Main testing steps for smart wearable devices

【51CTO.com Quick Translation】Whether you use smart wearable devices to track your steps or record your sleep time, you want the devices you use to be accurate and easy to use. This article will take common wearable devices as an example to introduce the general testing stages involved before they are put on the market. In addition, we will also discuss some unique aspects of special types of devices.

As we all know, the integration of hardware and software and how they can interact smoothly is one of the important aspects of quality assurance (QA). When testing wearable devices, we should focus on whether they have faster and more seamless integration quality.

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1. Material testing

Material testing often occurs during the prototype and sample manufacturing stage. We generally take the following types of material testing:

• Chemical testing: This involves detecting potentially irritating or harmful chemicals that may be present in a component of a wearable device (e.g., a shoe) and that are strictly prohibited by local laws in various countries.
• Mechanical/Physical Testing: This testing ensures that all components in the device are properly connected to each other, and testing for wear resistance is particularly important.
• Performance testing: This aspect of testing focuses on verifying whether the equipment meets the quality standards set by the company, including whether the equipment has the ability to resist friction and pressure under extreme weather conditions.

2. Hardware Testing

Let's take a look at the types of hardware testing for wearable devices:

• Wireless Testing: Wireless testing involves the speed, correctness/accuracy, and integrity of information transmitted via WiFi and Bluetooth.
• Battery life cycle testing: This test refers to the entire life of the battery from the time it is installed in the factory until it is fully discharged. We can test the battery in various modes of the device (such as airplane mode). Understanding and measuring the duration of the battery in the device is crucial because in wearable products such as sports shoes, we generally cannot replace the battery.
• Electrical safety test: Since these devices are often in direct contact with the user's skin, the purpose of this test is to ensure that the user has no risk of electric shock or burns during use.

3. Firmware testing

Firmware testing mainly targets the operating software and integrated data layers of wearable devices. The test types include:

• Usability testing: It targets the user’s first-hand experience and involves analyzing the gap between the actual results produced by the device and the user’s expectations through their real interaction with the device.
• Compatibility testing: It mainly deals with the connection and mutual calls between various devices and platforms.
• Data/Database Integrity Testing: This verifies that data is stored correctly and is not corrupted when the device is updated or restored.
• Security testing: This type of testing includes how to protect data and information related to user privacy stored in device media, thereby avoiding various data leaks and eliminating security risks.

4. External software integration testing

This type of testing is the detection of the interaction between various mobile applications and their wearable devices. It usually occurs in the beta testing phase of the product and targets a set of established functional features, such as the number of beats or steps collected per minute.

In addition, we can also test various functional updates for compatibility issues with old versions and whether they will cause data loss in storage. It can be seen that once a bug is detected (such as the number of steps being automatically reset to zero after 120,000 steps), we should fix it in time at this stage.

Below we list some typical companies in this field, as well as their ongoing projects and tests. We hope you can choose the test cases that are suitable for you.

• Athos: This is a company that tests complex smart equipment for professional athletes. They use surface electromyography (sEMG) to test a group of men and women with different fitness levels.
• Applause: They are working on a very interesting project, which is to synchronize the app with wearable devices to record the various words and sentences that babies can hear throughout the day, and track their progress in learning to speak through analysis.
• Orpyx: They use wearable devices to track and detect diseases that may cause irreversible damage to the body (such as diabetes), thereby changing patients' real-life habits.
• Qaprosoft: This San-Francisco company is testing a variety of smart shoes, fitness bands, and apparel for professional athletes.

In addition to the common wearable devices on the market, such as fitness bracelets and smart shoes designed for professional athletes, some companies are using their unique scientific methods and professional technical equipment to try to save patients' lives in critical moments (such as stroke attacks).

For example, the American company Orpyx mentioned above uses various types of soles to track diabetic patients' related neuropathy, thereby preventing diabetic foot ulcers and deterioration. If the patient's pressure level reaches a dangerous range, the accompanying smartwatch will send a signal to remind the patient to change the position of the foot. In the testing phase of such products, they found some real patients to try them out, thereby ensuring the effectiveness of these soles in various environments, data tracking capabilities, and actual improvement of patient health.

Although testing of wearable devices involves many aspects, in order to ensure the seamless integration of the device itself and its corresponding App, we need to do crowd testing. That is, through some unpredictable scene experiences, we can find various potential bugs and ensure that these bugs will not affect the normal behavior and life of the end users.

Today, some companies are creating different wearable devices according to their own technical specifications and conducting various tests under their own supervision; some companies are conducting various professional tests for leading products in the industry. No matter which one, they need to combine the current market, especially some of the general methods mentioned above, to ensure that the product can achieve the intended functions and effects at every complex stage of research and development.

Original title: Smart Wearable Device Testing: Main Steps to Cover, Author: Alexandra Gorobets

[Translated by 51CTO. Please indicate the original translator and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]