How Behavior Driven Development enhances User Experience

There is no rocket science in understanding the fact that for any app giving an immaculate user experience is important. In today’s hyper competitive scenario, providing user experience becomes essential as it will play a major role in bifurcating your app from your contemporaries and enable you to stand out from the rest. For this, in comes BDD i.e. Behavior Driven Development which is the new buzz word of the programming concept and lays special emphasis on the user and their specific needs.

The mobile app developers are beginning to realize that the features of the product are in fact just the set of behaviors that they need to understand. This is the main reason behind the cohesive bond of user experience and behavior driven development. BDD is a smooth amalgamation of principles of TDD (Test Driven Development) and the ideas from the domain driven design with object oriented analysis. In addition, BDD provides software development and management teams with tools to collaborate emphatically on software development.

It’s a general belief that developers and designers inherently understand what the user needs, which is not true in all the cases. Because for roles that are focused on researching the complex aspects, the developers needs to be aware of the user understanding and this should hold a high place during the app development process.

Thus, Behavior Driven Development has all the ingredients to be a decisive factor in enhancing user experience and be a competent force in escalating app sales.

Let us understand this in a better manner!!

Development based on User needs

Development must be based on the user things, as the developers and testers don’t understand what the users actually want. To know about this, they have to listen keenly to their users. A leading mobile app development company’s process consists of Product manager, a designer and a developer and based on their communication the user gets the end product. However, the developer doesn’t have any direct contact with these people and this weak links needs a fixation in order to enhance the user experience. Thus with behavior driven development, the people involved in the app development process can be made aware of the customer needs so that they can streamline their process effectively.

Also Read: Mobile Apps User Experience and Customer Experience – Are they different?

Offers new ways of doing things

To put it in a simple manner, BDD considers both business and technical perspectives in writing the code languages that both the technical and non programmers can understand. The process of Behavior Driven development consists of two related cycles. These cycles work in tandem right from tracking the issue to the coding phase and passing the app scenario. In the coding phase the app goes through three tests namely : the failing unit test, green unit test and the refractor.

BDD also facilitates flexible implementation of the testing scenarios that helps the developers to develop an app that compressively suits the customers and provide them emphatic user experience. As long as the desired behavior is same, the app tester does not have to worry about how the developer has implemented the code. For example, if an integer gets changed to a floating integer in the code, it doesn’t bother the test case and the QA team doesn’t need to make any updates.

Automating things and Specifications

We are all aware of the fact that there is a constant modification that is being done in the world of mobile apps and its important that the developers make the updates in such a way that it doesnot hamper the usability of the app. With Behavior driven development, we can create a common language so the communication barrier is completely eradicated and the specifying language is understood by everyone. Also, the specifications of the app consist of a series of scenarios that are easy to read and go through. Moreover, to accomplish the goals of better user experience and engagement, these scenarios are listed with the easiest of the examples.

BDD enables the process of UAT (User Experience Test) to take place in the very beginning before the starting of any coding activity so that the development process is well described. This essential activity makes the team involved know what to expect from the software and how it can be redesigned if the situation matters for better customer engagement.

Also Read: Customer Engagement: The benchmark of the best apps developed today

Other Key Benefits

• Behavior Driven development has other key benefits that increases the level of customer experience immensely on the positive side. They are:
• It provides the better understanding of the software at the time of its development. Also the method here involves the team discussing the app requirements fully upfront.
• With greater communication and collaboration, the percentage of failed tickets during the sprint can be managed effectively. As per stats, with the usage of Behavior Driven Development, the code
• failure ratio has come down from 30% to 2% for companies.
• With BDD, the team members can discus and write specifications and can also realized new opportunities which were never thought before. Thus their overall business knowledge will increase providing them high quality apps that will result in better user experience.
• With the common language, every desired system behavior can be expressed in a series of scenarios which can be understood by everyone.

Conclusion

Behavior driven development not only enhances the user experience, it also gives the software teams the vital communication and collaboration that is needed. It typically focuses on making things work so that the users would get the best value for their money. BDD also helps to solve the problems of software and mobile app development and also make the business to reach unforeseen heights.

Adarsh Nair

The world is now very much compact, we call it Global Village as a result of digitization and this impresses him! He likes to explore the nooks and corners of the incessantly modernizing world and marvel technologies. He leads the Digital Marketing Team at Prismetric. His passion for digital trends taught him the knack of reaching the huge digital mass to find business opportunities instantly. He writes articles about digital, technical and marketing tactics for business enhancements.