User Stories — A Designer’s Vision
In a nutshell, User Stories help in understanding the user problems and developing a more effective and impactful product.
User stories help us rethink the problem from users perspective which helps us to solve the desirable problems rather building something on intuition. So it also gives us the opportunity to understand the problem better and measure how feasible the solution is and viable the market is!
️What are User Stories?
User stories are a simple description of the task, feature or a goal told from the perspective of users or customers. There will be stories associated with every problem you are trying to solve, those stories help us to understand the problem better. Often user stories follow this structure —
As a — Role, (As a business owner)
I want to — Task, (I should keep my customers happy)
So I can — Goal. (So I can grow my business)
How to create user stories? 📝️
User stories can be created throughout the development. First, the big picture usually called The Epic — These are big stories as a whole which are not so detailed (eg. A Feature). The Ready Story — These are the small chunks which are detailed (eg. Sprints)
Before creating a user story you will have to do ground research on the problem space and have an idea about it and also necessary to define the user segments — Who they are? What they are doing? What their goals are? etc.
The Epic —As a business owner, I should keep my customers happy So I can grow my business. 😎
The Ready Story 1 — As a business owner, I should respond to all my customers instantly So I can retain them.
The Ready Story 2 — As a business owner, I should make sure all my clients are paid on time So I can get more deals from them.
When to create user stories in the design process? 👀
User stories have to be created at the very earlier stage of the design process as it will help us understand the problem from users perspective than making any assumptions.
It also has to be applied in all stages of the design process to make sure we keep peoples/users/customers at the center of the process. It gives us a clear idea of what value we are providing to the user and how it aligns with the market and business values.
User stories while defining the problem
User stories while ideating
User stories on visual designing
Take user stories into every aspect of the product development process (Design — Content — Development)
It helps us to think broader and solve all the edge cases for the users earlier in the process which save a lot of time. As we go broader in ideation it will help us narrow down to a better and efficient solution by comparing or combining or refining all the possible ideas 💡
It helps ideate and finds the right features that solve the exact problem and prioritizes those.
Once we understand the problem and how to move forward it's easier to prioritize things based on the pain points of the user in relation to feasibility.
Things that may impact the experience!
Creating user stories help us visualizing a real-time scenario where the user interacts with the product. So we can find their mental, physical and environmental impact towards achieving the goal they supposed to achieve through the product.
Mental — Understanding users bio, their behaviors…
Physical — Considering users physical ability to achieve their goal, the design should be Diverse & Inclusive!
Environmental — How is the user's environment at a given moment “Speed of their internet connection?” “Are our users using latest or old & low-end machines?” “Are they at the cozy-comfy chair or at the crowded subway station ?”
As we talked earlier about considering users stories through the whole product development process lets take a look at an example of
How UX Writers leverage User Stories?
Consider the image below.
From this page, users can select their desired payment option on the next page and complete their order.
What makes this simple change more efficient?
After getting feedback from many users, we learned that the majority of users bounced from Uber Eats app because they weren’t sure about the payment. The “Place Order” button was confusing.
From users POV, they still haven’t selected the payment option but it says place order. So this causes a lot of unrest and eventually, they end up not placing the order.
But, the Make Payment button is straight-forward. It gives the user an idea of what the next step is and helps in making informed decisions.
Over to you
I largely use it to initiate productive conversations before developing a feature. To me, it’s more of a collaborative tool to develop better products rather than a tool for visualizing functionality.
Hope this article helped you in some way. Also, lemme know how you’re using user stories in your design process. Maybe, I’ll learn a few 😉
