The presentation is used to introduce product design and development teams to user story mapping, personas, and scenarios. The technique draws on the work of Jaff Patton who integrates elements of user centered design, agile user stories, backlog management, and product management.

1. Personas, Scenarios, Storymapping
Kelley Howell, UX Research Manager – Homes.com

2. Personas, scenarios, storymapping
These are techniques for centering the user
experience
Instead of reading reports, concretize findings of
research into personas and scenarios
Use the narrative to help us understand user goals,
the activities she does to achieve goals, and then
map out stories that represent those activities and
the tasks someone performs to achieve them
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3. 3
Agile user stories
Attributes of a user story
1. Concise description
As a [type of user]
I want to [perform some task]
so that I can [reach some goal]
2. Title – usually a verb phrase: Search for article,
sort results, mark articles as read, print an article

4. 4
A user story serves many purposes:
 representation of users’ needs
 way of focusing on solving users’ problems
 planning item
 token for a longer conversation
 method for deferring a longer conversation

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Usually, we go from this --

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to this: product backlog + sprint backlog

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Seeing the forest for the trees
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How do we stay on track?
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9. 9
personas, scenarios and story mapping

10. 10
personas

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personas

12. 12
scenarios

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scenarios

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Story mapping

15. First, use the right kind of persona
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16. Product personas (not marketing personas)
Alan Cooper, 1975
1983, Plan*it, Kathy
To help him think
through complex
software design, he
would tell stories about
Kathy and how she
used Plan*it

17. 1. 1995, Cooper had bigger team and clients
2. talking to himself not enough
3. Why? In love with the technology, engineers
wanted the software to do everything
4. To rein them in, Cooper did user research
5. Discovered users fell into three categories:
Chuck, Cynthia, and Rob with different goals, tasks,
and skill levels. First goal-directed personas
Product personas: goal-directed

18. Product personas: design tool
Personas ground design decisions in the activities
and goals of archetypal users
Software is to achieve goals (not abstract bundle
of features)
Software are tools to reach ends
Immediately changed how engineers thought
about what they were doing
Personas as a common language to communicate
across roles

19. Etsy persona – a product persona
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20. Why scenarios? We need context
People don’t just perform tasks and activates to
achieve goals
They perform them in a context
Context is about their physical environment –
what kind of technology they use, place,
distractions, noise-level, brightness levels, etc.
Context is also psychological and social – stress
levels, conflicting goals, constraints (time – money
– skill), etc.

21. Scenarios represent those contexts
Use scenarios to understand that context
Scenarios tell a story about the persona to help us
understand and remember her environment –
physical, psychological, and social – so we can
design for that environment while we also design a
tool to help someone achieve their goals.

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Since scenarios are narratives, they are
powerful devices that help us
 identify with users
 shed our own skin and step into someone else’s
 remove ourselves from the process
 tell a story about a person and her problems, needs,
and goals
 think through the activities and tasks people do to
accomplish a goal

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Personas & scenarios to create story map
 Centers the user
 Ideally, built by the entire team with as many
perspectives as possible.
 Get the product manager out of the corner
ALSO:
 confirm completeness of product backlog
 provide a context for prioritization
 aid in planning sprint and release cycles

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People have goals and use tools to achieve
goals
tasks
tools: apps, sites, software

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Too often, we build from the tool out
goals
tasks
tools: apps, sites, software

26.  Tasks have a start and end
 Activities tend to be ongoing, repeated
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Activity: manage email
Activities and tasks
Task: Filter
email
Task: order
email
Task: create
folder Task: delete
message
Task: label
message
Task: move
message

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Scenarios ask these questions
1. What are user goals?
2. What are user pain points?
3. How will users of the system reach their goals?
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Composition
“Kendra found her apartment on homes.com. Her landlord told
her she could paint the walls red. She goes back to homes.com to
find out how to paint interior walls. Kendra sees a promotion for
Idea Gallery and clicks the link to what looks like it’s a how-to
guide. Optionally, Kendra considered using a bookmark to find the
detail page for the apartment community where she rents so she
could find the ad for the Idea Gallery where she’d seen an article on
painting tips. As another option, Kendra figured she could use
Google to search to find the home improvement blog she
remembered seeing. She figures she can use the blog’s search
function to look for an article on painting. Kendra enters her search
terms but, because she spelled painting wrong, she gets a page
with 0 results. Kendra looks for a way to search again. When she
does, she sees a promotion for ________ and she also sees a tool
that will let her browse some of the most popular categories.
- Bold-faced verb phrases are
knitted together, usually with
conjunctions, to tell a story.

29. Example: Etsy persona
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30. Sally
Redacted
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31. For more research-based insights about
Redacted users, check out the UX
insights portal
Thoughts? Questions?