This month we have invited our Top Tester from our crowd in Sweden, Markus, to the blog to hear about his experience testing with us
Hi Markus, and welcome to the blog! To get started, please tell us about yourself.My name is Markus and I’m 31 years old. I live with my wife, our 1-year old daughter and our cat in Gothenburg, Sweden. Ever since my parents got their first computer when I was at the age of 5, I have been interested in computers and IT. So I studied the natural sciences, mathematics and computer science in high school. After high school I studied and got a Master in Business Administration from the University of Gothenburg.After studying I have been working at several different companies, in several different sectors such as telecom, the food industry, the construction industry and now I work in the finance department of a hospital. I have retained my IT interest and thus have been part of several IT projects and ERP implementations.What hobbies do you have outside of testing?My main hobby would be gaming; preferably with my wife and friends. Mostly I play board games, role-playing games, card games and similar. I also play Xbox and computer games. In short, I am a huge gaming nerd. Other than that I obviously spend a lot of time with my wife and our daughter (who is hopefully a future gamer). Besides playing games, we like traveling, hanging out with friends and watching Netflix TV-series – currently Modern Family and Jessica Jones.How did you find out about Testbirds?There was an ad for Testbirds at the Swedish employment agency website. I decided to sign up as a tester because it seemed like a fun way to improve my IT skills and get experience from testing products.What is the app or website that you cannot live without, and why?Oh, that is a hard question. I frequent several websites and apps daily, but if I can only pick one it would have to be Facebook. Though I am not a hardcore Facebook user, I do not play Facebook games, use the like button very much, check in or update very much, I still use it a lot to plan events, upload pictures, and keep in touch with friends and family. I think I would feel disconnected if I could not access Facebook.Other apps and websites worth mentioning would be Netflix, LinkedIn, Fantasy Flight Games website and forum and the music app on my phone.Which client/product do you wish Testbirds would test for so you could participate in the project?It would be fun to test something unusual with a bit longer time frame than the usual tests. I have mostly tested new websites for different companies, which mainly means going through and documenting a lot of cases, or comparing different versions of the website. Combined with relatively short testing periods it makes the test focused to a limited time frame.Smart products for homes, cars, wearable tech, augmented reality and similar things are on the rise. I guess that reduced prices and higher usefulness makes these products more interesting to the average consumer. Products such as Philips Hue, Sonos, Enerfy Driving, Google glass and smart watches are becoming more and more mainstream. So it would be really fun to test some cutting edge smart or augmented reality technology for homes, cars or as a wearable. It would also be fun to be able to test over an extended period of time, say for at least a few weeks.What question would you like to ask another Bird(master)? Something I have been wondering about is that with all the testing going on at Testbirds, and all the different companies, businesses and cases you have access to I believe you have a database with a large amount of data. Compiled I believe that data could give a lot of insight into trends regarding what consumers and users like and dislike about products or services, how businesses design websites, apps and other products, and also what is coming in the near future.What possibilities do you see with all this data?
Nice question! We asked one of our founders, and Head of Operations, whose name is also Markus to answer your question!
Thanks for your very interesting question, Markus! It is true indeed that our database contains a lot of information about the likes, dislikes and interests of our testers. However, we are not planning to sell this data for market research or market trend analysis in any way. There is one reason why we are not going to use this information: data protection.On the one hand, there is information that our testers have voluntarily filled into their account profiles. We solely use this data when we select testers for upcoming tests to match them with the target group of our clients. We rely on this information to determine if we can cover the target group of our clients. Therefore, this information is secured in our Nest and will not be handed out to clients in any way. We want our testers to trust us with this sensitive data and we do everything to keep the trust of our testers. On the other hand, as you have already indicated above, there is a lot of data handed in by our testers via test and bug reports which are test-specific and company-specific. For us and our clients it is very important that those findings are not shared with any third party or used in any other way by Testbirds. We often test products that are not released to the public yet or that are still at a prototype stage. It is very important that those products aren’t leaked to the general public or – even worse – to competitors. Our Project Managers gain valuable insights regarding the needs of our testers with every test they manage. This trains them to give clients helpful suggestions to improve their digital products, but the findings of tests will never be exchanged between tests or companies. Overall, however, we are seeing more and more applications that make use of the Internet of Things. We are convinced that this area will continue to grow and offer many new and exciting possibilities for testers but also the general public in the future.
Thanks for your participation, Markus! We are looking forward to keep testing with you this year!
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Josephine cares for our Spanish & English speaking crowd and is bringing some Latin spirit into the team. She is improving her German on a daily basis and surprises us with tricky words such as “Brandschutzbeauftragter”.
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Testbirds specialises in the testing of software such as apps, websites and Internet of Things applications by using innovative technologies and solutions. Under the slogan, “Testing Reality”, the company offers various testing methods to its clients looking to optimise the user-friendliness and functionality of their digital products. With over 250,000 registered testers located in 193 countries, Testbirds is one of the world’s leading crowdtesting providers. In addition, the IT service provider utilises cloud based technologies to support customers in the optimisation of their digital products. The combination of the two testing methods delivers a unique and extensive portfolio that takes the quality of software to the next level. Testbirds was founded in 2011 by Philipp Benkler, Georg Hansbauer and Markus Steinhauser. Today, the company has over 100 employees. Other than its headquarters in Munich, there are now offices in Amsterdam, London and Stockholm, franchises in Hungary and Russia and sales partners in Italy.
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