Scenario-based product design
Half day workshop. Tuesday 8 August 2017, 9am- 12:30pm.
Description
When we design new user experiences we change the things people do, or the way people do things – we change behaviour. However, if we want to change people’s behaviour, then we need to be able to envision, share, refine and validate those new behaviours in the full context of users’ lives. That’s where scenarios come in.
Scenarios are stories that describe people living with our products. By drawing on our shared cultural tradition of storytelling, scenarios provide a compelling, insightful and approachable way to understand issues of context, motivation, usability and emotion in our products.
Scenarios are our first designs.
In this workshop you’ll learn to create scenarios and other types of stories to identify product opportunities, form design hypotheses and focus your design and evaluation of new user experiences. Drawing on your existing ability to tell a story (trust me!), we’ll cover character development, motivation, internal dialog and story arc - all in the context of creating great user experiences.
In this hands-on workshop you will spend time trying story-telling techniques and sharing your experiences. See for yourself how valuable - and fun - it is to integrate scenarios into your user experience design practice.
What you will learn
- Using scenarios to design for behaviour and emotion, not just transactional outcomes
- Elements of story: character, setting, challenge, plot, and theme
- How to use scenarios to move from research to design
- Scenario template
- Scenario rules and tips
- How to brainstorm, select and write scenarios
- How to review and refine your scenarios with your broader organisation
- The role of scenarios in each stage of the UCD lifecycle
What you'll take away
There are a set of workshop handouts (slides) which include additional material such as references for further reading. There is a separate scenario 'template' plus stimulus materials for the exercise.
Target audience
This workshop is suited to beginner to intermediate UX practitioners, though senior practitioners who have not had much exposure to scenario-based design will also benefit. Scenario-based design is also relevant to product and service design as a whole, and so other professionals who would benefit from attending this workshop include product managers, product owners and business analysts.