User Scenarios

A document that explains why and how someone uses a product through a real-world situation

What

Scenarios are anecdotes that describe the context behind why a specific user or user group comes to your site and what steps they take once they arrive. They are usually hypothetical, but must be based on real-world research or data. Similar to a userflow, they can represent tasks, screens, or features in a sequential manner.

Why

To define what the product will do before you dive into how the product will do it
Because stories are easier to remember/respond to and are more intuitive than a standard userflow
Helps to avoid arbitrary feature lists that are hard to prioritize
Context is critical for good design becaue it helps you think about what people need in a deeper way.
Through creating user scenarios, you’ll identify what the user’s motivations are for coming to your site as well as their expectations and goals.
User scenarios help the team answer questions about what the product should do as well as how it should look and behave.

How to do it

Determine a persona (#11) or user group to focus on.
Begin to list out the user’s goals, motivations, and the context/environment in which they interact with your site.
Put the details you came up with in step 2 into a story format that includes information about who they are (persona or user group), why they are using your site (motivations), where they are (context), what they need to do (their goal), and how they go about accomplishing their goal (tasks). Keep in mind, the more realistic details you add, the richer and more useful your story becomes for helping in understanding your user’s behaviors.
Share the user scenarios you’ve written with the larger team for feedback and refinement.

Format of Output

Title - A simple phrase that describes the outcome, think of it like titling a childen's book.
Story Backgound - what happens before the person comes to the site/app? 1-3 sentences
Sequence - step by step sequence that is realistic.
Diagram - A visual reference of the sequence, used to identify what pieces of the scenario should be represented in designs or wireframes

Make sure your scenario has a user group , motivations, context, goals, tasks

Pro-tips

Use the See | Think | Do model to describe what happens step by step
Describe the experience, not the interface details
Focus on what happens and avoid adding detail of how it happens (eg she clicks the button in the top right corner)
Use data to guide your story (eg what does Google Analytics is the most common entry point? Is that desktop or mobile? Try building your story around that)
Number each step
It should be obvious and realistic why someone goes from step to step within your sequence. Challenge yourself to identify assumptions by asking "why would a real person do the next thing?" if the answer is obvious its probably good enough! If you find yourself using system-oriented explanations (like "they start on their dashboard because that's where the function is")than you should continue to iterate.
It will never be perfect, you will always make some assumptions or describe the "how" a little bit. Just get it to a point where its compelling enough to share and get useful feedback!

Examples

https://whimsical.co/5M6YfgWrxrNAsPJDLYzmsK https://whimsical.co/Tie73mMaFFnRHdD7aCaQp

Time Required

4-6 hours per scenario

(before you can start you'll need access to analytics, user surveys, stakeholder/user interviews, diary studies, user profiles, non-provisional personas, etc -- something you can base it off of)

islco / methods

User scenarios (aka Userflow) #12