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Tag: UI

Why Automation Fails Without the Right QA Mindset
In the DevOps world, with its faster release cycles and continuous delivery, quality assurance (QA) cannot be sidelined until the end of the process. Companies that actively use automation achieve up to 60% faster release cycles compared to those relying solely on manual testing. However, automation alone is insufficient. Without the right QA mindset, moving faster can easily backfire if quality is not built into every stage. QA teams must evolve to become quality enablers throughout the software delivery cycle. Rather than joining at the tail end of the lifecycle, they must work alongside product owners to understand functional requirements, collaborate with architects and developers to grasp solution design and ensure visibility into end-to-end solution delivery.

Getting involved more deeply from day one means QA can help build quality from the outset through deployment. In response to this shift, QA professionals need to step up by:
- Designing and managing automated tests in continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines
- Focusing on risk-based testing
- Collaborating with teams to ensure quality is integrated into every step of the delivery process
In a fully automated pipeline, QA teams add the most value when they go beyond just testing and contribute as collaborative partners, strategic advisors and critical thinkers throughout the entire development process.

The Importance of the Right QA Mindset

Automation is key to fast, continuous delivery, but its real impact depends on the mindset driving it. In fact, 63% of organizations deploy code without thoughtful testing in pursuit of faster delivery timelines. The so-called developmental mindset focuses solely on speed, code coverage and scripting mechanics — often resulting in a check-the-box mentality, where tests verify expected outcomes but overlook real-world usage, potential risks and user experience.

The QA mindset, by contrast, offers a broader, more critical perspective. It is rooted in exploration, skepticism and curiosity. As QA professionals, we don’t just ask whether the software works — we ask how it might fail, where it could break and whether it fulfills the user’s ultimate needs. This mindset is essential for prioritizing automated tests based on business or user risk, rather than simply following functional decomposition.

With this strategic mindset, we design automated tests that anticipate edge cases, test assumptions and reflect actual user workflows. This leads to earlier detection of defects, fewer production incidents and, ultimately, a smoother user experience. In the long run, it also improves team productivity and reduces rework and reactive firefighting by catching issues in advance.

Automation alone doesn’t guarantee quality — it is only as effective as the tests it is scripted to run. If the requirements are misunderstood, automated tests may pass while critical issues remain undetected. I have seen failures where teams relied solely on automation without involving proper QA practices, leading to tests that validated incorrect behavior. Automation frequently fails to detect new or unexpected issues introduced by system upgrades. It often misses critical problems such as faulty data mapping, incomplete user interface (UI) testing and gaps in test coverage due to outdated scripts.

Lack of adaptability is another common obstacle that I’ve repeatedly seen undermine automation testing efforts. When UI elements are tightly coupled, even minor changes can disrupt test cases. With the right QA mindset, this challenge is anticipated — promoting modular, maintainable automation strategies capable of adapting to frequent UI and logic changes.

Automation lacks the critical analysis required to validate business logic and perform true end-to-end testing. From my experience, the human QA mindset proved essential during the testing of a mortgage loan calculation system. While automation handled standard calculations and data validation, it could not assess whether the logic aligned with real-world lending rules. Here is where human insight was crucial: Automated tests confirmed data processing and standard calculations, but couldn’t verify whether the outputs complied with evolving lending regulations and complex business requirements. QA ensures that test scenarios are aligned with business goals and remain adaptable to change.

As QA professionals, we often serve as a bridge between developers and business teams — translating business requirements into actionable testing scenarios and ensuring the team’s efforts focus on what truly matters.

Why Human QA Thinking is Irreplaceable

Automated scripts can only validate what they have been explicitly designed to check. That is why human-driven testing remains essential, even in highly automated pipelines. Human-driven testing is especially valuable for UI and user experience (UX) validation, exploratory testing and identifying edge cases that automation may miss.

