The document discusses different levels of tester and their potential responses to being asked how they would test a text field. A junior tester may only suggest a few basic input types without considering other factors, while more experienced testers would propose a wider range of tests including special characters, character limits, formatting, and compatibility. The most senior tester would first ask questions to understand the purpose and requirements of the text field before designing tests. The document also provides examples of text fields with different levels of functionality that could be used to demonstrate testing approaches.

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How Would You Test
a Text Field
by Maaret Pyhäjärvi

2. @maaretp http://maaretp.com
Situation:You are in a real job interview for a QE/
SQE/Tester position and they ask you following
question. Do not use several minutes to think the
answer, instead try to answer as you would answer
in real interview situation (start answering in some
10-20 seconds).You can spend longer in writing the
answer, but don't change the answer anymore.

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How WouldYou Test
a Text Field?

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This_box Text Field

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Junior tester or not a tester
Category definition:They know little or nothing about testing
Example answer types:
• Would give less that 5 type of inputs: e.g. only characters, numbers and funny
character like "%&$
• Would assume that this is a unit test
• Would test it Automatically (and nothing else is said)
• Would talk about hardware requirements
• Would separate test design and executions as own tasks and even to dedicated
people
• Would think this is really big task and requires several people to do it
• Would think that text field is only for showing the text (not looking like field on
screen)

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Tester / QE with functional testing
experience
Category definition: They can quickly list basic things that need to be
covered, but stop there and They can follow given tasks and
requirements, but don't really search for all the facts
Example answer types:
Lists 5 or more things from following testing
ideas:
alphabetic + number; special characters;
double-byte characters
fill up the field
try to copy/paste to and from the field
character limit
correct character's shown
erasing text
does text fit to the field
leave blank?
line change with Enter?
HTML
SQL
Lists 5 from above and then starts talking about
processes (which this question was not about) like:
Returning things to developers
Entering bugs
Retesting after developer has fixed the bugs

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Excellent functional tester / close to
real senior QE
Category definition: They can come up with huge amount of different
ideas that would need to be tested, and they realize that there isn't
necessarily time to do it AND They at some point notice that they
actually want to know what this text field is?
Example answer types:
Instead of just listing the things in above category
also understands things like:
equivalence classes, boundary tests, positive and
negative testing, fractions, ...
finding requirements and limitations
is there time/value/reason to test it more?
different testing levels (e.g. for unit testing they
would need to see the code)
Security testing (e.g. SQL injections, XSS, ...)
Very long answers (almost like a book) that covers
everything (well good that you know that, but there is
shorter and better answer there)
Answer includes talking to developers, product owners,
customers, ...
In addition to one or more of the 3 above, they at some
point noticed that they actually need to figure out what this
text field is all about

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The real senior QE
Category definition: They answer back with questions and they
can question everything first: ideas, requirements, business needs,
assumptions, …
Example answer types:
• What is this text field about?
• My first thought would be "With the information given - in no way".
But as this wouldn't be a very polite answer, I would start asking for
more information about the context

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This_box Text Field
http://maaretp.com/TestThisBox.html

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https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings
Google: Naughty Strings Github
for one useful tool

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This_box Text Field
Text Field without Functionality

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DFEditor Text Field
http://darkfunction.com/editor/

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DFEditor Text Field
Text Field in product context through UI
and filesystem

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Gilded Rose Text Field
https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata/

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Gilded Rose Text Field
Text Field in code context through API
with automation

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Text Analytics Text Field
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/text-analytics/

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Text Analytics Text Field
Text Field that is more than a text field
with machine learning functionality

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Summary
QA = question asker
Test around your assumptions
More interfaces than what
meets the eye

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Maaret Pyhäjärvi
Email: maaret@iki.fi
Twitter: @maaretp
Web: maaretp.com
Blog: visible-quality.blogspot.fi
(please connect with me through
Twitter or LinkedIn)