User Scenarios

Your constantly-updated definition of User Scenarios and collection of topical content and literature

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What are User Scenarios?

User scenarios are detailed descriptions of a user – typically a persona – that describe realistic situations relevant to the design of a solution. By painting a “rich picture” of a set of events, teams can appreciate user interactions in context, helping them to understand the practical needs and behaviors of users.

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Multiple Uses of Scenarios

The term and general concept of scenarios has many uses. In wider-ranging discussions within software development, they can range from “prescriptive” to “evocative” (see “The Persona Lifecycle” under Learn More About User Scenarios). Prescriptive scenarios describe what should happen but don’t necessarily reflect any consideration for user needs and behaviors. A typical example would be a scenario derived from a use case. Use cases are intended to describe how a system responds to events and became the core for many software development methods from the mid-1980s onwards. (They have been supplanted by user stories in many methods.) Use cases are intended to describe all of the possible outcomes from a particular set of events. The term “scenario” is used in this context to describe just one path – one set of outcomes – through the use case. A well-known instance is the “sunny day scenario” when everything happens as it should. Prescriptive scenarios are perhaps one of the main reasons that software systems are not inherently easy to use since both the use cases and prescriptive scenarios describe what users should do, as if they were a programmed system component.

Hierarchical diagram showing that different scenarios describe different parts of the system. — Individual scenarios are usually describing a particular path through an interactive system.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

User scenarios are generally evocative. Their purpose is to provide motivation and back stories explaining how and why they need to interact with our solutions the way they do. In so doing they’re intended to promote empathy and understanding, as well as a user focus in a technological solution, whether it’s a website, wearable device or voice assistant.

Scenarios, Personas and Roles

Although usually textual, user scenarios paint a “rich picture” of important factors behind users’ needs and behaviors.
© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 3.0

In software development, scenarios are typically focused on actors who assume one or more roles within the system. This approach is counter-productive from a user-centered design perspective since there is no detailed understanding of the roles themselves or how the activities being described in the (prescriptive) scenarios are actually performed.

While personas can take one or more roles in the context of a system, user research provides us with a wealth of information about a persona’s relationship to a role: Do they love it or hate it? Is the role well-defined or vague? What are the pain points? (And so on.) Also, particularly in customer-facing systems, the roles themselves are not very meaningful. For example, in an e-commerce solution the role is “customer”. In the travel industry the role is “passenger” or “customer” depending on the transaction. In more general solutions the role may simply be expressed as “user”. These roles tell us almost nothing about how we need to design our solutions.

So, the focus in user-centered scenarios is personas, with the concept of role being used only when relevant. The travel example above is a case in point: for some transactions it is important to know whether the user is the customer, the passenger or both. Similarly, in many contexts some roles are associated with greater responsibility and therefore more functionality is available to them. The relationships between roles are not always hierarchical, though. In a hospitality setting, cleaning and maintenance roles would not have access to accounting information (and vice versa).

Creating User Scenarios

User scenarios have a number of benefits and applications in user-centered and user experience design. They allow us to…

Explore and explain motivations for certain user needs and behaviors.
Explicitly describe how our persona expects interactions to proceed, with expectations about the sequence of events, the formats of input and output and details of the information required to realize this scenario effectively.
Draw attention to “pain points” in an existing process or anticipated complexity in new processes.

For each scenario we need to describe not only the persona’s goal, but also the context in terms of the…

Persona involved and their role (if relevant).
Events leading up to the scenario, particularly those that created the need for this scenario to be realized.
Environment in which the scenario is performed. Note that this is not only the physical environment, but also the social, legal and organizational environments.

Then it’s time to write the scenario. User scenarios are written as stories that are rich in detail. But be careful not to include too much in the way of extraneous information. For example, what the persona is wearing would only be relevant if there was an important issue with the physical environment that needed to be explained. (Shorts in a refrigerated storeroom would be an exception!)

Learn More About User Scenarios

Detailed description of user scenarios with a how-to guide and examples @ https://www.justinmind.com/blog/how-to-design-user-scenarios/

A concise summary card on user scenarios complete with instructions @ https://methods.18f.gov/decide/user-scenarios/

A practical guide to relating scenarios and personas @ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/scenario-mapping-personas/

Extensive reference for personas and scenarios in UX design (book) @
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Persona_Lifecycle.html?id=wWuBbTCcsCoC

Literature on User Scenarios

Here’s the entire UX literature on User Scenarios by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Design Scenarios - Communicating the Small Steps in the User Experience

Design scenarios are useful tools for communicating ideas about user actions. Mapping design scenarios also has the added benefit that it helps formalize ideas and to take creative approaches to those ideas. Most importantly of all, it will ensure that your designs are firmly rooted on terra firma and taking a “what our users want/need” approach from the outset. In general, user scenarios are designed to capture the key interactions with a system and not all possible interactions.

What is a User Scenario?

A user scenario simply describes a basic story of an action or goal that a user wants to accomplish. It might be how Kevin needs to buy a CD online for delivery today for his friend’s birthday, for example. Of course, scenarios can be much more detailed too the idea is to work out the: who, what, when, where, why and how of the user’s scenario.

Scenarios can be used to describe both what currently happens within a system or environment or more typically the intended behavior within a system or environment.

User scenarios can be useful when defining usability testing too. They enable testers to focus on the key tasks within a system.

As Steve Jobs, the Apple founder, said; “Design is not what just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.” User scenarios help you examine how your design will work.

Author/Copyright holder: Kishorekumar 62. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 3.0

A common way for developers to illustrate user scenarios is to use UML (Unified Modelling Language) as seen here.

When Should Scenario Mapping Be Used in a Project?

