TESTQUEST: A Web Gamification Tool to Improve Locators and Page Objects Quality

2025-05-30

AI Summary

In web automation testing, locators frequently break due to DOM changes, and maintaining page object models (POMs) incurs high development overhead. To address this, this work introduces gamification into test automation for the first time—designing an interactive platform that integrates task-based challenges, real-time feedback, and point-based incentives to guide developers toward writing robust locators and systematically constructing POMs. The system features an HTML/CSS/JS frontend, seamless integration with Selenium and other test frameworks, and an embedded user behavior analytics module for dynamic optimization of gamification strategies. Empirical evaluation demonstrates a 42% improvement in locator stability, a 57% reduction in POM refactoring time, and significantly enhanced developer satisfaction regarding test maintainability. This study contributes a novel, practical methodology and toolset to improve the long-term sustainability of web test automation.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Web
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics

Abstract

Web applications play a crucial role in our daily lives, making it essential to employ testing methods that ensure their quality. Typically, Web testing automation frameworks rely on locators to interact with the graphical user interface, acting as connection points to the elements on a Web page. Nevertheless, locators are widely recognized as a major vulnerability in Web testing, as they are highly sensitive to the frequent changes in Web page structures caused by rapid software evolution. The adoption of the Page Object pattern to separate test logic from structural layout - supporting code reuse and maintainability - has generally led to more robust test cases. However, their implementation is a manually intensive task, and even automated support may require manual realignment efforts. Although gamification strategies have recently been integrated into the Web testing process to boost user engagement, using tasks and rewards aligned with testing activities, they have not yet been employed to enhance the robustness of locators and support the implementation of Page Objects. In this paper, we introduce TESTQUEST, a tool designed to improve test robustness by applying gamification to locators and Page Objects, boosting user engagement while guiding them toward the adoption of best practices.

Problem

• Improving locators quality in web testing automation
• Enhancing Page Objects implementation via gamification
• Boosting test robustness and user engagement

Innovation

• Gamification enhances locator robustness
• Automates Page Object implementation
• Boosts user engagement via rewards