User scenarios help to understand the user and how to interact with the product. They describe the history and context of why a specific user or group of users comes to your site. They pay attention to the goals and questions to be achieved, and sometimes define the possibilities in which users can achieve them on the website. Scenarios are critical for both interface design and usability testing.
What are User Scenarios?
A user’s scenario is a structured description of a situation or event that a potential user of a product can experience when he is trying to achieve his goals. They are used at the product planning stage to reduce the description of market problems with a higher level to smaller parts of problems where more detailed requirements can be identified and documented.
A user scenario is a narrative that describes how a user can interact with a website or application. The user scenario specifies a specific task and describes a narration describing how the user can perform this task. The user’s scenario differs from the user’s history, which is often written by the user himself.
How to create user scenarios?
User scenarios are created by clearly recording what interaction must take place in order to be able to complete the task. The scenario should be understandable for those who do not have technical facilities. The user’s scenario should not be limited only to user interaction with technology, but also to other things that take place during this interaction. User scenarios can therefore include cultural information and context as well as a description of the circumstances that lead the user to use the product or application. For example, a user’s scenario describing how someone uses a mobile phone application may include information that the device is being used when the user is on the train, or if the action has been interrupted by an incoming call. This information can help developers adapt their projects to improve the usability and convenience of the application.
How to create a user scenario for projects with user experience?
Find your users. You have to go beyond the project and determine who the real users are. What is their habit? Why are you obsessed with your product? Stay in touch with your real users and create a detailed document for them.
Learn more. Use your product. Find out more about him. Lead conversations with users and discover pain points in the design of the digital user interface. Find out from your users if they receive the information you want to communicate to them. Then you can simply comb through the whole process based on the needs, experience and narration of results.
Build your scenario. Capture any idea that can help users understand, experience and use your product, even if it looks stupid. Mostly stupid scenario is more memorable and entertaining. Remember to design a different scenario for different types of persona groups so that your product does not appear suddenly on every occasion.
The structure of the user’s scenario.
In the user scenario, we try to provide a framework for a number of related tasks that will ultimately lead the user to the desired goal. To do this, each user scenario must have a start point and a desired endpoint that describes the frames of the resulting tasks. Often, the endpoint of one user scenario will be the starting point of the next scenario and the scenarios will be combined together to describe the overall user experience.
“User Scenarios” should not be limited only to situations in which Persona User interacts with the product. They should be developed in such a way as to cover the entire customer experience of the product and should include marketing, sales, purchasing and ancillary experience. The user scenario for the buyer (buyer scenario) will be applied here.
What to consider when writing scenarios
Good scenarios are succinct, but answer the following key questions:
- Who is the user? Use the person that has been developed to reflect the real main user groups entering your site.
- Why does the user visit the site? Pay attention to what motivates the user to enter the site and their expectations upon arrival, if they exist.
- What are the goals of the user? By analyzing the tasks, you can better understand what the user wants on your site, and thus what the site must have to remain satisfied.
- How can the user achieve his goals on the site? Determine how the user can achieve his goal on the website, identifying the various possibilities and potential barriers.
What are the benefits of using user scenarios?
When designing a customer-centric and product development process, Product Managers are constantly trying to understand the unmet customer needs of the target customer. Scenarios provide focus on product management, marketing, programming team and vendors to understand the context when and where a new product or service can affect the target user or buyer.
The scenarios not only describe the context of each point of contact between the user and the product, but also the typical situations that the user may encounter during each decision process, purchase and use.
User scenarios are especially useful in more complex situations in which many of them can be interconnected to share more interaction with smaller, easier to manage components. They are also very good at forcing product managers to look at problems through the eyes of the target market, instead of becoming a user.
Conclusion
Scenarios are a useful artifact of UX design that can help in nurturing empathy for the user and designing the best solutions for him. They can be used to determine where usability tests should be performed and to understand the key tasks in the product.
We all love telling stories. In fact, it is the oldest and most natural way to share information. In the field of UX design, the scenario helps designers to show a concept or a new product. More importantly, this is the most direct way to place users in the design center. Regardless of what project you are building, it will be ultimately used by users. The user scenario makes users do the project, although they do not belong to the team.