Scenario mapping can be effective at many points during a project but there are three great uses for it at specific stages:

Ideation – if you’re trying to create a new product, then having scenario maps makes it very easy to explore ideas with your team and with users. It also helps, in a similar means to task analysis, formulate a shared vision for the project. (See the method below as to how to do this).
Iteration – if you’re new to a product and you’re going to be involved in creating future iterations then it’s pretty easy to create scenario maps “on the fly” by observing users with the current product. (This can be done solo and doesn’t need the method below).
Usability testing – user scenarios can also be used to define which are the most important areas to test during usability testing and to provide guidance on how it should be done.

Author/Copyright holder: Rosenfeld Media. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0

Usability testing is a vital part of UX work and user scenarios make it easy to provide the story for the user to test.

How to Do User Scenario Mapping?

It’s a pretty simple process to create user scenarios and here’s a simple way to conduct it:

First, find a place that you can use to get creative – you’re going to need somewhere where a group can talk and discuss without being interrupted and without disturbing others. You’re probably going to need between 2 and 3 hours for the session.
Then invite a bunch of relevant people to the session – the UX team, the development team, the product manager, etc. but don’t invite too many people, a maximum of 7 is a good idea as it means everyone can contribute without anyone getting lost in the mix.
Then get some post-it notes, flipchart paper, etc. stuff that makes it easy to capture an idea and get it in front of everyone. Bring sellotape or blu-tack in case things aren’t sticky enough for the surfaces in your room.
Explain to everyone present what your objectives are and what a user scenario is – it’s always good to have everyone on the same page. However, don’t spend too much time on this either; you want people firing on their creative best not snoring in the corner because you’ve TMI’d them to death.
Hopefully you have user personas because they’ll come in handy as you map your first user scenario. What is it that this user must do in this interaction with the product? This tells you what goes into the scenario.
You also need to provide context to make your scenarios as accurate as possible – the who, what, when, where and why detail that gives a scenario colour and makes it easy to relate to.
Then it’s time to take some baby steps and walk through the scenario in the shoes of your user (referring to your user personas). What will the user do? What information do they need to get that done? What questions will they need answered or will you need answered to do this? What assumptions will you have to make to make this work?
Finally, you also want to collect ideas from the team that don’t fit within the scenario but may be related to it.
After you’ve completed each scenario make a written note of it and stick it to the wall. Try and get scenarios grouped so that you can make easy sense of them and spot any gaps that arise.

Author/Copyright holder: Billy Meinke. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0

Grouping ideas together makes it easy for you to form connections between them – you can even follow this example and link them using bits of string (or draw arrows).

Repeat this process for each scenario. Until you’ve generated scenarios for every key task the user will perform with the product.
Need to find more scenarios? Then the question is “what key tasks must be performed in order to satisfy the user and/or the business” (though it’s worth noting that tasks that satisfy the business and not the user are unlikely to be performed very often).
Once all your scenarios are complete – take a high-res photo of the wall (it saves you from having to copy all that data down before you give up the room to someone else) and ensure that you can read the notes you’ve made in the photo.
The last stage is to compile all that data into something useful (say a spreadsheet or a flowchart) and then share it with other stakeholders to get their feedback. The feedback they provide should be specific and detailed to be of the most value; “I don’t like that.” is not feedback – it’s opinion. “I don’t think that can be done because our hardware doesn’t support XYZ functionality” on the other hand is useful feedback – it invites exploring other options or changing the plan.

Author/Copyright holder: FlorianBauer79. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 3.0

Here’s an example of user scenarios being brought together to form a user story. This will guide the design and development process.

One final note: scenario maps are not intended to represent every possible interaction with a system or product but rather to capture the most important interactions. If you try to cover everything, particularly with a complex product, you’re going to find that future iterations of the scenario maps become ever more convoluted (as one change will impact a bunch of other scenarios) so it’s best to keep things quite high-level.

The Take Away

User scenarios are a great way of communicating the key tasks a user will perform with a system. They can also help define the usability testing regime when a project has finished. It is a simple process to create user scenarios and every UX designer should have them in their toolkit for developing and iterating products.

Resources & Where to Learn More

Course: “User Experience: The Beginner's Guide”.

You can find some great examples of user scenarios here (as used for accessibility analysis).

The British government’s usability website offers some handy hints on using user scenarios too.

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Katie Inglis . Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Learn more about User Scenarios

Take a deep dive into User Scenarios with our course Human-Computer Interaction: The Foundations of UX Design .

Interactions between products/designs/services on one side and humans on the other should be as intuitive as conversations between two humans—and yet many products and services fail to achieve this. So, what do you need to know so as to create an intuitive user experience? Human psychology? Human-centered design? Specialized design processes? The answer is, of course, all of the above, and this course will cover them all.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) will give you the skills to properly understand, and design, the relationship between the “humans”, on one side, and the “computers” (websites, apps, products, services, etc.), on the other side. With these skills, you will be able to build products that work more efficiently and therefore sell better. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the IT and Design-related occupations will grow by 12% from 2014–2024, faster than the average for all occupations. This goes to show the immense demand in the market for professionals equipped with the right design skills.

Whether you are a newcomer to the subject of HCI or a professional, by the end of the course you will have learned how to implement user-centered design for the best possible results.

In the “Build Your Portfolio: Interaction Design Project”, you’ll find a series of practical exercises that will give you first-hand experience of the methods we’ll cover. If you want to complete these optional exercises, you’ll create a series of case studies for your portfolio which you can show your future employer or freelance customers.

This in-depth, video-based course is created with the amazing Alan Dix, the co-author of the internationally best-selling textbook Human-Computer Interaction and a superstar in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Alan is currently professor and Director of the Computational Foundry at Swansea University.