Don't be confused, we won't test frontend application functionality. This is already tested with our unit test, so what is really UI testing? Well, it is a very long discussion. We can have many test suites configured to be executed at any time, and this will ensure that our E2E meets the business requirements already programmed. What do we mean by this? Unit and integration testing cannot evaluate all areas of a complete application, specifically the areas related to workflow and usability. Basically, all our automated tests can only verify code that exists. They cannot evaluate functionality that is maybe missing or issues related to visual elements of our application and how easy our product is to use. This is the real value of GUI testing, which is performed from the perspective of a user instead of the practical point of view of the developer. By analyzing an application from a user’s perspective, GUI testing can provide enough information to the project team to decide whether the application is ready to deploy or we need to reorganize some features to accomplish the user needs.

So, that being said, will I always will need a person who should be verifying a functionality manually? Yes and no. This theme is really hard to explain, because different points of view can be referenced and in some cases, contradicted. For these cases, we will focus on some very useful testing techniques in the next section.