Project Overview

COP28 represents the latest iteration of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP) held between the 30th of November till the 12th of December 2023 at the state-of-the-art Expo City in Dubai.

The Conference of the Parties is a series of meetings organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is an international treaty adopted in 1992. The UNFCCC aims to address and combat climate change on a global scale. These conferences are attended by diverse entities including member country representatives, NGOs, IGOs, leading industry representatives, and researchers among others.

Decision-making is a crucial aspect of these conferences as global climate policy affects developed and developing countries in the fight against climate change. These policies result from a series of intense negotiations between member countries. For this reason, communication between members is an integral part of these conferences.

For COP28, the conference attendees were divided into two major categories, Blue Zone and Green Zone representatives. Blue Zone participants represented groups and individuals affiliated with the UNFCCC acting as active members of the conference. The Green Zone is the area accessible to the general public and media outlets to stay up to date with the progress of the conference.

Challenges

The primary challenge for this edition revolved around managing the dual digital aspects of COP28—the mobile apps and the digital platform. Effectively addressing the quality of both items demanded a strategic and adaptive approach, especially considering the pressing time constraints leading up to the event. With fixed event dates, meeting deadlines was non-negotiable, making speed and transparency paramount. The imperative was to ensure the highest quality for both products, given the anticipated large user base relying on them during the conference.

The conference also has a digital aspect to facilitate the demands of the thousands of participants attending. This was achieved in the form of the COP28 Digital Platform (Website) and the COP28 Mobile Apps. The Digital Platform was a purpose-built web app for COP28 Blue Zone users. This platform was integral in the operation of this conference. The COP28 Digital Platform has the following features which help facilitate the delegates present at the conference:

• Personalized accounts: Each delegate has their own account, that they login into. Delegates can add their profile bio, LinkedIn profile link, and also areas of interest, that help them network with people who have similar interests and also filter out meetings relevant to their interests.
• The networking aspect of the platform allowed delegates to ‘connect’ with each other and gave them the ability to chat and add them to their network.
• Delegate could also select their own preferred timezone for the conference.
• Meetings: The core feature was the ability to join or watch all the meetings that were being carried out throughout the conference.
• Scheduled Meetings: The option to join or watch was determined by the level of access granted to the delegate according to the type of user they were on the platform.
• On-Demand Meetings: Since the COP conference is a massive conference with delegates and organizations attended all around the world, there are a huge amount of meetings happening simultaneously, so delegates could miss a particular meeting of interest. So the platform had a separate section of On Demand meetings that may have the recorded meeting added there so that they can watch those at a later time.
• Self-Service Meetings: The self-service meetings allowed the delegates to set up meetings with other participants to discuss and have one-on-one meetings via teams.

Other than meetings and networking, delegates also can read up on what is happening at the conference, in the form of various articles, the latest news, and other informative pages such as the guide on planning their visit and checking the site map. The delegates are also kept up to date via notifications which give the latest needed information relevant to the conference. Other helpful features included in the platform that made the experience easier for the delegate included:-

• COP GPT: The platform had its own built-in state-of-the-art AI model, that when asked would provide extremely helpful answers regarding the COP28 Conference, the GPT had answers for venues, information about meetings, and other aspects as well.
• FAQ Document: Delegate could download a helpful PDF of an FAQ document which contained some of the most frequently asked questions.
• Help and Support: If the FAQ and GPT were not enough to resolve a query of a delegate, they could always take their concern to a COP28 agent and the platform would help them connect with them to help them out.

Now with all the features and digital aspects mentioned above it was evident that the platform would require extensive QA and testing to ensure the platform was ready to handle such a huge conference. It was important for us to QA and test every single aspect and keep an eye on each minute detail.

Security Concerns

Given the high-profile nature of attendees, Cybersecurity emerged as a paramount concern. Rigorous security testing had to be undertaken using OWASP ZAP to identify and address vulnerabilities, ensuring protection against unauthorized access and potential cyber threats.

Scalability

Anticipating a substantial user base, load testing had to be conducted using Jmeter to evaluate the platform’s capacity to handle simultaneous users. This involved analyzing response times, codes, and error rates to meet international standards.

User Experience

With high-profile users in mind, UI/UX testing was needed so that the platform was user-friendly and visually consistent. Weekly meetings had to be held to address design ambiguities.

Continuous Changes

To adapt to evolving requirements, regression testing had to be of paramount importance. Daily Status Reports needed to be shared with the client, ensuring transparency regarding bugs, test runs, and JIRA stories tested.

Design Changes

Visual regression testing with Percy and Cypress had to be implemented so that rapid design changes did not introduce new issues. A combination of visual and end-to-end testing would be needed to ensure both functional correctness and visual consistency across browsers and devices.

Solutions and Strategy

Now with all the features and digital aspects mentioned above it was evident that the platform would require extensive QA and testing to ensure the platform was ready to handle such a huge conference.

