Localization – Repurpose Your Test Automation Infrastructure for Maximum Impact

One of the great things about functional test automation is that is let’s you perform time-consuming tasks very quickly. The downside is that it can often be expensive to build and maintain. This is especially true in a rapidly experimental environment like Zoosk where at any given time we are conducting dozens of A/B tests and making several daily releases. Given that the primary value-add of automation is increased speed to delivery and the always difficult to quantify area of loss prevention, the high construction and maintenance costs can make realizing the value of the investment difficult.

One way we offset that at Zoosk is by repurposing the infrastructure we build for streamlining other tasks. An example of this is a tool we developed to assist in our localization process. The tool uses our existing web browser and mobile device automation to take screenshots of each step of several important scenarios across all of the languages and markets that we support. We already had and maintain hundreds of Selenium and Appium tests that went through every possible screen, so we modified our existing code to have a documentation mode. All we had to do was add a few lines of screenshot code and our existing automation was repurposed for a new task. Instead of verifying that the site functions properly, the automated scripts now just take screenshots for each scenario. We then assembled these screenshots into a zip file that contains a webpage that we send that to our translation vendors and they are able to find translation issues in a fraction of the time.

The automation handles several tedious tasks that were difficult for localization vendors to perform. Many of the pages they need to analyze require accounts that are set up in very specific states (subscribed, blocked, delinquent, etc.) Some required payment information, such as credit cards and bank account numbers to be filled out. Many even required multiple accounts in very specific states. In order to access the majority of our site, translation vendors would first have to spend hours becoming an expert in Zoosk, which isn’t essential to their job of localizing and translating our site. Automation does all of this effortlessly. When a new vendor jumps in they can focus on what they do best and not have to learn how to create an account with 2 connections, one of which has blocked them.

The localization tool is one of many we’ve built on top of our automation stack to facilitate productivity throughout the company. We also have tools that generate test data for users (e.g. thousands of messages,  accounts with dozen of Facebook friends that also use Zoosk, and so on.) We have another tool that allows people to tweak account states with the click of a button (e.g. make the user subscribed, give then coins, mark the account as fraudulent, etc.) The goal of these tools is to reuse the infrastructure we already build and maintain in new ways to maximize the value it can provide to company.