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User Testing / Usability ​

Validating designs with real people before build. Observation is upstream of the brief; usability is downstream of the wireframe. The two are not the same craft — and the second is currently a gap in the corpus.

This is a gap area

This craft exists in the chain but is not yet addressed in any volume. The cycle currently handles validation through: (1) observation before shaping, (2) UX review before release, (3) signal check after release. Usability testing — sitting a real person in front of a wireframe or prototype, watching them try to complete the task — is the missing middle.

Owners: Designer, PO Phase it would live in: What We Build → How We Build (a half-step between)

Why the gap exists ​

The chain trusts observation (Volume II) to surface the problem and trusts the signal reading (Volume V) to confirm the solution. The chain assumes amigos catches the gaps in between. In practice, amigos catches scenario-gap; it does not catch flow-confusion that only shows up when a real person sits in front of a real interface. That is what usability testing addresses.

What the practice would look like ​

  • Five users, low fidelity. Wireframe in hand, task spoken aloud ("submit a graded exam for Avi in Class 5A"), notes on time-to-success, hesitations, dead-ends.
  • Held once per Feature, before the first Epic is pulled. Not after the design is "done" — there is no done. The findings either confirm the wireframe or surface a flow gap that reshapes it.
  • Output is a one-page note appended to the Feature Brief: "Tested with 5. Three completed without prompt. Two stuck at partial-submission — the state was visible but the next action was unclear. Adding affordance to the partial state."

The brief is the model. Usability testing is one more way to correct it before the cycle ships.

200apps · How We Work · NWIRE

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