SBIR Phase I: Effective Test Generation for Mobile Applications

Moquality Inc, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve the quality of mobile applications by providing developers with better tools for quality assurance of such applications. The results from these tools will enable the developers to take actionable steps to improve and evolve their applications before releasing to customers. This process will also increase developers' confidence in the reliability of their app and will allow them to ship high-quality apps faster. As a result, the average mobile user will have a better mobile experience, thus benefiting all segments of society that rely on mobile computing for their daily activities. From a research perspective, the proposed project will help us understand the practical issues in effectively applying and scaling test generation for mobile applications. Based on the findings, the company will define improved techniques to address such issues and disseminate its results broadly through publications and interactions with industry. Finally, the work will positively influence the next generation of mobile computing development tools by making automated testing more integrated with the development process. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project directly addresses the stated goals of the "Information Technologies" topic; it promises to provide fundamental scientific advances by developing both solid theoretical foundations and practical tools that help in improving the functionality and performance of mobile software. Bugs in mobile applications are dependent on the multiple contexts such as user, location, platform etc., leading to several challenges in testing under realistic user conditions. Thus, despite recent research advances in software engineering, app testing is still done by humans, resulting in a tedious and error prone process. This project will lead to the development of novel techniques and a tool (product) that enables, supports and automates the generation of test cases for mobile applications under various conditions. Upon completion, this project will provide unprecedented advantages to developers for reducing their testing costs while effectively finding and addressing app issues. The results of the company's preliminary evaluation are encouraging and motivate further research and development in this area. The company will leverage relationships built during its initial customer discovery to empirically validate the proposed techniques on real world mobile applications.