For example, in a human capital management payroll system upgrade project with zero downtime, we applied a hybrid testing strategy that combined automated and manual efforts. Automated regression scripts ensured core functionality remained stable, while human-driven tests were used to validate new scenarios and feature upgrades. This ensured proper integration with other modules and subsystems. The result was a fast, stable CI/CD pipeline that still allowed space for creativity.

Human insight remains a critical part of both DevOps and QA. Without a mindset grounded in strategy, risk awareness and a deep understanding of how real users interact with software, automation can mislead teams. Quality teams don’t just bring tools — they bring perspective. By asking the hard questions, they ensure testing efforts stay aligned with what truly matters to both the business and the end user.

Key Tips to Strengthen Your QA Mindset

In conclusion, here are the key QA mindset principles for successful test automation:
- Integrate QA from the start. Involve QA early in the process — don’t wait until the end.
- Adopt a risk-based, user-focused approach. Prioritize testing based on business impact and user risk. Go beyond validating expected outcomes — explore how the software might fail in real-world scenarios.
- Design maintainable and adaptable test automation. Avoid brittle scripts that break with every minor change.
- Blend automation with manual testing. Let automation handle data and calculations, and human testers cover new features, UI/UX and edge cases through exploratory testing.
September 16, 2025
8 Web Development Trends to Follow

Since the inception of the internet in 1983, many web development tools have been introduced to simplify complex processes that would otherwise take months to finish and cost companies a great deal of money.

According to internet live statistics, over 1.5 billion websites and more than five billion active daily internet users visit multiple sites around the clock. That number is expected to grow as businesses (and website owners) offer personalized experiences to users, make their websites more user-friendly and introduce navigation that visitors prefer.

Website development has changed and is still evolving quickly. As a website owner, it’s imperative to watch out for new trends that are being introduced in the industry. Neglecting to adopt current trends might affect your website’s functionality, user experience and network. You risk falling behind your rivals and losing visitors to websites with superior user experiences and network scalability.

The best way to maintain competitiveness is to make sure your website is consistently updated, fresh and that it follows current trends. Here are eight to watch out for.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)

PWAs speed up website loading times and enable offline functionality in multiple applications. PWAs have already been used by businesses like Starbucks, Uber, Pinterest and Twitter to improve user experience.

It is crucial to transform web apps into PWAs, given the increased shift toward smartphones and tablets for various online functions. PWAs offer a superior user experience, increased engagement and conversion rates and lower development costs.

Motion UI

Motion UI is used to create fully responsive site designs. Motion UI enables developers to produce motion in a native app environment, and with a built-in motion, it can be used for any design project. A website needs to be appealing and offer the information a user seeks. Your target audience is more likely to notice websites that look good.

Motion UI is easy to implement as the developer doesn’t need to be an expert in JavaScript. It also assists people in finding the precise information they need and improves the effectiveness of site design.

Privacy Center

Privacy is a core component of ensuring your customers have a safe user experience when navigating your website. Privacy Center is an intuitive way of cataloging your privacy policy and notices, terms of service, cookie policy, refund policy, data subject requests and more on a single page.

Privacy Center enables users to obtain information regarding a company’s data activities from a single source without having to navigate multiple pages and scroll through endless paragraphs to identify the information they need.

Privacy Center is a growing trend for web developers as data privacy laws impose strict obligations on companies, necessitating the need to implement intuitive privacy centers that address all concerns of users.

Dark Mode

Although dark mode was first introduced in 2016, it wasn’t until 2020 and 2021 that it gained popularity as a standard practice in web building. Essentially, dark mode refers to a site’s color scheme. In other words, the website has a darker background with light-colored text and other UI elements.

Dark mode typically lessens eye strain, especially in dim lighting. When dark mode is used instead of light mode on a mobile device, it uses less battery. People with light sensitivity or vision impairments have also found it to be beneficial.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Accelerated mobile pages, better known as AMP, is an initiative that resulted from Google and Twitter working together to provide quicker mobile pages. Pages that are AMP-optimized load quicker, thus ranking better than pages that take more time to load. Compared to non-AMP pages, which may take up to 22 seconds to load, AMP pages do so in roughly two seconds.

