HOW TO CREATE A USER STORY?
A user story is an informal, general explanation of software features written from the user’s point of view. It is usually written by a product owner, product manager, or program manager and shared with the developers of a website, online service, or mobile app. Many companies skip this step and go straight to creating a technical specification after agreeing on the idea. However, well-written user stories help make a product as user-friendly as possible.
What is this about?
- What is a user story and what are its parts?
- Steps for writing user stories
- Advantages and disadvantages of user stories
- How to create and evaluate a user story?
- Conclusion
What is a user story and what are its parts?
User stories are a few sentences written in simple language that describe the desired outcome without extra details. A user story is a technique used to define the scope of a product’s functionality and improve usability.
“In software development and product management, a user story is an informal, natural language description of features of a software system. They are written from the perspective of an end user or user of the system and may be recorded on index cards, sticky notes, or digitally in project management software. Depending on the project, user stories may be written by different stakeholders such as a client, user, manager, or development team.”—“User story”, Wikipedia
The goal of any user story is to bring value to the end user or to company employees. It helps look at a website or product’s functionality from different angles and avoid many edits and reworks. Simply put, a user story is a guide for developers that describes what should be on the site or in the software.
User stories are written on small cards (around 2.8 × 5.1 inches or 3.1 × 4.7 inches), which helps keep the description short and clear. They answer three main questions using this format:
“As a <role>, I want so that <goal/desire> so that <benefit>”
For example:
“As a lawyer, I want to download document templates from the website to save time instead of searching for them on other platforms.”
They also use a shortened framework:
“As a <role>, I want to <goal/desire> “
For example:
“As a lawyer, I want to quickly and freely download document templates.”
Creating a large number of such cheat sheets takes time—but in the long run, it helps avoid mistakes and creates a product that is valuable to users.
📌 Read on our blog: What is LTV (Lifetime Value) of a customer
User stories include four elements known as the “Four Cs.”
A brand shows the company’s identity, reflects its values, and communicates promises to customers. Keeping brand consistency is critical—this is the job of a brand manager. This specialist monitors marketing efforts that affect the image of the business or product. They bring together teams from different departments to shape the right brand perception among the target audience.
- Card (“As a product quality specialist, I want to make it easier to send feedback so that customers can add user-generated content directly on the website.”)
- Conversation. Collaboration between all parties helps everyone understand the needs and problems of the end user.
- Confirmation. The back of the card can include acceptance criteria to know when the task is done.
- Context. Reviewing each situation and the conditions it may happen in helps keep user stories consistent and ready to connect into a larger story map.
Steps for Writing User Stories
Very often, designers, developers, and marketers follow trends that grab attention but quickly annoy users. To make sure the website or service is not just for someone’s portfolio, focus on user experience as your main goal.
5 key steps to writing a User Story
- Define acceptance criteria. A checklist helps you know when the story is finished.
- Prepare customer segment profiles. To research user needs, you can use surveys, interviews with focus groups, forum and social media analysis, and competitor monitoring.
- Create tasks and subtasks. A detailed process description helps the team understand each task clearly.
- Build story maps. Story maps help organize big projects and include not only user questions and needs but also different customer journey options.
- Evaluate story quality. The final step is checking how good the user story is.
You can use the INVEST method to evaluate a User Story. The acronym stands for:
- Independent—Stories can be worked on in any order and stand alone.
- Negotiable—The story text can change after team discussions, or talks between the product owner, marketer, and end user.
- Valuable—A story is useless if it doesn’t bring value to the customer.
- Estimable—It’s best if you can estimate how long it will take to complete the story.
- Small—A User Story is short. It doesn’t include technical details, notes, or multiple versions.
- Testable—To meet quality standards, the story must be testable.
A good User Story follows all INVEST rules. The biggest mistake is adding stories just to increase the list of requirements. If a story doesn’t help a certain user segment, it’s better to add that feature later and see if people use it.
Pros and Cons of User Stories
If in the past, writing customer story cards was only done to define and record client requirements for product development, today it is seen as an effective way to improve website metrics thanks to great usability and well-implemented technical solutions. There are several key benefits of user stories.
- They focus developers on the user. Unlike a typical task list, this approach helps solve real user problems and anticipates their needs.
- They support collaboration. Team members work together to set goals and figure out how to reach them. This helps avoid confusion between departments—for example, when a developer doesn’t understand what the designer had in mind when creating a prototype.
- They encourage creative thinking. Brainstorming, user surveys, story mapping, and adding new cards help the team think outside the box, step into the customer’s shoes, find insights, and put them into action.
- They save resources on development and launch. Story cards make it easier to understand what the customer wants, which trends and features are worth using, and which ones are unnecessary.
- They remove limitations. User stories are flexible because they don’t dive deep into technical details. They can be adjusted to fit a specific audience segment and the team’s technical capabilities.
There are also some possible downsides to using user stories.
- A user story might not be specific enough or might suggest multiple solutions at once.
- To write a high-quality user story, you need to spend a lot of time researching the audience and discussing ideas.
- Narrow focus. Each story card covers a specific need, which can make it hard to see the big picture. So without creating a story map, implementing user story requirements may feel unstructured.
Before you start writing a user story, you need to study your target audience well, predict what parts of the user’s needs might change, and what must stay consistent to create a high-quality software product.
📌 Read in our blog: How to create a target audience profile?
How to write a good user story?
You can write user stories on paper cards or use one of the many data visualization tools, such as Canva or Excel spreadsheets.
The software development analytics platform Pluralsight Flow offers users story templates of different complexity. For example, in addition to the key three questions—“Who?”, “What do I want?”, and “Why?”—you can also include context (“Given that”), time (“When?”), and desired outcome.
Stories help create special and useful features for customers—for example, a unique product filtering system or a service comparison tool. If you don’t know exactly who your typical user is and can’t describe each segment of your target market, you should not write stories. In this case, you should start by analyzing the resources you’ve used before and creating customer profiles based on third-party websites and focus groups.
We recommend starting the process with a “poem”—a basic story that applies to all potential customers. Base it on your business goals and your company’s capabilities. After that, you can divide the poem into several user stories. Use user feedback during the early stages of product development. Special attention should be paid to the story cards during the prototyping stage of the website, app, or platform.
To combine all user stories and decide which ones are a priority, use User Story Mapping. There are special tools for this, such as the User Story Canvas model.
You can also create user story maps in other software or by hand. Grouping them this way helps you see each card in the context of product usage and find gaps in the work that’s been done.
Frequently asked questions
A User Story is a simple and clear description of a requirement that explains what is needed, who it is for, and why.
According to the Rachel Davies template, a User Story might look like this: “As a regular customer, I want to see personalized product recommendations so that I can save time and don’t have to search for clothing in my style in the catalog.”
A User Story includes four elements known as the “Four Cs”: Card, Conversation, Confirmation, and Context.
User stories should be created through communication between the product manager and team members. Create a fictional profile of the target user and define their goal—the benefit they want to get or the problem they want to solve with the product.
Conclusions
User stories are not required. But they help create products that are easy to use and valuable for the target audience in the shortest time possible. A user story can clearly describe the needed features and structure of a website, mobile app, online service, or any kind of software.
User stories are most useful for defining requirements in complex projects that have many stages. By using story cards, talking through them, confirming details, and understanding the full context, you can stay ahead and meet customer expectations right when the product launches.
