Hand-picked resources for product owners, business analysts, and product managers working in tech-enabled organizations. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!
User scenarios explain how and why people use your product
Good product managers build a shared understanding with product teams. More often than not, that shared understanding focuses on what the product will do. It’s features described by requirements.
Great product managers know the shared understanding needs to be about users, their problems, and how a product can help solve those problems.
One technique coming from the design community to help you build that shared understanding is user scenarios.
User Scenarios provide depth and context
No, I didn’t say user stories. It’s good that they’re user focused, but unless your team follows the intended practice of actually discussing those items, the single statement tends to be light on useful context.
User scenarios provide a richer description of how people use a product. These descriptions provide insight into why users do what they do with your product and explain how your product should fit in with specific tasks.
This week’s newsletter shares resources describing what user scenarios are, how you can create them, and how they’re different from user stories and use cases.
Sick of biased news? Try 1440.
If you wish all news could be as no nonsense as this, you'll want to check out a newsletter loved by millions, called 1440. It's a daily digest of all the most important info in culture, science, sports, politics, business, and everything in between—and better yet, it's the fastest way to an informed and impartial point-of-view.
The folks at 1440 scour over 100 sources every morning so you don't have to. You'll save time and start your day smarter. What more could you ask for?
Sign up for 1440 now and get your first five-minute read this minute. It's completely free—no catches, no nonsense, and absolutely no BS.
IDF Ultimate Resource on User Scenarios
The folks at the Interaction Design Foundation maintain a constantly updated definition of User Scenarios and collection of videos and articles.
They define user scenarios as 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.
User Scenarios and why they are important in Product Design
Product Design involves many stages of ideation, from market research to usability testing and customer journey mapping to sketching. Every step of the UI and UX Design process accounts for users.
In this article, the folks at Health Updates Daily take a look at how user scenarios can be useful to an organization working on a product and what the advantages are when working with user scenarios.
Another Newsletter to Read
If you’re looking for another great source of product management knowledge, I encourage you to check out Another PM Day.
Join 11K+ PMs accelerating their careers with tactical frameworks, behavioral science, and insider tips. Learn from Jean-Michel Van, a $30bn SaaS Product Leader.
Subscribe and make today Another PM Day.
A step-by-step guide to designing effective user scenarios
User scenarios are stories that help teams visualize people's steps to achieve a specific goal or resolve a problem. They focus on why people's goals and motivations are a certain way instead of how.
Understanding why users take specific actions can ensure companies provide the right solutions and meet their users' needs.
User scenarios are essential for UX professionals to understand user behavior and what they want when visiting a website or using an app.
Product development teams also use user scenarios to understand users and how product features or new products can provide them with practical solutions for their issues.
The folks from Dovetail explain how to design user scenarios, including examples.
How to Create Effective User Scenarios: A Step-by-Step Guide
A user scenario is a tool to imagine a user’s journey when using your app. A good user scenario requires strong research and storytelling to align different teams. For product managers and developers, the creation of “user scenarios” provides a foundation of understanding for UX and UI design and development.
A user scenario is an important exercise for understanding the user and what they want from a product. It helps teams understand the intent, motivation, and context of an app’s users. It involves high-level conceptualization and focuses on the “why” rather than the “how” of a user’s goals and motivation.
The folks at Stream explain how to create user scenarios after you’ve done market research and defined user personas.
User Stories, User Scenarios, and Use Cases: Understanding the Differences
In the world of product design and development, three terms often come up that can sometimes be confusing for us: user stories, user scenarios, and use cases. Understanding the differences between them is crucial to know in which moment we should use one or another.
To help you decide which one you should use, Benjamín Pérez Souto looks at each one to highlight their different applications.
Thanks for reading
Thanks again for reading InsideProduct.
If you have any comments or questions about the newsletter, or there’s anything you’d like me to cover, just reply to this email.
Talk to you next time,
Kent J. McDonald
Founder | KBP.Media
InsideProduct
Hand-picked resources for product owners, business analysts, and product managers working in tech-enabled organizations. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!
I try not to overuse click bait titles, too much. For this particular topic, however, it was just too tempting. As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, there were several reasons I went to Agile2024 after a six year hiatus. One was to get a sense of the current state of agile. There’s been a bit of chatter about the decline in agile coaching opportunities as well as trends in agile transformations in general. I certainly caught some inklings about what’s going on, but I didn’t want to rush...
I’m back from Agile2024, and it was good to be back after a 6 year hiatus. I caught up with some old friends, made some new acquaintances, and had some great discussions along the way. Some of those discussions will influence future issues of InsideProduct, and others will go down as obnoxiously long running inside jokes. If you're wondering about the latter, ask me about retractable stairs or comic sans the next time you see me. While I’m not going to talk about those topics here, I did want...
For the last few weeks, I’ve explored what prioritization looks like in a variety of different scenarios. This week finished up that series with a look at how you can go about prioritizing a bunch of stakeholder requests. This is a common scenario when you’ve already built software for your company (ie internal product) and you’re trying to optimize or maintain it. A unique aspect for internal products is that most requests for changes come from other people inside your company who may, or...