In web development, AMP is a simple search engine optimization method that reduces bounce rates, adapts to any browser and doesn’t need sitemaps to be discovered by search engines.

AI Chatbots

AI chatbots are intuitive, enabling businesses to operate more quickly over voice or text chats while enhancing the consumer experience. The technology provides a more human-like experience to visitors with the help of machine learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) that understand the user’s intent and responds accordingly. Many well-known enterprises already use AI chatbots to communicate with their clients.

Industry experts predict that AI chatbots or self-learning bots are the way of the future, and organizations can save money by using them instead of human customer support representatives, especially for simple queries and FAQs. AI chatbots are a long-term investment as they process orders, respond to users’ questions, connect them with the relevant department and quickly resolve any complaints, resulting in an improved user experience.

Voice Search Optimization

The practice of optimizing web pages to show up in voice searches is known as voice search optimization. Voice assistants and the internet of things (IoT) have helped voice recognition devices become increasingly widespread.

Google launched voice search in 2012. Since then, the market for voice search tools—such as virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri—has seen exceptional growth. The trend is only expected to grow since virtual assistants are not currently being integrated into many internet-enabled devices.

By 2023, eight billion digital voice assistants are predicted to be in use worldwide. Due to this enormous expansion, voice search optimization will become indispensable among the newest web development technologies.

Push Notifications

When users browse, push notifications—clickable pop-ups—appear before them. Companies employ this technology as a speedy route for communicating information, such as promotions and announcements. Push notifications can be integrated on any device, including laptops, cellphones and tablets.

Push notifications are an effective tool that significantly improves users’ experience, drives visitors to your website, improves click rates, aids in grabbing users’ attention and improves conversion rates. Web applications from internet behemoths like Facebook and Google already use the technology.

Conclusion

Though it has been around for decades, web development continues to innovate and improve as organizations strive to influence the future delivery of web experiences. To give your users the best experience, raise the search rating of your website and reach new heights, it is crucial to keep up with these trends.

August 26, 2022
Designing a Future of Innovative UX, Without UI

The long-fabled future of a world without traditional human-to-computer interactions is no longer science fiction. It’s a reality. Consumers all across the globe are wearing computers on the wrists, talking to artificial intelligence to check the weather and monitoring body functions through micro-devices. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible through creative technology design, and yet the masses still see holograms and implantations as far-off science fiction, rather than the very close and possible future.

Designers and developers are leading the charge into the future, but not without their fair share of challenges and hurdles. With a blank slate of endless potential, how can we design for a simple UX while still having a visually appealing product? Moreover, what if, in the near future visuals are not required at all?

The New Frontier of Design

Holograms, audio controls, wearables … new technologies have the potential to disrupt the screen entirely. Society is teetering on the edge of the uncanny valley of a world without traditional UI, and designers must take the reigns.

Take audio design, for example. Voice technology and virtual assistants are already rendering many screen functions moot. Technology leaders such as Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon and beyond are pouring resources into voice, creating a screenless interface simple and intuitive enough for any consumer to use. Google, for example, has made creating an app on the Google home quite simple though Google Console. Designers can have fun building the tone, language and personality for the app easily in as little as five minutes. While it’s true that we live in a world where some still battle this technology, it’s also the case that audio assistants are carving out a place for themselves in our home and our lives. The technologies powering audio controls are being developed and refined quickly, so learning how to design for it now is key.

Itcher, a recommendation engine that helps users discover movies, music, television shows, bestselling books, games and more, requires no UI at all. The voice-powered platform allows users to ask their voice assistant for a recommendation, prompts them with questions to better understand his or her tastes and preferences and leverages artificial intelligence to provide optimal recommendations.