It was important for us to QA and test every single aspect and keep an eye on each minute detail. To achieve this we performed various types of testing mentioned below:

UI/UX and Functional Testing

As previously mentioned high profile people would access the platform, and so the user experience of the platform needed to be extremely user friendly. Our UI/UX testing involved evaluating and ensuring the visual design (UI) and user experience (UX) were as per the provided designs in Figma and additionally, the JIRA stories, that contained the acceptance criteria. The acceptance criteria included inputs, outputs, business logic, data handling, and UI. We aimed to identify defects and ensure compliance with specified requirements. We also made sure to check visual consistency, layout, functionality, navigation, usability, error handling, performance, and compatibility across devices and browsers to enhance user satisfaction and overall product quality. To clarify any ambiguities in the designs or stories, the QA team had weekly meetings with the project managers, delivery managers, and other key members of the software development project.

Regression Testing

A big aspect of functional testing is to assess the requirements and designs and then to extract comprehensive and robust scripts that would be flexible enough to handle ever-changing requirements and designs, as this was a minor inconvenience throughout the project. So we extracted information and wrote test scripts on the widely used tool TestRail test-cases management system. We also conducted various rounds of rigorous Regression testing to ensure that each newly added feature had no adverse effect on the previously implemented components and pages. To ensure transparency, Daily Status Reports were sent to the client along with clear information regarding the bugs raised, test runs executed, and stories tested on JIRA. This helped us make sure that the platform was as per the expected requirements, with no critical or major bugs in the system.

API Testing/Monitoring

As most systems nowadays have APIs and micro-services handling the backend aspects of the application, after back-to-back meetings with the client over what would be the best monitoring tool, we were provided with a list of vital URLs, that were extremely essential for the project. We decided on setting up a monitor on Postman that hit the endpoints/URL every five minutes, with relevant assertions that would verify the availability of the provided endpoints/URLs. A dashboard on New Relic was integrated with the Postman monitor as well to give a statistical view of all the requests/responses made through the monitor so that the user could have an idea of the overall health of the monitor over a long period.

Visual Regression Testing

Since the web app went through a lot of design changes rapidly it was necessary that these design changes were monitored and that new issues/bugs were not introduced on the website. So to keep a strict check on this aspect, we implemented Percy visual Regression testing with Cypress. Percy with Cypress combines visual testing (Percy) and end-to-end testing (Cypress) for web applications. It captures and compares UI screenshots to detect visual changes during the automated testing process, ensuring both functional correctness and visual consistency. Additionally, it captures screenshots across all browsers and also on mobile devices to ensure maximum compatibility across all platforms.

Automation Testing

To cover the functional aspects it was also important that the core functionality of the web app, kept on working without any bugs introduced in the system that would affect the high-priority business requirements of the project. So to periodically test these requirements, we implemented Cypress an advanced automation framework with a page object model to have a minimum coverage over the Smoke test that was scripted to test the core functionality to ensure that the issues relating to these requirements are picked up quickly. This helped us in finding bugs quickly and made sure the quality of the COP28 Digital Platform did not deteriorate.

Security Testing

Being a global event The COP28 Digital Platform was going to have accounts of various high-profile delegates from countries all over the world, that is why it was essential that the web app was safe from all types of cyber attacks and did not have any vulnerabilities, through which there was any type of unauthorized access to content or meetings. We conducted an initial security scan followed by back-to-back scans during the final week before going LIVE, via OWASP ZAP on the following items to ensure maximum Cybersecurity:

• COP28 Digital Platform (All Pages)
• Provided API Endpoints (Microservices)
• Postman API Collection

Load Testing

It was expected that a high volume of simultaneous users would be accessing the COP28 Digital Platform and their counterpart mobile apps, thus the entire system had to be able to handle the expected amount of users. We conducted extensive rounds of Load tests via Jmeter to generate and analyze extensive reports to conclude that the website would be able to handle the load during the conference. We checked various areas such as response times, response codes, and error rates to ensure all of these metrics met international standards.

Client Side Performance Testing

While Jmeter was used to evaluate from the server side, it was equally important to assess the client-side performance as well. So using Google Lighthouse we performed client-side performance testing to evaluate how quickly and efficiently the COP28 user interface loaded and responded on the user’s device. We also checked including aspects like page load time, responsiveness, resource utilization, and browser compatibility. We aimed to optimize the user experience by identifying and addressing performance issues in client-side components.

Accessibility Testing

Another major concern and goal was to make the COP28 Digital Platform accessible to everyone regardless of whatever disability that may hinder their experience. So in order to achieve that we made sure that the COP28 Digital Platform met a WCAG AA Level that would ensure a truly accessible experience. The tools we used for each platform made sure to highlight any area that lacked the important tags or information that would help the users. We used the following tools on the following platforms:

• Windows: Narrator (Built-in voice reader)
• MacOS/iOS: VoiceOver (Built-in voice reader)
• Android: Screen Reader

We also used WAVE and AXE to perform accessibility testing from a visual aspect to highlight any contrasting issues as well.

Conclusion

The success of the COP28 Digital Platform can be attributed to a comprehensive QA and testing approach. By addressing Cybersecurity concerns, ensuring scalability, prioritizing user experience, and adapting to continuous changes, the platform proved resilient and effective. The collaboration of various testing methodologies, including load testing, UI/UX testing, visual regression monitoring, and accessibility testing, resulted in a robust and user-friendly platform. The success of this project is exemplified by the seamless execution of COP28, where attendees could connect, network, and stay informed with convenience and Cybersecurity.