Guided Bug Crush: Assist Manual GUI Testing of Android Apps via Hint Moves

Mobile apps are indispensable for people's daily life. Complementing with automated GUI testing, manual testing is the last line of defence for app quality. However, the repeated actions and easily missing of functionalities make manual testing time-consuming and inefficient. Inspired by the game candy crush with flashy candies as hint moves for players, we propose an approach named NaviDroid for navigating testers via highlighted next operations for more effective and efficient testing. Within NaviDroid, we construct an enriched state transition graph with the triggering actions as the edges for two involved states. Based on it, we utilize the dynamic programming algorithm to plan the exploration path, and augment the GUI with visualized hints for testers to quickly explore untested activities and avoid duplicate explorations. The automated experiments demonstrate the high coverage and efficient path planning of NaviDroid and a user study further confirms its usefulness. The NaviDroid can help us develop more robust software that works in more mission-critical settings, not only by performing more thorough testing with the same effort that has been put in before, but also by integrating these techniques into different parts of development pipeline.

Automated summary

Mobile apps are essential for daily life, and manual testing plays a crucial role in ensuring app quality. However, manual testing can be time-consuming and inefficient due to repeated actions and missed functionalities. Inspired by the game candy crush, NaviDroid proposes an approach that guides testers with highlighted next operations for more effective and efficient testing.