Designing for audio navigation is not necessarily fully intuitive. More so than with desktop screens or handheld devices, interactive audio treads on the brink of the uncanny valley—imitating humans in many respects but still not quite convincingly human. Audio designers like the team at Itcher must consider factors such as lexicon, pitch, volume, direction and most importantly, value for users to want to interact with a voice-controlled device.

One contributing factor for the rise of audio is the rise of wearable technology such as smartwatches, AR smart glasses and beyond. Designed to be connected to consumers at all times, wearables are blurring the lines between technology and its users. As the wearables become better optimized for everyday use, the screens will shrink, and likely disappear altogether. This will make audio design more valuable than ever before.

While people are still going to be very dependent on traditional screen interfaces for quite some time (especially for complex tasks), there is no doubt the world is hurtling towards a future where screens are no longer a necessity, but an option. Designers and developers no longer have the luxury of waiting for the next big thing to enter mainstream—it’s here.

Focus on the U (User)

No matter if you are designing for a wearable, a voice assistant or a mobile app, customer feedback is an important aspect of innovation and design that often gets overlooked. Of course, the first thing a designer must consider should always be the end user—know the business and customer requirements so they are making the best product that will fill the needs of both. A designer that does not approach a project by asking many “why” questions of both the company and the target audience will not have the information they need to build the best and simplest interface she or he can.

Innovative thinking is important at all points of the design process, but to ground design in reality rather than getting trapped in science fiction aspirations, designers must have both quantitative and qualitative research to better understand not only the functionality success of a product or platform, but also the user sentiment. This requires heavy interaction with stakeholders (both internal and external) at every stage of the design process.

Bring customers in to soundboard ideas, test products and platforms and engage on a deeper level with the business. At Shutterstock, we speak to customers on a regular basis, hold focus groups, and use user testing platforms to ensure we have customer feedback at many steps along the way. It’s vital for customers to be able to interact with products and platforms along with designers. This allows for greater creativity and most importantly, simplicity in UX.

Focus on Simplicity

Shakespeare’s quote “Brevity is the Soul of Wit,” from Hamlet, is typically interpreted for works of writing, encouraging authors to be concise. However, this is also true of all creative endeavors, writing, art and design. Making things simple (concise) takes hard work, it takes time, it takes skill and giving yourself the space as a designer to do that work is critical to finding success in creating a “simple” design.

Designing something simple is one of the hardest things every designer faces. Sure, it’s easy for the designer to come up with a simple interface that answers the customer’s needs at a cursory level, but often there are additional requirements or stakeholder feedback that one also has to take into account. It’s important to remember that product, UX and engineering are all parts of an equal trifecta. Designer and developer questions, as well as conversations with real customers about how to solve a user’s need, will only make a product better in the long run. The challenge for designers is balancing immediate feedback from their company and users with forward-thinking innovation.

It is often not intuitive for both businesses and consumers alike to imagine a future that pushes the boundaries of what exists. Designers are uniquely positioned to bring abstract innovation and technology to the masses through simple and intuitive UX.

— Erin Essex

November 22, 2019
The Emergence of UI and UX in DevOps Tools
Most of the popular DevOps tools on the market such as Puppet, Chef and Jenkins, are open-source and require a high level of proficiency. With the complexity comes the challenge of learning new frameworks and paradigms, a benefit to those who want to challenge themselves and learn new skills.

But while these tools have become widely adopted, the widespread adoption of DevOps is creating a need for interfaces that cater to all users, from the most technical engineers to those who don’t want to learn, don’t see the value in learning or don’t need some of the top-end power that a complex scripting interface provides.

It is for this reason that CloudBees developed Blue Ocean, a new interface for its continuous delivery tooling, and Red Hat released a user interface (UI) for Ansible.

The Right Time for UI?

Why have there not been UIs before now?

