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<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nA user story is a useful method to help you focus your content on what a user wants to achieve when they come to your site or web page. Thinking about the content in this way can also help you with the tone of your writing and creating page titles and summary paragraphs.<\/p>\n
It is recommended that for every new piece of content you create, there should be an associated user story. If you are not able to produce a user story for the content, then it poses the question – does this piece of content serve any purpose for users? If the answer is no,\u00a0you may not need it on your website.<\/p>\n
User stories focus on a single, achievable need for a particular user, and why they have that need i.e. what are they getting out of it? User stories do not propose solutions.<\/p>\n
A user story consists of three parts:<\/p>\n
The user\/role types you define will be dependent on your site. Some types may be very general like\u00a0staff<\/em>\u00a0and some may be more specific e.g.\u00a0prospective students<\/em>. You\u00a0will need to think about who your site is intended for and whether those audiences have different needs. Here are some example user types to help you get started:<\/p>\n The second part is the most important, as it is the thing that we can measure the final or proposed content against to see if the user can achieve that goal.<\/p>\n As a<\/u>\u00a0prospective student As a<\/u>\u00a0member of staff As an<\/u>\u00a0alumnus Although a page should ideally be focussed on one subject and one user need, there will inevitably be pages which address multiple user needs. By identifying all these user needs it will help you with structuring your content. For example, each user need may be a section of the page with a different heading.<\/p>\n Job stories are similar to user stories, but they assume there is only one user type or all users have the same needs. Job stories are scenario-based rather than need-based.<\/p>\n A job story consists of three parts:<\/p>\n When<\/u>\u00a0the printer in my office stops working When<\/u>\u00a0I want to book a meeting room This all depends on your users, do they all have different needs? If you find yourself writing user stories for each user type and the needs and motivations are similar, then a job story is probably better. If you have multiple users all with different needs, requiring different content then user stories are the best option.<\/p>\n As you are going through your project, it is sometimes good practice to go back to your user or job stories and check if the content is addressing them. To do this you can write some acceptance criteria. This could be\u00a0evaluated by doing some user testing with a representative user. For example:<\/p>\n The following user story:<\/strong><\/p>\n As a<\/u>\u00a0member of staff would have this acceptance criterion:<\/strong><\/p>\n This story is done when they have applied for a season ticket loan<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" User stories A user story is a useful method to help you focus your content on what a user wants to achieve when they come to your site or web page. Thinking about the content in this way can also help you with the tone of your writing and creating page titles and summary paragraphs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278325],"tags":[278443,290350],"class_list":["post-277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-design-techniques","tag-content-design","tag-websites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/content-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Needs\/wants<\/h4>\n
Some user story examples<\/h3>\n
Example 1<\/h4>\n
\nI want<\/u>\u00a0to find Aeronautical Engineering courses
\nSo that<\/u>\u00a0I can decide if the course is right for me<\/p>\nExample 2<\/h4>\n
\nI need<\/u>\u00a0to find out what the process if for season ticket loans
\nSo that<\/u>\u00a0I can apply for a season ticket loan<\/p>\nExample 3<\/h4>\n
\nI want<\/u>\u00a0to see a list of upcoming events
\nSo that<\/u>\u00a0I can register for an event I want to attend<\/p>\nWhen there is more than one user need<\/h3>\n
\nJob stories<\/h2>\n
How to write a job story<\/h3>\n
\n
Some job story examples<\/h3>\n
Example 1<\/h4>\n
\nI need<\/u>\u00a0to find out who to contact
\nSo that<\/u>\u00a0I can get it fixed<\/p>\nExample 2<\/h4>\n
\nI want<\/u>\u00a0to see all the rooms that are available at a given date and time
\nSo that<\/u>\u00a0I can book the best room available<\/p>\n
\nShall I write user stories or job stories?<\/h2>\n
Acceptance criteria<\/h2>\n
\nI need<\/u>\u00a0to find out what the process if for season ticket loans
\nSo that<\/u>\u00a0I can apply for a season ticket loan<\/p>\nFurther reading<\/h2>\n
\n