This document discusses using story mapping to communicate product ideas more effectively. It recommends:
1) Using story mapping at every stage of product development, from research to release, to build shared understanding between teams.
2) Conducting story mapping workshops to collaboratively map out user needs and desired outcomes through stories, rather than just writing requirements.
3) Focusing on outcomes for users through storytelling, rather than what features to build, to ensure the product is truly valuable.
2. Hi! I’m Tobias
I use design thinking to solve complex problems
and create valuable experiences.
tobias.jensen@blackboardinsurance.com
www.tobiasholm.com
Product Designer in NewYork City
8. As a __________ I want to __________ so I can __________
Who What Why
9. I want to filter users by
their job title
so I can filter users by
their job title
As an admin
10. As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
SPRINT 1
SPRINT 2
SPRINT 3
NEVER?!
As a ___ I want to ___ so I can___
11. “The real value of stories isn’t what’s written down on the card.
It comes from what we learn when we tell the story.”
— Jeff Patton
23. How to: user story
mapping workshop
Find it on Medium!
24. “Teams must build a shared understanding and focus on
outcomes — rather than what to build — for their users”
Jeff Patton
25. Key takeaways
— Don’t expect people to fully understand your written documents
— Collaborate early to achieve shared understanding
— Start telling stories – don’t just write them
— Flat backlogs don’t show the big picture
Hi!
Thanks Anna and UXDX
It is important to better tell stories about our products
Bridging the gap between UX and development.
Who here knows of Story Mapping?
Who has used it?
Use design thinking to solve complex problems and create experiences.
Product Designer
From Copenhagen - lived in New York City for two years but from Denmark.
Degrees from IT-University of Copenhagen
Obsessed with handling complex domains
Currently work at an insurance company.
We work hard to reimagine the current way insurance works.
New look at insurance - how can insurance be a good experience?
Historically boring and tedious
No trust
Asymmetry
My mission is to figure out how design can change insurance for the better.
Why story mapping is important
What it actually is
How to use it in your organization.
I’ll try to leave time for questions at the end as well.
Has anyone seen this video before?
Telephone game - explain
Usually super wrong and hilarious
Explain video
Big difference between what was first and last enacted
So.. Why am I showing you this?
This is all fun and games - but…
Feels like playing telephone game
Instead of doing it for fun, we just switch this out with written documents – passed on to others
And this can go on and on until the original idea is completely lost.
We write down requirements and then we expect everyone to look at these documents and understand them the same way we do.
But what actually happens is this …
When I read something, I will most likely understand it differently.
No shared understanding of what they’re actually looking at, so they use their own judgment.
Point: we should never expect people to read documents and understand them the way that we do ourselves.
Just because you share a document with someone else, it doesn’t mean that it leads to a shared understanding of that document.
These documents (if agile) will look like this.
Standard format for a user story
Goes: As a (persona), I want to (do something) so I can (accomplish something).
Features from users’ point of view.
By doing this, the users and their motivations are always considered.
However, we most often end up with this…
Very informative right?
Extreme example, but… reality.
Seen this before?
If we don’t put this story in context, we won’t know why it is important to filter by job title.
Take these small documents and we start putting them in an agile workflow.
Lost desired outcomes of the stories, we have also lost the bigger picture.
What are we trying to accomplish?
What should the system do for the user?
Why in this particular order?
How do things relate or fit together?
Are we building the right thing?
Isolated chunks of work
To do list - or an assembly line
It is clear that there is no holistic narrative
The vision got shredded a part, then the features are prioritized and then we expect to be able to build a a wholesome, holistic product.
No clear vision Makes sense to people who write them, but how could we expect others to understand the bigger picture?
Jeff Patton says …
Stories are tools for communicating better about features and not a different way to write down requirements.
Stories don’t become stories before they’re told.
If you just keep the stories in writing, they aren’t stories.
We want to get to this point
We want to be able to see things from the same perspective and have conversations
Shared understanding is when we both understand what the other person is imagining and why.
Maybe the solution is not to try to be better at writing stories, maybe the solution is to start telling them.
This why this book has become so popular
Jeff Patton talks about these challenges
Introduced in 2014, but has been around for longer.
If you haven’t read it!
He talks about story maps
Fosters conversation and creativity with the user’s journey at the center.
Example: going to a conference to speak - you take a big story and break it down
Being able to take really big ideas, and then break them into smaller ideas.
Take time to explain our thoughts with words and pictures, we build a shared understanding of our users.
Building a shared mental model.
So let’s look at the basic anatomy of a story map
It will ALWAYS be created with users/customers/personas with a goal in mind
Goals are reached by completing activities.
To complete an activity, users needs to perform tasks.
And these tasks can be transformed into user stories for software development.
The we slice up the map into releases
Viability is defined by the outcomes we get (not the outputs to get there).
Not viable in terms of it being a wholesome successful product
Not viable to think “what is the crappiest thing we can build to get out there”
Viable from what you need to be able to validate an assumption about your product.
Chunks of value
But Minimum and viable are both subjective – get shared understanding if all knows what we want to accomplish
Break down product ideas into parts
Formulate hypotheses about what your product needs to do for your users.
Prioritization
It’s about slicing features and defining road maps for products
A visual roadmap to communicate both the planned work and the work that remains.
Planning releases
Communication
A shared language about people and their jobs to get done
A framework for conversation
Keeps the context of the user’s journey
Outcome thinking
Outcomes over output
Customer outcomes are in focus
Iterative (always WIP)
Proactiveness
Used for designing proactively
Instead of reacting to problems
Can be used in many phases of a project.
Initial product vision/discovery workshop
Restructure a backlog that has lost focus
Internal team activity for alignment
Research
Before research starts – what would be valuable to research.
See knowledge gaps are and what you need to research.
Connect your research findings with the story map
If you want to do you favor, structure your research phase from a jobs to be done perspective. This will help you understand what jobs (in each phase of the journey), the user wants to get done.
Hypothesis
Formulate hypotheses about your users.
Where in the user journey you’re most unclear about what your users
What is the product hypothesis you want to validate? (Lean UX)
Prototyping
Having a user story map is super useful in a design process. Understand the journey I’m designing for.
What MVP could be designed and tested even before development starts.
Build, test, release
Use it for the different agile ceremonies
Grooming to realign everyone on the “why” while discussing features
Good for release planning and road maps.
Measure using the story map (did we meet the goals of the MVP?)
Tools to get started
Pens and sticky notes - preferred
Miro.com - good for remote
EA - story map in JIRA which is awesome
Specific guidelines for doing a workshop
This quote from Jeff sums it up really well
This is the essence of what user story mapping does – it creates a sheared understanding of outcomes for their users.
Don’t expect people to understand your written documents
Flat backlogs don’t show the bigger picture
Tell stories, don’t just write them - Stories are not requirements – they facilitate conversation
Collaborate to achieve shared understanding
