Using scenarios to test assumptions
We were at that tricky stage of a project. We were no longer in Discovery. Visions and missions had been set. Business and technical decisions were being made. The client was against the clock to get to Live as soon as possible. There was some existing user research, but we didn’t know how these had informed decisions. We, the customer experience team, needed to bring the users back as a priority.
It was tricky to get up to speed with a rationale we weren’t involved in, within a landscape that was really complex. Our way of making sense of it was to visualise it. To draw it out. To tell it as a story from the point of view of those who would be affected.
I hadn’t used scenarios for a really long time. I’d kind of forgotten about them. But, we were in this strange limbo where it was too soon to prototype, and a blueprint would have been too detailed. The challenge to create the right tool for the right situation was ignited. We were forced to work backwards from what we needed to find out, and to design the best tool to get us there. It felt like the right time to reflex that storyboarding muscle.
We used the UX comic pattern library — which, if you’ve not used before, I’d fully recommend. The time we saved drawing elements from scratch enabled us to focus on the story we were trying to tell. We didn’t have to waste time worrying about what it looked it. You can also get free imagery from Blush, icons8, Craftwork or the classic Emoji.
As a service designer, it felt scary for my role to fall into what I would consider to be a UX, or even UI, designer’s space. My role fell to pulling us back to the appropriate narrative altitude. Just enough to bring it to life, but not so much that we’d bog people down in details. This was particularly important when deciding which visual elements to highlight.
Alongside business requirements, pain points, and needs, we generated assumptions to test. These helped root our scenarios in the right things.
We ran a series of workshops with staff and customer users, narrating each of the scenarios. We got participants to feedback on things they liked, wished, and wondered. This is a helpful method to generate feedback in a positive manner as outlined by Hyper Island. This helped us uncover three things:
1. The desirability of our assumptions
2. Parts that were missing
3. Aspects which required further investigation
We compiled our findings into recommendations that could be traced to the workshops.
As a neglected tool in my design box it’s one I’m excited to use again. When have you used scenarios or storyboards in your practice?
