Appium hit the open source stage almost 7 years ago and has gone through many iterations of development since then. In this talk, we'll look at how Appium continues to grow, and how the Appium devs are working to ensure Appium's relevance for the future.

The world of testing is rapidly changing. It's not just about functional correctness anymore: UX testing, performance testing, visual testing, and no doubt several other kinds of testing have descended upon us. Tools and methodologies have also proliferated—image analysis, AI, and other new terms give us pause. What will testing even be like in 5 years?

I don't know the future, but I know that Appium's philosophy and development methodology are well-suited to ensuring Appium adapts to whatever the testing ecosystem becomes, and I'll give examples both of how Appium itself is evolving to take advantage of new technologies, as well as how Appium's own ecosystem is growing (through a proliferation of Appium-related vendors and products). And of course, we'll save a bit of time for something … interesting.

Don’t worry, the Terminator is not coming for you or your job. But you might need a Terminator someday to test your mobile app. Desktop and web development happen in a relatively constrained environment: keyboard and mouse for input, video for output — easy to virtualize and test anywhere, locally, or in the cloud. However, with mobile apps, running tests in a simulator can sometimes be hard or impossible. There are more parts involved (e.g. touchscreen, physical buttons, camera, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.) and the possible interactions can complicate a team’s ability to automate end-to-end test scenarios (e.g. receiving a call or text, taking a photo, controlling a Bluetooth device, making an NFC payment, etc.). In those hard-to-automate situations, a robotic device that can emulate human interaction can be a good option.

In this talk, we’ll go into more detail on why teams might want to make their own robotic mechanisms, and how they can do it without “terminating” their budget or schedule.

I have been a functional exploratory tester. I was motivated to move out of exploratory testing and go into automation. Thankfully, someone pulled me aside and told me - I am more suited to be a functional exploratory tester and I am business savvy. I didn't shy away from code. I worked closely with developers, my testing approach involved reading code (didn't write any) and brought in value to developers and to the business. I grew up as a tester being coached by experts, reading blogs from experts and learning that automation will help exploratory testers do more.

In my wait - I found very little effort that has gone in direction. I partnered with developers to be building some products.

I failed multiple times but here are my failed attempts

1. Tool for Social Media Driven Testing for Testers
2. Tool for mapping the heuristics and oracles to test ideas
3. A checklist tool for testing mobile apps and scoring on quality for start-ups

I would like to share
- The thinking behind building these tools and their value
- How purely focusing only on automation is taking away the possibility of building tools
- How I would love the community to start building tools
- How I can help and how they can help me