OK, so UTest. The platform can seem a little bit confusing, but I’ll try to give a basic outline of how it works. I’ve just got ‘proven’ status in 17 days since joining.
When you log in, the left panel is your menu. Your tester ID is really important and that’s found underneath your name. You will also have your rank there – Unrated, Rated, Proven (top 50% of rated testers), Bronze (top 25% of rated testers), Silver (top 15% of rated testers) or Gold (top 7% of rated testers). The rating matters, because the UTest algorithm automatically decides who gets an invite to paid cycles, and the higher your rating, the more likely you are to get an invitation. You can boost your rating by doing the Academy test cycles.
The Academy
The Academy has courses which act as walkthroughs of the different testing scenarios you may encounter in UTest. It’s really worthwhile completing those. Once you’ve completed course 5 onwards, each course completion unlocks the opportunity to participate in a Test Cycle. Your score within the test cycle will contribute to your rating – you can become rated without doing a paid test. However, be aware that for academy test cycles, invitations are only sent on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So, if you complete a course on Thursday – Sunday, then apply for the relevant test cycle, you will have to wait until the Monday following for the invitation.
After you have done all the academy courses, the ‘Academy challenge’ opens. This is slightly different to the other test cycles, because in the other test cycles bugs are hidden from view. In the academy challenge, you can see everyone else’s bug finds. You can either produce your own bug or confirm the bug someone else found by following their listed steps and taking a screenshot of the result. Finding your own bug gives you the most points but confirming other people’s bugs gives a small boost too, and it can be helpful to see how bugs are found.
In the home section of UTest, you have ‘My activity’. There are tabs for All activity, Projects, Invitations and Community. If you have accepted a test cycle, it will come under the project tab. If you have been invited to a test cycle, it will appear under the invitations tab. It should be easy to keep track of your work.
Community refers to the social side of UTest – there are articles which you can read (or even author when you have some knowledge to share!), a forum and status updates. You can collect badges for participation and follow other Utesters. So it’s a bit like Mumsnet meets Facebook meets ‘The Money Shed’ meets Twitter! You don’t increase your rating through the Community, but you can get a lot of knowledge and you become more visible if you contribute.
I am rated as proven now, but actually I can see from my rating that if I participate more, I'll be eligible for bronze, because my rating is 74.2643%, which is just short of the 75% needed for bronze.