Black Box Testing

Black box testing is a type of software testing in which the application design and source code is not known to the tester. It allows developers to receive external feedback, such as feature requests and bugs that may have been overlooked by the development team.

While white box testing is useful for stress-testing apps, black box testing is useful for improving the user experience. For this reason, a software company may provide a beta version to a group of outside beta testers. These users, who may be using the app for the first time, can provide objective feedback about the user interface and overall functionality.

Black box testers may also uncover bugs that the original programmers did not find. A large number of beta testers can discover errors and incompatibilities more quickly than a small group of developers. Therefore, large software companies often release beta versions of their apps before releasing them. Testers can submit bug reports and other feedback during the beta stage of development, which may last few months.

Many software programs go through both white box and black box testing. White box testing is more common in the alpha stage, while black box testing is usually performed in the beta stage. Running both types of tests at the same time is called "grey box testing."