User-story mapping
User-story mapping will help you uncover insights about the users, but also capture the findings from your research, and plan out the design (and development)
Today I’d like to present to you another way of capturing insights about the users that would take you closer to solving the problem at hand. It is called User Story Mapping.
It is actually fairly similar to a customer journey map, but the focus is a bit different.
It might sound like an overkill for what you are trying to do for your portfolio, but trust me it is a great tool that will win you bonus points in your case study.
User Story Mapping will help you uncover insights about the users, but also capture the findings from your research, and plan out the design (and development). It will also teach you a bit about iterative software development process, which might be eye opening if you had no prior experience working in the software company.
An excellent reference for User Story Mapping is an article by Jeff Patton: The New User Story Backlog is a Map.
Jeff Patton is actually the author of the method. Interestingly enough, he is not a UX designer. I guess he is more of a product manager (PM), a role that is responsible for figuring out what to build.
In most cases there is a lot of overlap (and power struggle) between PMs and UX designers, but that is a topic for another time.
PMs work closely with developers, and thus the lingo they use might be unfamiliar to you. Don’t feel bad if some details he is talking about don’t make much sense. Just try to grasp the main idea of the method.
In the article Jeff references Indi Young’s Mental Models and Todd Warfel’s Task Analysis Grid. I encourage you to look into those frameworks as well. A simple Google search should lead you in the right direction.
If you are interested in learning more about User Story Mapping check out Jeff’s book User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product.
Take what you learn from these and see how you can apply it to the problem you are working on.