One of the hardest things in life is to look at\u00a0things how other people look at\u00a0them. So when you\u2019re building something – say a web page – it can be hard to understand what other people might think of it. Why are they even looking at it in the first place? Why would they care?<\/p>\n
You can and should have your own business agenda. But if you don\u2019t give people what they\u2019re looking for, they won\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
User stories are simple statements that help you focus on what other people actually want and need.<\/p>\n
A user story might be something like:<\/p>\n
As a<\/em><\/strong> prospective student<\/p>\n I would like<\/em><\/strong> to see a list of scholarships that I\u2019m eligible for<\/p>\n So that<\/em><\/strong> I can help fund my education<\/p>\n The first line begins with \u201cAs a\u2026\u201d and helps you think about the person using your web page. There may be several users and lots of stories for each page, but it really helps to think of a\u00a0key audience and a key story to help keep your content focused.<\/p>\n The second line begins with \u201cI would like to\u2026\u201d and helps you think about your users\u2019 needs. What do they want to do on this page?<\/p>\n The third line begins with \u201cSo that\u2026\u201d and may feel a little vague at first. But it really helps you put user needs in context. People don\u2019t come you your website just for kicks. They\u2019re trying to solve a real problem. You\u2019re helping them.<\/p>\n When you do this for the first time you may feel it\u2019s all a bit strange. Do persist though. After a while you\u2019ll start to get the feel\u00a0of thinking from a user\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n It often helps to write a user story on a post-it note with a large marker pen. This keeps the user story short and focused. Resist the temptation to write more detail. That can be worked out later, possibly with more user stories.<\/p>\n Try to make writing user stories a collaborative process.<\/p>\n You may feel you already know your users\u2019 needs pretty well, but whenever I\u2019ve involved people in user stories or testing I\u2019ve always<\/em> found out something new and interesting.<\/p>\n Go out and ask people. Ask your colleagues to take part. Ask your users to take part. You need to find out what people think. Collaboration makes this easier. It has an added benefit of making people feel more engaged in your website.<\/p>\n A simple workshop might help. It doesn\u2019t need to be anything fancy. Just half an hour with a few colleagues or students. Get some post-its and pens and get people to write half a dozen user stories each. Then – as a group – get them to stick their stories on a board and prioritise them.<\/p>\n Even if you don’t learn anything new about your users (but I bet you will), you’ll have validated your ideas. This is a great start to building any web page.<\/p>\n User stories help you focus on what people want from your website.<\/p>\n They are meant to be short and quick to write.<\/p>\n Try to build your user stories with other people. Even if you can\u2019t manage that just writing one user story for your web page will help you think about that page differently.<\/p>\n Of course you\u2019ll still have your own agenda and message. You want your website to get across how amazing you are, or convey important information or facts. But if you don\u2019t give people your message in the way they’re looking for it, they simply won\u2019t listen. And then everyone loses out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the hardest things in life is to look at things how other people look at them. So when you\u2019re building something – say a web page – it can be hard to understand what other people might think of it. Why are they even looking at it in the first place?<\/p>\n User stories are simple statements that help you focus on what other people actually want and need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[79447,79410,79395],"tags":[442,79464,521,79451,79384,79483,79422,23153],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2841"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3885,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2841\/revisions\/3885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/webdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Writing tips<\/h2>\n
User story workshops<\/h2>\n
Summary<\/h2>\n