Exploring the Socio-Technical Motivations Behind the Adoption and Migration of Web GUI Testing Frameworks

Abstract

Web Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing frameworks are widely used to automate end-to-end testing of modern web applications. While prior research has explored their performance and technical features, limited attention has been directed to the socio-technical motivations that drive their adoption and migration in practice. To address this gap, this paper explores the socio-technical motivations behind the adoption and migration of web GUI testing frameworks through a repository-based study of open-source projects that use them. Specifically, we analyzed commit messages and issue discussions associated with web GUI testing framework adoption and migration events, and manually identified explicit rationale statements. This process yielded 72 relevant messages supporting 52 justified events, from which we inductively derived a thematic categorization of eight socio-technical motivations. Our results indicate that initial adoption is primarily shaped by usability and integration considerations, whereas migration is more strongly associated with reliability, performance, and ecosystem alignment, providing empirical evidence that the criteria guiding framework decisions evolve over the lifecycle of web GUI testing infrastructure.