Black box testing is one of the first QA concepts I was able to wrap my mind around, and is where I generally recommend people start when trying to learn. Let’s be real here – I was never technical. Like, before getting into tech support and then eventually QA I couldn’t even troubleshoot issues on my own computer, and was too intimidated to try and install Chrome Extensions and such. So, pretty much the definition of not technical ?! So, if I was able to grasp black box testing then I feel like most can, and it can be broken down simply enough that nearly anyone can understand.
Black box testing is focusing on the input and output of something. It doesn’t worry about anything happening behind the scenes – the internal structure/design/implementation isn’t known to the tester. It sounds pretty simple if you’re just worried about input and output, and it can be. But, it’s also very, very important. Black box testing can help with finding bugs that, when looking back, seem really obvious and would immediately be a bad user experience, and they help to find them early on.
At one of my jobs there was an issue that went out where emails were not sent when you clicked on an invite button – HUGE deal. But, black box testing was skipped, so no one noticed, until it went to production and users could not invite people in their organization to use the app. All it would have taken to test was clicking the button, and checking if the email was received at the address specified.
With our Facebook login test the black box testing would be the login. When you login what happens; so input and output. When you login with valid credentials, are you logged in? When you login with invalid login credentials are you logged in? Or, for a password reset, when you request a password reset is one sent to your email? If you request one for a different user but use your email do you still get one?
2 comments On Black Box Testing
If black box testing is only concerned with the inputs and outputs. Wouldn’t black box testing be redundant if you are doing a smoke test, positive test, negative test, etc…
Black box testing is a type of testing, and you’re actually doing black box testing when you do functional testing and smoke tests, etc. But, it’s a type of testing you are often asked about in an interview, as well as white box and grey box testing. So, even though there are other types of testing that do cover another type of testing, you need to be able to know the terms associated with each type, and have enough of an understanding to speak to each.