Convergence of applications - New challenges

When Apple released its iPhone 4S,  one of the key additions to its feature list was 'Siri', a virtual personal assistant. Siri is an application that responds to voice commands and performs a variety of actions, based on the instructions. For example, if you ask Siri to suggest good restaurants, it uses your current location and searches the internet to find restaurants and further can go the restaurants website and book a seat as well.

In the above simple example, we have seen an application that uses voice recognition, collecting GPS data from the mobile, framing search queries based on data and instruction, conducting an internet search and performing a small transaction of booking a seat. More complex transactions will involve far more complex interactions and involvement of multiple application, the data from one being used for performing another transaction on the other.

It is the bringing together of multiple applications to perform a function rather than building all of the capabilities into one application that I see as a new area for testers to explore. Convergence of applications and devices are not a new concept. We have been discussing and debating in various forms and types. But with the possible commercial success of Siri (which we will come to know soon), There will surely be a boom of applications that uses one form or other of convergence technologies and are sure to be a challenge for testers.

It will not only make tests more complex by extending the boundaries of the system under test to the applications in converge, but also make scenarios far more specific to the context in which the test needs to be developed. It will also make the 'domain knowledge' far more extensive and make the tests more intuitive that ticking off a set of test conditions.
I test. Therefore I am.