Specialmoves

Specializing in the production of sites, games and mobile applications, Specialmoves is a full-service creative agency based in London. With a staff of 25 employees, the company works with clients directly on development, strategy, project delivery – and testing. But when it came to certain QA tasks, like mobile testing, the company knew that outside assistance would be required.

"If you're trying to do that type of testing in-house, you've got to coordinate lots of different people and lots of different devices,” said Senior Project Manager, Sarah Pridham. “But uTest can easily cover all of those things, as well as different operating systems, browsers and even new devices like the iPad. It's brilliant."

In 2010, as Pridham organized two projects (Lynx Effect, a web-based app, as well an upgrade of a Nokia application) she realized that a more flexible, cost-effective method of software testing would be needed in order to meet their deadline.

This case study will show how Special Moves leveraged the uTest community for their testing needs - explaining the process of getting started, managing the uTest platform, defining the scope of projects,  selecting testers and other common tasks.

Testing Summary: Lynx Effect and Carpediemdaily.com
Specialmoves had worked closely with BBH and Unilever to deliver the Lynx Effect site in multiple languages, with each territory being able to manage their content with a bespoke CMS built using Adobe AIR plugged into a .NET backend. After designing a back-end system that was capable of supporting both a Flash and standards compliant HTML front-end, Pridham would leverage the uTest community to ensure that it functioned as intended. During that time, testers from several countries executed a series of detailed test scripts.

The Nokia app – called Carpediemdaily.com – was designed to fire up users’ imaginations and to help them learn more about the world around them. However, creating an app that works well across a wide range of handsets is a huge challenge. To ensure the functionality of the updated version, Sarah would test it across different configurations of touchscreen, keyboards and screen sizes, and two popular Nokia handsets.