Scenarios

Scenarios provide a fast and effective way to imagine the design concepts in use. In a sense, scenarios are prototypes built of words.

Scenarios are, at their heart, simply storiesstories about what it will be like to use the product or service once it has been made. The protagonists of these stories are the personas. Using a scenario, designers can place their personas into a context and further bring them to life. Indeed, scenarios are one of the factors that make personas worth having. Running through the same scenario using different personas is an excellent technique for uncovering what needs to be included in the final product.

Consider an e-commerce Web site, for example. One persona is Juan, a very focused shopper who always knows exactly what he wants. Another persona is Angela, who likes to look around and compare items. If the designer imagines them in a scenario in which they are shopping for an item, the scenario starring Juan will have him using search tools, and the scenario starring Angela will have her using browsing tools.

One common scenario that works well for almost every product or service is one that imagines first-time use. What happens when the personas encounter the product or service for the first time? How do they know what to do and how to use the product or service? How does it feel to them? Running each persona through a first-time use scenario can reveal how to tailor the final design to appeal to and work for each persona.

A picture can be worth a thousand words, but a few words can also be worth quite a few pictures. Consider this example from a scenario for an online grocery delivery service:

Sarah logs onto her BigGrocery account. She sees her order from last week and decides to use it again for this week's order. She removes a few items by dragging them off her BigGroceryList. Her total cost adjusts appropriately. She has all the groceries she wants now, so she clicks the Deliver button. Her saved credit card account is charged, and her confirmation page tells her to expect the groceries in about an hour.

This scenario took only a few minutes to write, but it would have taken hours to storyboard, days to wireframe, and weeks to prototype. Using scenarios, designers can sketch with words.