UX Glossary · U
User scenario
Also: Scenario
A short narrative of a specific person achieving a specific goal in a specific situation.
A scenario is a short story: who the person is, what situation they are in, what they are trying to achieve, and what happens. It sits between a persona, which describes a person, and a task, which describes an action.
Why the narrative form works
Scenarios keep context attached to requirements. “The system must support bulk editing” is a feature. “Anja is between two client sites with fifteen minutes before her next appointment, and needs to change the mowing schedule for eleven mowers at one site from her phone” contains the constraints that decide whether the feature is any good.
Time pressure, device, environment and quantity are all in the second version and none are in the first.
Where they are used
As input to design, to keep decisions anchored. As the basis for usability test tasks, which should be written as scenarios rather than instructions. And as acceptance criteria in teams that want more context than a user story carries.
Scenario and user story
A user story is a compact format for planning work. A scenario is longer and richer, and exists to preserve the situation. They complement each other: the story goes in the backlog, the scenario explains why it is worded that way.
In practice
Write them from research. A scenario invented at a desk describes the user you hoped for.