I would say two reasons:
1. Users did not demand nor care for one until now. A UI in many circles is seen to been more presciptive/restrictive of what can be achieved, and that only scripting/programming interfaces expose the real power to an engineer. Also, many of the most progressive engineers like scripting; they derive satisfaction from learning new skills, especially those that are the most highly desirable/in demand. And, I think many engineers like things because they are difficult to do; it’s a challenge, they have bragging rights and means they likely are getting paid more/are in demand.
2. The open-source community is not as good at or geared toward building UIs.
Why has a UI become important now?

At MidVision, like many of the other commercial automation tool vendors, we have always believed that user experience and accessibility is critical, so we have provided command-line, scripted, API and GUI interfaces to our tooling. But this has not been the common approach.

What makes this moment different is the wider adoption of DevOps automation tooling by groups that want at least graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and improvements to user experience such that you don’t need to be super-technical to be able to use them.

The main groups we see are:
- Business users within an organization. Continuous delivery/release automation tooling very much promotes collaboration, interaction and self-service, allowing release managers to see the status or pipelines, approve releases or initiate deployments. Managers may want to see dashboards and metric, produce reports or usage data. Other less technical staff, offshore teams, second level support, etc., may want to be able to provision, clone environments or deploy changes.
  There is a gap between the nerds in the basement speaking one language – and the business users who speak another which accessibility, UI and UX hopes to bridge.
- Operations. There are certain parts of IT Operations that have welcomed the technical script-based tooling with open arms—it was a natural evolution for a UNIX system admin to become a DevOps/automation engineer. They can still script in shell (or are they meant to be doing it all in Python? ?). Again, some of the security tooling, storage, etc., are generally more comfortable down in the weeds. As you move up the stack however, toward the business application deployments, users are much more familiar and comfortable with UIs. Also, at this level dashboard, metrics, access control and reporting are much more important—and all of which are very hard to achieve without a proper UI.
- Wider industry adoption. Adoption of the tools and techniques that are often advocated in the DevOps world started with the same poster child companies—Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, Google—and other newer companies that are cloud-native, have an open-source-first policy and are unencumbered by heritage technology stacks.
We have then seen parts of enterprises adopt DevOps practices and tooling. Obviously, it is important to start small, establish value and then scale—running an initiative like you would a startup within an enterprise works well.

Now that there is a compelling body of evidence to suggest that DevOps practices provide competitive advantage, cost savings, improved time to market, etc., other industries that are heavily dependent on technology have not had yet adopted these practices for varying reasons. Some parts of the finance and healthcare industries are two such areas. These industries have concerns around security and stability that may have slowed their adoption to date.

Overall, however, this wider adoption means we need to cater not just for the new breed of DevOps engineers that are both system administrators and programmers and can script in Shell, Rudy and Python. We also need to cater to a wider group that either don’t have the skills to use these tools or don’t care for them.

What change, then, are we likely to see?

I believe DevOps tooling will evolve to provide new interfaces to cater to business users and self-service, and to make it easier to achieve the same thing without needing years of experience using a tool before being considered a competent user.

I would compare many of the current tools today to a map and compass. Lovers of orienteering or mountaineering may suggest using a GPS or map on a mobile phone is cheating, cannot be relied upon or won’t provide the same same information as the contours on a 1 to 10,000 map. Or maybe you prefer vinyl to Spotify.

Neither of these things are wrong; they are just not the only right. If you want to nerd out with your map and compass, vinyl LPs and Python scripts, I say fill your boots. All of which, BTW, I have some passion for! However, if you also want to get in your car, enter a zip code and know that it will get you there (accepting there is maybe a route that is slightly quicker if only you had done your research more thoroughly), this makes perfect sense to me.

User experience is at the heart of the most of the other products we choose to consume, and I think many new and existing users will be pleased with UX becoming more important as tools like ours and others put this at the forefront of their design.

About the Author / Dave Sayers

Dave Sayers is a co-founder and technical services director of MidVision, a provider of Release Automation and Continuous Delivery Software. He works closely with customers and partners on DevOps and Automation initiaitves throughout Europe and North America and is responsible for devising and managing the partner and channel strategy. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
May 30, 2017