Rings: A Game with a Purpose for Test Data Generation

In human-based computation, the machine outsources certain steps of an algorithm to humans to optimize computation by making an equilibrium of human and machine computation advantages. Software testing is an important part of the software development life cycle that aims to reveal failures in software. One of the most important activities in the software testing is test data generation. Although many automatic methods have been introduced to generate effective test data, humans are still extensively used in the software industry, due to the challenges of the proposed automatic methods. Assuming that software companies still need the help of humans, in this research, we hypothesize that a game with a purpose can be utilized to improve the process of human-based test data generation by making test data generation more cost-effective and fun. To investigate this hypothesis, we implemented a game with a purpose, Rings, to improve the process of human-based test data generation for program units. We also performed an experiment to evaluate this idea as entertainment as well as a mean for test data generation. The results show that by crowd-sourcing test data generation of program units to typical players of a game, we can make test data generation more cost-effective and fun. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS Software testing is an important part of the software development life cycle. Despite automatic methods for software testing, humans are still being extensively used due to the shortcomings of automatic methods. In human-based computation, certain steps of a process are outsourced to humans. Providing cheap numerous workforces. Solving problems that human can solve better than computers. Rings is game with a purpose that tries to use human-based computation technique in field of software test data generation. Professional testers are expensive, scarce and not motivated. Players are cheap, numerous and motivated. Rings introduces a mapping form original test data generation problem to a visual puzzle. Visual representation of a computation problem Wider audience of players means more test data generators. Can use mobile gadgets as a platform to generate test data. The results show that by crowd-sourcing some steps of unit testing to ordinary players of a game, we can provide plentiful of motivated cheap test data generators for unit testing.