User Stories And User Scenarios In UX Design

Magnus Lundström
5 min readSep 6, 2022

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When designing the UX (user experience) of a product, you need to think about the people who will be using it. The product’s users are important, and they should be in the focus when designing a product they will be using.

You need to use what you know about the customers to create a product they will want to use. If you can’t do that, then what reason is there for them to use your product instead of the alternatives which are available to them.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

If you don’t know how to do this, then we are going to help you. Using user research and creating common user stories and scenarios, you will learn how to design your products to put the customer’s experience first.

What Is A User Story?

A user story is a description of what a user wants from the product you are creating. It will describe how the user will interact with the product, why they want to use it, what value they will get from it, and more.

Before creating a product, you should have a user story which you can use for guidance when designing the product. You need to know who will be using the product. Do not start designing and creating the product before then.

Benefits Of User Stories

  • They help to focus on the problems that are important to the end user.
  • Provide a guideline for the creation of the product and the direction it should go.
  • Help different teams work on the product together and have the same idea of what the product needs to be.
  • Remind designers what the user’s pain points are and what they need to solve.

What Is A User Scenario?

A user scenario describes a situation that shows how users will perform different tasks when using the product. It will describe what their motivations are, what they want, and how they can accomplish these goals when using the product.

This will add onto the user story and make it easier for designers to create the best product. User scenarios will tell you how a user decides to accomplish a goal. This information can be used to make the design better or add more features to help the users.

A user experience design agency will use scenarios to build on their user actions to give their designers more information about what the product should do, and how it should do it.

Photo by Taras Shypka on Unsplash

Benefits Of A User Scenario

  • Help designers know what users want from the product.
  • Validate different parts of the product’s design that users will interact with.
  • Show you how people will use the product to accomplish their goals.
  • Knowing the user’s motivations will help direct the product’s UX design.

How To Write A User Story

When writing a user story, you need to include who the user is, what does the user want from the product, and why do they want the product to have certain functions. A user story needs to answer these questions.

Don’t Complicate It

You need to keep the user story simple and concise. Do not complicate it with details that will not help understand the users. Only add information about the users that will make designing the product easier and faster.

Focus On The User

The users are the most important part of the user story. Find out all of the information you can about the user and then add it into the user stories you want to use for the product. if you don’t know how to get all the information you need, then hire a digital design agency to help you get this information and then help you use it effectively.

How To Write A User Scenario

You need to have enough information about your users before you can write the user scenarios for how they will use your product. This is why you should already have user stories before trying to create the user scenarios and trying to figure out how the users will use your product to accomplish their goals.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Usually, experienced designers want to have at least one user story before creating the scenario. If you need help doing this, then you should find a user experience design agency to help you through this process.

A possible scenario includes who the user is that will be using your product, why they want to use your product, what they want to accomplish when using your product, how they intend to accomplish their goals by using your product, information about the user such as their income and how they spend their money, and the user’s pain points.

When creating scenarios for your product, you need to have a great understanding of your users. It doesn’t need to be very complex, but the scenarios need to be detailed enough to provide value to designers. It’s best to keep the scenarios close to reality, as this will increase their value.

Conclusion

Before designing your product, you need to create user scenarios and stories to help you create the best product. creating user stories and user scenarios can be difficult if you haven’t used them before, but using this article’s information, you can start easily.

If you need help, then you can hire a digital design agency that can help support you through the UX design process. Don’t hire the first company that you find, ask all the questions you have, and if you are satisfied with the answers, then you should hire them.

User stories are a concise version of user scenarios which provide more detail for designers to create the product’s UX. You should have at least one user story before trying to write a scenario for your users and your product.

Thanks for reading!

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Magnus Lundström
Magnus Lundström

Written by Magnus Lundström

I’m a Swedish UX designer and marketing guy

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