Overview

Transport yourself to a world of winter enchantment with our Winterlands holiday card, originally unveiled in 2014 and now reborn with a touch of modern magic. This immersive experience brings the captivating beauty of winter right into the palm of your hand, seamlessly integrating the latest advancements in interactive 3D computer graphics.
Featuring not only a timeless generic version but also 13 unique interactive snowscapes, each meticulously recreated and presented in a mesmerizing full 360° view.
In collaboration with AKQA, Winterlands card has been infused with creative brilliance. Now, not only can you experience the joy of these interactive snowscapes, but you can also share the magic with your loved ones. Write bespoke personal messages that can be sent via email, SMS, or shared on various social networks. Winterlands is not just a card, it’s a celebration of the season.

Challenges

• WebGL Integration and Compatibility: Ensuring the seamless integration of WebGL for a 3D experience within a mobile browser, while simultaneously addressing potential compatibility issues across various browsers and devices.
•  Performance Optimization: Balancing the optimization of graphics for performance without compromising visual quality, guaranteeing that the enchanting snowfall and interactive elements did not hinder the overall system performance.
• Cross-Browser Testing: Testing Winterlands across different browsers to validate consistent functionality and appearance, considering variations in rendering engines, JavaScript interpretations, and CSS implementations.
•  Responsive Design Validation: Verifying the responsiveness of the virtual winter landscape on different screen sizes and resolutions, ensuring a consistent and enjoyable user experience across a diverse range of devices. 
• User Interaction Testing: Conducting thorough testing of user interactions within the 3D environment, including tapping, swiping, and zooming gestures, to ensure a seamless and intuitive user interface.
• Stress Testing: Implementing stress testing scenarios to identify potential performance bottlenecks and ensuring that Winterlands could deliver a captivating experience even under demanding usage conditions.
• Regression Testing: Continuously performing regression testing to safeguard against unintended consequences of code changes, ensuring that new features or modifications did not introduce unforeseen issues
• Network Conditions Simulation: Simulating varying network conditions to evaluate the performance of Winterlands under different internet speeds and connectivity scenarios, ensuring that the holiday card remained accessible to users in diverse environments.

Solution & Strategy

• To tackle the challenges encountered during the testing phase of the Winterlands project, the QA team formulated an extensive testing strategy. A comprehensive test matrix was devised, covering all conceivable combinations of virtual winter scenes, ensuring a thorough examination of the project’s functionality. Compatibility testing spanned across diverse browsers and devices to guarantee optimal performance.
• Test cases were meticulously crafted to encompass all JIRA stories and tasks, ensuring a robust testing framework. The team adopted the real-time test scripting tool Testpad to create and execute test cases seamlessly throughout the project sprints. Issues and bugs identified during QA were diligently linked within the JIRA platform, facilitating transparent tracking of progress through a daily status report (DSR) shared across the team.
• Regular smoke tests, functional tests, and regression tests were performed on new builds, release candidates, and during the Go Live phase. To assess the project’s performance in scenarios with low network connectivity, the team conducted network testing by simulating slow and unstable networks using Throttler to limit bandwidth.

Conclusion

The QA team successfully contributed to the development and launch of Winterlands 2014. Their meticulous efforts and strategic testing ensured that users experienced a flawless and enchanting 3D winter landscape within their mobile browsers. The challenges faced during the testing phase were met with innovative solutions, ultimately contributing to the widespread acclaim and success of Winterlands as a pioneering example of seamlessly blending art and technology.