# Classifying and Qualifying GUI Defects

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive GUI fault model, empirically evaluates its relevance, assesses existing testing tools against real failures, and provides reusable GUI mutants for benchmarking.

## Contribution

It presents a new high-level GUI fault model, empirical validation, evaluation of testing tools, and creates GUI mutants for benchmarking purposes.

## Key findings

- The fault model effectively classifies GUI faults.
- Existing tools like GUITAR and Jubula have varying effectiveness.
- The GUI mutants serve as benchmarks for testing tools.

## Abstract

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are integral parts of software systems that require interactions from their users. Software testers have paid special attention to GUI testing in the last decade, and have devised techniques that are effective in finding several kinds of GUI errors. However, the introduction of new types of interactions in GUIs (e.g., direct manipulation) presents new kinds of errors that are not targeted by current testing techniques. We believe that to advance GUI testing, the community needs a comprehensive and high level GUI fault model, which incorporates all types of interactions. The work detailed in this paper establishes 4 contributions: 1) A GUI fault model designed to identify and classify GUI faults. 2) An empirical analysis for assessing the relevance of the proposed fault model against failures found in real GUIs. 3) An empirical assessment of two GUI testing tools (i.e. GUITAR and Jubula) against those failures. 4) GUI mutants we've developed according to our fault model. These mutants are freely available and can be reused by developers for benchmarking their GUI testing tools.