An Interview Study of GUI Testing Approaches in Brazilian Software Industry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5753/jserd.2026.6174Keywords:
software testing, GUI functional testing, interviews, software testersAbstract
Context: Software quality has become increasingly important as users expect reliable and robust systems. Poor software quality can result in financial losses, legal consequences, and even risks to human life. To mitigate these issues, software testers use Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing to verify whether applications behave as expected from the end-user perspective. Despite its widespread adoption in industry, little empirical research has examined how GUI testing is actually performed in practice. Goal: This study investigates how GUI testing is conducted in the Brazilian software industry from the perspective of software testers. Method: We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with software testing professionals. Results: Experienced testers reported automating a larger proportion of GUI tests than novice testers. Participants also indicated that they primarily acquire testing knowledge through workplace experience and online resources. Furthermore, testers who perform only manual testing often avoid automation because they lack programming skills or prefer not to engage in programming-related activities. Conclusions: This study contributes to a better understanding of GUI testing practices in industry. The findings indicate that programming-related barriers and personal preferences are key reasons for continuing to perform manual GUI testing. The interviews also revealed organizational challenges, including inadequate project processes, insufficient staffing to cope with workload demands, limitations of the hardware available to testers, and ineffective communication among team members.
Downloads
References
ISO/IEC 25000 (2011). ISO/IEC 25010. https://iso25000.com/index.php/en/iso-25000-standards/iso-25010?start=6. Last checked on Sep. 8, 2021.
Adams, W. C. (2015). Conducting Semi-Structured Interviews. In Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation, chapter 19, pages 492–505. John Wiley & Sons.
Alégroth, E., Feldt, R., and Olsson, H. H. (2013). Transitioning manual system test suites to automated testing: An industrial case study. In 2013 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), pages 56–65. IEEE Computer Society.
Alégroth, E., Feldt, R., and Ryrholm, L. (2015). Visual GUI testing in practice: Challenges, problems, and limitations. Empirical Software Engineering, 20(3):694–744.
Alégroth, E., Gao, Z., Oliveira, R., and Memon, A. (2015). Conceptualization and evaluation of component-based testing unified with visual GUI testing: An empirical study. In 2015 IEEE 8th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST). IEEE.
Alferidah, S. K. and Ahmed, S. (2020). Automated software testing tools. In 2020 International Conference on Computing and Information Technology (ICCIT-1441), pages 1–4.
AltexSoft (2023). Acceptance criteria for user stories: Purposes, formats, examples, and best practices. Online article.
Alégroth, E., Feldt, R., and Kolström, P. (2016). Maintenance of automated test suites in industry: An empirical study on visual GUI testing. Information and Software Technology, 73:66–80.
Alégroth, E., Petersén, E., and Tinnerholm, J. (2021). A failed attempt at creating guidelines for visual GUI testing: An industrial case study. In 2021 IEEE 14th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), pages 340–350.
Amalfitano, D., Coppola, R., Distante, D., and Ricca, F. (2026). AI in GUI-based testing: A survey of techniques, tools, and perceived advantages and limitations. Journal of Systems and Software, 235:112751.
Amalfitano, D., Fasolino, A. R., Tramontana, P., De Carmine, S., and Memon, A. M. (2012). Using GUI ripping for automated testing of Android applications. In Proceedings of the 27th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2012), pages 258–261. ACM.
Amalfitano, D., Júnior, M., Fasolino, A. R., and Delamaro, M. (2025). A GUI-based metamorphic testing technique for detecting authentication vulnerabilities in Android mobile apps. Journal of Systems and Software, 224:112364.
Bach, T. (2022). Testing in Very Large Software Projects. Master's thesis, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Heidelberg University.
Banerjee, I., Nguyen, B., Garousi, V., and Memon, A. (2013). Graphical user interface (GUI) testing: Systematic mapping and repository. Information and Software Technology, 55(10):1679–1694.
Canny, A., Palanque, P., and Navarre, D. (2020). Model-Based Testing of GUI applications featuring dynamic instantiation of widgets. In IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops (ICSTW 2020), pages 95–104. IEEE.
Coppola, R., Ardito, L., Morisio, M., and Torchiano, M. (2020). Mobile testing: New challenges and perceived difficulties from developers of the Italian industry. IT Professional, 22(5):32–39.
Corbin, J. and Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. 3rd ed. Sage Publications.
Cui, C., Li, T., Wang, J., Chen, C., Towey, D., and Huang, R. (2024). Large language models for mobile GUI text input generation: An empirical study. arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.08948.
Dallal, J. A. (2009). Automation of object-oriented framework application testing. In 2009 5th IEEE GCC Conference and Exhibition, pages 1–5. IEEE Computer Society.
