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Show HN: I built testelf - app testing service for your iOS app

testelf.com

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Re: Show HN: I built testelf - app testing service for your iOS app

#11

Post by jmatthew3 »

ssong wrote: post #2

OP here. I quit my full-time job almost a year ago to travel and work on startup ideas, and this is the fruit of my labor in the past six months that I hope you'll find useful. I wanted to make it easy for startups and indie devs to test their iOS applications. How does testelf work? You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective, loggin…

This is a pretty cool idea, and something I would have considered trying to get my boss to pay for when I was a developer. I didn't see on your website - do you test on a wide variety of hardware platforms, or just iPhone 5 and iPad? Different versions of iOS?

Also, do you have any terms, in particular, regarding confidentiality?

Re: Show HN: I built testelf - app testing service for your iOS app

#14

Post by Cushman »

matthuggins wrote: post #8
ssong wrote: post #2

OP here. I quit my full-time job almost a year ago to travel and work on startup ideas, and this is the fruit of my labor in the past six months that I hope you'll find useful. I wanted to make it easy for startups and indie devs to test their iOS applications. How does testelf work? You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective, loggin…

"You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective..." It seems like a user should have at least some idea of what the app is. For example, I'll read the first couple sentences of an app's description and look at some screenshots/video before I decide to download it. This might be something you want to consider instead of having absolutely…

It's usually a good idea when user testing to tell testers as little as possible about the product. It's true that real-world users have more context than that, but it can be worth it to get more unfiltered feedback— the first few moments you watch a user flounder to even understand what they're looking at can be the most valuable.

Re: Show HN: I built testelf - app testing service for your iOS app

#15

Post by ssong »

matthuggins wrote: post #8
ssong wrote: post #2

OP here. I quit my full-time job almost a year ago to travel and work on startup ideas, and this is the fruit of my labor in the past six months that I hope you'll find useful. I wanted to make it easy for startups and indie devs to test their iOS applications. How does testelf work? You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective, loggin…

"You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective..." It seems like a user should have at least some idea of what the app is. For example, I'll read the first couple sentences of an app's description and look at some screenshots/video before I decide to download it. This might be something you want to consider instead of having absolutely…

Good point! There is an option to attach additional information (description, notes, link to website/app store) when uploading an individual build. We do ask for a little bit of information about the app in general when the first build is uploaded so that we have some context.

Re: Show HN: I built testelf - app testing service for your iOS app

#18

Post by ssong »

jmatthew3 wrote: post #11
ssong wrote: post #2

OP here. I quit my full-time job almost a year ago to travel and work on startup ideas, and this is the fruit of my labor in the past six months that I hope you'll find useful. I wanted to make it easy for startups and indie devs to test their iOS applications. How does testelf work? You upload a build of your app without providing any additional instructions, and we'll test your app from a user's perspective, loggin…

This is a pretty cool idea, and something I would have considered trying to get my boss to pay for when I was a developer. I didn't see on your website - do you test on a wide variety of hardware platforms, or just iPhone 5 and iPad? Different versions of iOS? Also, do you have any terms, in particular, regarding confidentiality?

Thanks for asking! We do test on common devices (retina/non-retina iPad, iOS 5/6), and we're going to carefully consider which devices to cover as we grow. I am also very aware of the importance of confidentiality, such as keeping test results private -- I think the service wouldn't make sense without it. Our exact terms will be available before we publicly launch.

Re: Show HN: I built testelf - app testing service for your iOS app

#20

Post by thomseddon »

Looks excellently useful, good job. I must say the graph on the test page (http://beta.testelf.com/builds/share/0b78d05c4f5d11e2ab5a220...) is particularly wonderful, great use of D3.

Also, would be very interested to know if you have plans as to how (or if) you will overcome the issues you would have if you wanted to scale such a bespoke service?

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