How to Write a Good User Story: Tips & Examples

Do you want your product to solve real-world issues, evoke emotion, and drive engagement? Then, you need to take a user-centric approach to your product design. Learn how to shift your focus from features to customers by writing realistic and effective user stories.

What are user stories?

User stories are tightly connected to software system requirements, and some people think they’re the same thing, but they are not.

A?user story?is a general and simple description of a feature from a user’s perspective. It usually consists of three elements:

• Persona
• Purpose
• Need

While software system requirements are focused on features and functionality above all else, user stories are there to prioritize the customer perspective of the product. What does that mean?

Features and technical requirements answer the question “how”. User stories answer the question “why”.

Diving into technicalities and all the intricacies of implementing features is very easy during?software development. They answer the question “how.” On the other hand, user stories answer the “why” of each feature — why does a person need it? What problem does this feature solve? What type of user you’re catering to?

User stories help the whole development team adopt the user or customer mindset while implementing the functionality and developing the best solutions for each potential request and need.

User stories and epics in Agile development

In Agile development, you’ll see the terms “user story” and “epic” equally frequently. So, what are epics??

Epics are large tasks that string across sprints, teams, and even projects. They usually contain full segments of a software product. To make them manageable, they’re divided into user stories that are easy to implement one at a time.

An epic consists of:

• An introduction?that describes the goals and reasons for creating a product or its part
• A product requirement?that explains in detail what’s to be designed, built, and released
• A technical requirement?that explains the technologies, tools, and frameworks that will be used during the development
• A design requirement?that shows what the product will look like

Just like user stories, epics need to be flexible and have room to change depending on customer feedback, market changes, business need changes, team workflow, etc.?

What user stories look like: Examples

As I stated earlier, all stories share the same three elements that create a simple template:

• Persona?— who is your user?
• Purpose?— what outcome do they want to achieve?
• Need?— why do they want it?

So, a typical user story looks like this:?As a [persona], I want to [action] to achieve [purpose].?

To write a story, you need to get in your user’s shoes, define their objective and figure out what action would lead them to fulfill their need. Let me give you a few examples.?

Example 1. E-commerce app

“As a buyer, I want to store my credit card information in the app so I make my next purchases fast.”?

Example 2. A mobile bank

“As a mobile bank customer, I want to log in to my app with biometrics, so I don’t have to type the password each time.”

Example 3. An mHealth app

“As a patient, I want to search for doctors by location so that I can choose the nearest specialist.”

As you can see, user stories are concise and don’t have many details. How exactly can they help your future product? Let’s find out.

The benefits of writing user stories for your product development

If you'd like to know more about how to write great user stories, make sure to read the full article at Mobindustry.net!