How does a fundraising event perform when it's transformed into a mobile app?
The Prince’s Trust is Britain’s leading youth charity, helping thousands of 13 to 30 years olds to transform their lives every year. It provides them with practical and financial support to help equip them with the skills and confidence to live, learn and earn. To support and continue its work, The Trust runs a number of fundraising events, including the Future Steps challenge – a workplace team fundraising event where participants can get fit and have fun whilst raising money for The Trust.
In previous years, teams kept track of their steps and manually recorded them on the website. The data was then collated into a central spreadsheet that was used by The Trust to manually populate a leaderboard each day. To streamline the process of signing up and tracking steps, as well as reducing the admin for The Trust, the event was transformed into a mobile application.
Steps recorded by wearable devices are automatically recorded by the app and added to the team’s count allowing teams to see their activity in real time. Whilst The Trust have an in-house test team, due to a tight schedule before launch, they needed to add extra resource quickly. It was important to find a test partner that could handle the wide device configurations needed, as well as the experience to design a test approach that incorporated the data elements, end-to-end user journeys and test verification.
Zoonou created a bespoke test solution that was a result of proactive communications between multiple teams including the development agency, Despark, based in Bulgaria. The test solution aimed to achieve coverage of three core aspects of the application:
– The functionality of the app
– Compatibility of the app with different mobile devices and integration with health-tracking platforms.
– Performance of the application for the user, particularly when placed under load.
For functional and compatibility testing, Zoonou embarked on a scripted approach, where detailed test cases were generated to ensure that the test effort achieved a known level of coverage of the app. A scripted approach crucially ensures the test process is traceable, measurable and repeatable. Zoonou gained an understanding of the different user profiles for the app, both Team Captains and Team Members and planned the test cases and user journeys accordingly.
Compatibility with the mobile devices that the Prince’s Trust’s users would be accessing the app on was vital, so Zoonou devised a representative selection of devices to test on, including iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel and more. Utilising our in-house test lab, all compatibility testing was conducted on real mobile handsets – not emulators. As a step collecting application, it was essential that the application integrated successfully with existing health[1]tracking platforms, so Zoonou created test suites to verify this was functioning and performing as expected. Platforms included: Apple Health Kit, Google Fit and Fitbit – as well as manual input. Tests focused on ensuring the data transmitted from the health-tracking platform to the Future Steps app as expected, without delay and that the correct data was synced.
The application launched on time and was received with enthusiasm and positivity from the users. Participants were able to record their steps and see their team’s score in real time and post updates to social media directly from the app. The solution allowed the Trust to scale the event and reach a wider audience.
Zoonou continues to partner with the Prince’s Trust with on-going test support across a range of projects
We have a proven track record of delivering projects on time and within budget for a wide range of public sector organisations. Our services can be purchased through the Government’s Digital Marketplace on procurement frameworks including G-Cloud and the Digital Outcomes Specialists.
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"Zoonou joined the project with a limited window before launch. They are flexible and adaptable on a project with numerous stakeholders. They delivered a test approach that accommodated a lot of moving parts and provided us with the device coverage we required. Very helpful!"