How can you effectively communicate the value of user scenarios to non-UX team members in agile teams?

Comprendre les membres de votre équipe non-UX est crucial pour présenter efficacement vos scénarios utilisateur. En explorant leurs r?les, responsabilités, objectifs, et défis au sein de l'équipe agile, ainsi que leurs hypothèses, préférences et modes de traitement de l'information, vous pouvez adapter vos scénarios pour mieux répondre à leurs besoins. En montrant comment les scénarios se rapportent à leur travail, en utilisant un langage et un format adaptés, vous favorisez une meilleure compréhension et une collaboration plus efficace au sein de l'équipe.

Want to understand something I don’t know? Maybe I start with understanding how it affects me and my work. For product managers and developers, understanding user scenarios involves connecting them to their own tasks and responsibilities. Let's take a product manager as an example. If they're working on an e-commerce platform, a user scenario could be a customer searching for a product, adding it to the cart, and completing the purchase. This aligns with the product manager's goal of optimizing the purchasing process. For developers, a user scenario might involve a user signing up, logging in, and accessing personalized content on an app. This relates to the developer's work on creating a seamless and secure authentication system.

Effectively communicating the value of user scenarios to non-UX team members in agile teams is crucial for fostering collaboration and ensuring a shared understanding of user needs. Here are some strategies to communicate the value of user scenarios: 1. Use Plain Language: Avoid using jargon or technical terms that may be unfamiliar to non-UX team members. Present user scenarios using simple and clear language that everyone on the team can understand. 2. Tell a Story: Frame user scenarios as stories to make them relatable. Describe the user's journey, challenges, and goals in a narrative format. Storytelling helps engage team members and provides context for the user's experience.

For developers, user scenarios translate into a clearer understanding of the 'why' behind what they're building. This clarity can lead to more intuitive feature prioritization, early identification of potential risks, and a more focused approach to testing and debugging.

In my product teams I aim to steer away from “feature” hunger and more towards user needs. As a UX designer, it's better to focus on user scenarios rather than just features. User scenarios help you understand how people will use a product in real life. Instead of thinking about isolated features, you look at the whole journey a user goes through. For example, instead of just adding a "search" feature, you imagine a scenario where a person needs to quickly find specific information. This way, you design with the user's needs and context in mind, creating a better overall experience. You have to consider this when product teams insist on bringing new technology without an understanding on how it will help the user.

Priority on main user scenarios should come from User Research, it will help you steer away from edge cases. Through research, you gain insights into the most common and critical user needs and behaviors. This understanding allows you to focus on working for the scenarios that will benefit the majority of users, ensuring that your efforts align with their primary goals and expectations. A note on stakeholder seniority when it comes to user scenarios: there are times when you'll give priority to less common scenarios but who can have a greater impact on higher level employees.

I disagree with always aiming for simple user scenarios. On complex applications, user scenarios may not always be simple. In intricate systems or applications, user interactions can involve a series of interconnected steps, reflecting the complexity of tasks users aim to accomplish. While simplicity is often a goal in UX design, recognizing and addressing the inherent complexity in certain scenarios is crucial. The key to designing for complexity is to understand intricate user journeys, anticipate challenges, and create interfaces that make it easy for users to navigate complex workflows. Delivering a user experience that is intuitive and capable of handling complex applications requires balancing simplicity with functionality.

Your product will change, people using it as well. Reevaluate user scenarios as a product evolves because users' priorities may change over time. As a product develops or undergoes updates, user needs, behaviors, and preferences can shift. Regularly revisiting and reassessing user scenarios helps ensure that the design continues to align with the current priorities of the users. This iterative approach allows designers to stay responsive to evolving user expectations, enabling the adaptation and better meet the changing landscape of user needs. It is important to communicate this continuously to stakeholders, since changes are very likely to happen.