What Do Testers Actually Do?

If you are new to testing with Betabound, you probably don’t know what to expect and how your feedback helps shape future products. If you’re familiar with testing, you have an idea of the basics; you’ll get to play with an unreleased product and give feedback based on your experiences. The product’s development team will then use your feedback to shape their product before it is launched to the public.

But how do our clients receive your feedback within one of our Betabound exclusive projects? What kind of activities can you expect to complete? Here’s a list of the typical tasks you’ll be expected to do during a test and how each one helps our client improve their product.

Discover Issues

One of the biggest challenges developers face is to find all possible issues, major or minor before they release their product. That’s where you come in! During our Betabound Exclusive tests, you’ll be able to use our Issues submission form. As you use the product, you can report any problems you find using this form. You’ll need to be as detailed as possible about the issue you encountered. No item is small enough so include steps on how you encountered this issue, in case the test manager or development team is having trouble recreating your issue. Screenshots and video footage are also really helpful to include when submitting an Issue. 

Not every issue will be fixed during your test but your reporting is appreciated and helpful.

Propose Ideas

Since you’ll be one of the first to test out a product outside of the development team, your fresh perspective can really make a difference in its development. You may come up with some great ideas on improving existing features or adding new features entirely in future versions of the product so we encourage you to submit any suggestions using our Ideas submission form.

Be sure to explain how exactly you’d like to see this idea realized and why this can improve the product overall. We want the development team to know what makes your idea so vital to the future success of their product, so the more specific your idea is, the better!

Award Praise

As important as it is to report issues or suggest ideas for improvements, it is also necessary to give praise to what you already love about the product that you’re testing. Many times, it’s easy to take for granted the things that work perfectly because we just expect them to work.

A product’s design might be your favorite part of your experience but if the developer is unsure about how that design is being received, changes might be applied to that design and you might not like a new version of it. Praise helps our clients understand why a certain feature works so well and they might use this feedback to apply to other areas of this product, a new iteration or even their other products. Share your positivity!

Check-in Weekly

During a typical Betabound Exclusive test, you’ll receive weekly instructions from your test manager asking you to focus on specific aspects of the product. While you will be able to play with this unreleased product as you like, these focused activities will ensure that you get a chance to explore all its aspects.

For example, you might be given a Bluetooth headset to try out. While you will be using the headset’s signal to listen to music, you might be asked to use its accompanying aux cable to test out the sound quality while the headset is physically connected to one of your devices. These activities are created to make sure our clients receive feedback on multiple areas of their product.

Submit Surveys

Once you’ve completed those weekly activities, you’ll submit a survey that asks you to rate your experience with them. Product teams use surveys to ensure that they’re getting everyone’s opinions on important aspects of the product and user experience so that they can track patterns and trends.

Since a product is being worked on in real-time as you are testing, make sure to submit your surveys on time! Your feedback on these surveys is needed as soon as possible to help shape the future of these developing products.

Discuss with Fellow Testers

Our tests will also have an opportunity for you to discuss the product with other testers in forums within the project. This is your chance to talk about anything: general impressions, neat ways you’re using the product, your favorite and least favorite features, or simply how excited you are to be a part of the test. The product development team will look at the discussion forums to see how people are discussing and using the product.

Perform Special Tasks

Sometimes our clients might need more input from testers to better help their development teams understand how their product is being received so you might be asked to perform additional tasks. Some of these include writing journal entries centered around your product usage, writing mock reviews about the product, completing additional surveys, or having a phone call with your test manager or even the client to better understand your experience.

Did we miss any activities that you’ve been asked to do as a beta tester? Which activities are your favorites? Let us know!

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Look familiar? This post is a part of a series in which we’re breathing new life into some of our older entries.