Checking app user interfaces against app descriptions

Abstract

Does the advertised behavior of apps correlate with what a user sees on a screen? In this paper, we introduce a technique to statically extract the text from the user interface definitions of an Android app. We use this technique to compare the natural language topics of an app’s user interface against the topics from its app store description. A mismatch indicates that some feature is exposed by the user interface, but is not present in the description, or vice versa. The popular Twitter app, for instance, spots UI elements that al- low to make purchases; however, this feature is not mentioned in its description. Likewise, we identified a number of apps whose user interface asks users to access or supply sensitive data; but this “feature” is not mentioned in the description. In the long run, analyzing user interface topics and comparing them against external descriptions opens the way for checking general mismatches between requirements and implementation.