A QUICK LESSON ON USE CASES
The little parts that make up the machine.
An essential part of the design process is to capture use cases. Use cases are the foundation for what steps the user needs to take, what pieces need to be built, and another tool in helping define your minimum viable product (“MVP”).
By definition use cases are a set of interactions between a user and a system. I prefer a more human-centric definition in that use cases are a collection of tasks needing to be completed to help a user attain a goal. Think of them like the ingredients that make up a recipe. Let’s use an easy-to-understand example like…
“I have to go to work (or school) this morning.”

It’s easy enough, right? Wake up and be at your destination by 8:00am. Initially you think “I need to get out of bed and walk to the bus stop.” An experience designed explicitly to those directions may have your user in a very uncomfortable situation…

We left out some parts like “get dressed before leaving” and if you examine the entire experience under a microscope, you’ll see there’s actually much more to it. The use case part of the design process asks that you be explicit with every step.
It’s easy for us to skip over the little details when we have a clear goal in mind. It’s especially easy when examining a familiar process like getting ready for work. While going through the empathy stage of the design process you should take note of all the complexities a user faces while performing even the simplest of tasks.
To capture these little details I prefer to take a stripped-down textual approach followed with a visual map. There’s another popular approach that focuses mostly on the visual map side which works well too. It’s up to you to decide if you want to use some combination of these or come up with your own way. Let’s try it out with our “get to work” problem.
Outline
Our use cases combine to become the story of your user. That story should be framed around acts and chapters that give it structure and flow. Let’s break up our problem into two main acts each with a number of chapters.
A user must get prepared:
- Wake up
- Cleanse
- Dress
- Eat
A user must deliver themselves:
- Walk to bus stop
- Get on bus
- Get off bus
- Walk to destination
Expand
Next we’re going to add the details that make up each of these cases. (I won’t go too deep into these, just enough to get the idea across.)
A user must get prepared:
- As a user I need to wake up by 7:00am
- I need to verify that my alarm clock is set to 7:00am the night before. (If it is not set I will need to set it.)
- I need to turn off the alarm clock once I have awoken. (By pressing the off button)
- I need to get out of my bed and walk to the bathroom.
- Cleanse
- I need to clean my teeth and mouth. (With a tooth brush and tooth paste and with mouth wash)
- I need to wash myself in the shower. (First I’ll set the water temperature to an appropriate level, next I’ll remove any clothing and get into the shower, then I’ll use soap to clean myself, when finished I’ll turn off the water and dry myself with a towel)
- Dress
- I’ll select undergarments from my dresser and put them on
- I’ll select a shirt from my closet and put it on
- I’ll select a pair of pants to wear and put them on
- etc…
- Eat, leave and lock my home, walk to the bus stop, so on and so on…
Hopefully there’s enough there to get an idea on how these work.
Map
As noted earlier, some combination of written and visual maps is often helpful. These are created by placing your user on a canvas and mapping out all the possible decisions they might make. These are especially helpful when a process may have multiple decisions available to the user.

Finalize
After you’ve mapped the use cases, you’re pretty much done. A final piece (or pieces) may be to add additional info or multiple solutions for each case. In the case of getting ready for work additional data like timing might be important for the experience. If you say the entire process should be complete in 60 minutes then you may consider testing the timing and setting potential ranges on each case. Or you may look at a case and break it out into separate steps to compare them against your MVP. Cleaning your teeth could be an example of this. A super-lean, minimal approach may be to only use mouth wash. Of course users would revolt at this idea so you could also add options for using a standard brush or a motorized brush.

You can probably imagine how complicated your cases and maps could get. Especially when looking at the entire ecosystem of a product experience with multiple decisions and system processes running. Regardless of complexities it’s a great way to make sure you’re responding correctly to your users and MVP as well as laying a foundation for every piece that may need to be built.
