User testing
User testing is the act of working with users to determine whether certain experiences are optimal (or at least good) and if they are what the user actually wants to do. These are often called user interviews. The idea is that you ask a user questions to see how they do, or would, interact with a piece of software. To create a user test, you need to come up with an experience that you want to investigate, come up with questions and tests, and find people to test.
In most of my examples, I am talking about software that is already built. Just remember throughout this chapter that you can do user testing with paper diagrams or frontends that have buttons that don't do anything, or even using a slide deck. The more ephemeral the thing your users are interacting with, though, the more you need to set up the test to explain what is going on.
You can use these tests to design user stories. User stories are a description of a type of action a user will take. They often combine...