Dias-Neto, A. C., Matalonga, S., Solari, M., Robiolo, G., and Travassos, G. H. (2017). Toward the characterization of software testing practices in South America: Looking at Brazil and Uruguay. Software Quality Journal, 25(4):1145–1183.
Garousi, V., Rainer, A., Lauvås, P., and Arcuri, A. (2020). Software-testing education: A systematic literature mapping. Journal of Systems and Software, 165:110570.
Grechanik, M., Xie, Q., and Fu, C. (2009). Creating GUI testing tools using accessibility technologies. In IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation Workshops (ICSTW), pages 243–250. IEEE Computer Society.
Jones, C. (2015). Wastage: The impact of poor quality on software economics. Software Quality Professional, 18(1).
Junior, N., Costa, H., Karita, L., Machado, I., and Soares, L. (2021). Experiences and practices in GUI functional testing: A software practitioners’ view. In Proceedings of the XXXV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES 2021), pages 195–204. Association for Computing Machinery.
Karhu, K., Repo, T., Taipale, O., and Smolander, K. (2009). Empirical observations on software testing automation. In 2009 IEEE Second International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST), pages 201–209. IEEE Computer Society.
Kertusha, I., Assress, G., Duman, O., and Arcuri, A. (2025). A survey on web testing: On the rise of AI and applications in industry. arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.05378.
Klaus Olsen, M. P. and Ulrich, S. (2019). Certified Tester Foundation Level Syllabus. International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB), 3rd edition.
Leitner, A., Ciupa, I., Meyer, B., and Howard, M. (2007). Reconciling manual and automated testing: The AutoTest experience. In Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), page 261. IEEE Computer Society.
Melo, S. M., Santos, Í., Souza, P. S. L., and Souza, S. R. S. (2022). A survey on the practices of software testing: A look into Brazilian companies. Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, 10:11:1–11:15.
Molyneaux, I. (2015). The Art of Application Performance Testing: From Strategy to Tools. 2nd edition. O’Reilly Media.
Polepalle, C., Kondoju, R. S., and Badampudi, D. (2022). Evidence and perceptions on GUI test automation: An exploratory study. In Proceedings of the 15th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference (ISEC 2022). Association for Computing Machinery.
Qian, J., Lv, G., Jin, Y., Shang, Z., Yan, S., Wang, Y., and Chen, L. (2025). Robotic visual GUI testing for truly non-intrusive test automation of touch screen applications. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 51(4):1205–1231.
Ramler, R. and Wolfmaier, K. (2006). Economic perspectives in test automation: Balancing automated and manual testing with opportunity cost. In Proceedings of the 2006 International Workshop on Automation of Software Test (AST 2006), pages 85–91. Association for Computing Machinery.
Rothermel, G., Untch, R., Chu, C., and Harrold, M. (2001). Prioritizing test cases for regression testing. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 27(10):929–948.
Sánchez-Gordón, M., Rijal, L., and Colomo-Palacios, R. (2020). Beyond technical skills in software testing: Automated versus manual testing. In Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering Workshops (ICSEW 2020), pages 161–164. Association for Computing Machinery.
Sharma, R. M. (2014). Quantitative analysis of automation and manual testing. International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT), 4.
Shruti Malve, P. S. (2017). Investigation of manual and automation testing using assorted approaches. International Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science and Engineering, 5:81–87.
Tanaka, H. (2019). X-BROT: Prototyping of compatibility testing tool for web application based on document analysis technology. In Workshop on Industrial Applications of Document Analysis and Recognition (WIADAR@ICDAR 2019), pages 18–21. IEEE.
Tramontana, P., Amalfitano, D., Amatucci, N., and Fasolino, A. R. (2019). Automated functional testing of mobile applications: A systematic mapping study. Software Quality Journal, 27(1):149–201.
Yarifard, A. A., Araban, S., Paydar, S., Garousi, V., Morisio, M., and Coppola, R. (2025). Extraction and empirical evaluation of GUI-level invariants as GUI oracles in mobile app testing. Information and Software Technology, 177:107531.
Ye, J., Chen, K., Xie, X., Ma, L., Huang, R., Chen, Y., Xue, Y., and Zhao, J. (2021). An empirical study of GUI widget detection for industrial mobile games. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2021), pages 1427–1437. Association for Computing Machinery.
Yu, S., Fang, C., Tuo, Z., Zhang, Q., Chen, C., Chen, Z., and Su, Z. (2023). Vision-based mobile app GUI testing: A survey. arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.13518.
Zein, S., Salleh, N., and Grundy, J. (2016). A systematic mapping study of mobile application testing techniques. Journal of Systems and Software, 117:334–356.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Nailton S. Almeida Jr, Larissa Rocha Soares, Heitor Augustus Xavier Costa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
