03 Mar 2023Maksym Vysunko

Can User Journey and User Flow help with QA?

It can be hard to create software when you don’t have a clear vision of it and its purpose.

And it’s hard to test as well. That’s why, for many years, bright minds have been working to shape standards and recommendations for creating software. Their brilliant ideas shaped the modern software development industry by creating various methodologies, approaches and tools. Among others, the design tools help us to elaborate the concept of a product into a set of detailed and comprehensive documents or so-called artefacts. This documentation will guide the development team from the design stage of the Software Development Life Cycle onwards.

In this article, I will try to find out where, specifically, User Flow and User Journey documentation can help QA engineers have a better perspective on the product.

User Journey

User Journey depicts the most general and important information about your User(s), which can then be used not just solely by marketing, but also by the development team. This document provides a holistic vision and sufficient details to understand the product’s genuine audience. The following questions need answering and are important when developing a product:

• Who is a User (i.e. client, persona(-s))?
• What are the User’s goals and motivation?
• What are the User’s points(-s) of interest in your product?
• What does he expect to achieve with your product?
• What is the experience he wants with your product?

A map is the best word to describe how a User Journey is usually represented. The map can contain one or more personas (i.e. types of core Users) and show different scopes of coverage: from end-to-end experience to parts of the interaction. Having the “what” and “why” explained in detail to the development team at early stages, it’s much easier to build and test to meet given requirements and expectations.

QA team can benefit from User Journey documentation when:

• verifying and refining the requirements and specifications of a product;
• evaluating the User Interface and User Experience of a product;
• preparing Usability Testing or User Acceptance Testing;
• making suggestions on improving particular aspects of a product.

Example #1 of User Journey map (Source: unknown)

Example #2 of User Journey map (Source: NNgroup.com)

User Flow

User Flow is an algorithm-like series of steps from an entry point to the final point, a path that a User takes throughout the product. Unlike User Journey, it brings more details on what action a user needs to take to achieve a particular result. Mostly used by UI/UX architects and product teams, User Flow flowcharts help to design and present typical patterns of User interactions with the product. Each diagram can display one or more paths of interface with your users, whether it is a ‘happy’ path or an alternative path or an exception. A good User Flow diagram should answer the following questions:

• What is the user trying to achieve?
• What input or data does the user need to accomplish the task?
• What are potential impediments or hesitations during the path?
• What is important for the user that keeps him progressing on the path?

Having user experience split into segments with help of flowcharts, it’s easy to look and navigate through your product. The development team can find User Flow flowcharts very useful to build the state transition diagrams and other documentation, which will be heavily relied on in development. User Flow flowcharts and workflow diagrams can be changed over time to meet the requirements and growing needs of the business.

QA team can benefit from User Flow documentation when:

• verifying and refining the requirements and specifications of a product;
• evaluating the User Interface and User Experience of a product;
• preparing Usability Testing or User Acceptance Testing;
• creating test cases for manual functional testing;
• creating scenarios for automated test suites;
• evaluating results of Performance Testing (i.e. if some parts of a process take longer or cause bottlenecks that might hinder a user’s progress);
• making suggestions on improving particular aspects of a product.

Example #1 of User Flow (Source: piktochart.com)

Example #2 of User Flow (Source: crayond.com)

Conclusion

While User Journey provides a more high-level holistic view of a product, User Flow diagrams can be more focused on its component parts and bring various details into sight. They can help the QA team to improve their understanding of the software and enhance collaboration with developers and other stakeholders in the testing process. Certainly, User Flow diagrams win for QA specialists, because they can truly become the basis for testing and quality control.

Having a product covered with comprehensive and detailed flowcharts in addition to regular requirements, it’s so much easier for the QA team to:

• build a testing strategy for a product;
• identify and prioritise paths in terms of importance before testing;
• identify and prioritise potential issues or problem areas that users might encounter;
• create test cases based on flowcharts;
• design scenarios for automation testing;
• evaluate and improve test coverage of a product;
• use flowcharts as a source of truth and reference any time whenever there is a necessity or a risk of losing track.