SCENARIO SWIMLANES

Scenario Description Swimlanes is a UX deliverable that illustrates the activities of multiple actors in a flow of events and how they influence the outcome of the overall user experience.

Provides an effective starting point to understand how the success of an application-based product relies on the interaction of multiple components working together.

Define the problem you’re trying to solve at the user experience level. Describe the scenario, make assumptions, write down the personas profile and the strategic goal to achieve.

What?

Why?

How?

Step 1

Conduct a Contextual Inquiry to get directinsights from your users. Spend some time where the action happens.

Interview your potential users using a broad-to-narrow approach to inquire about users’ real needs, their tools and their struggleto complete certain tasks.

Allows the team to focus on how and why they’re solving a user experience problem

Helps the team to understand and easily visualize complex flows of a system, service or user/product interaction from a very high-level perspective and from a micro-view, as well

Makes effective correlations between different actors and variables of a system or service that have direct influence on the success of a UX strategy

Step 2

Time to start diagramming.

The top lane is the storyboard lane. It can include comic strips, photos, drawings or sketches to describe the story in a visual way.

The next lane is the user experience lane. It is a description of the story above, in the form of boxes and arrows.

The third lane is the business process lane. It is the business flow that matches the top two lanes.

The fourth lane is the tools and systems lane. This lane includes technical systems, such as servers, databases, spreadsheets, etc., that support the business process lane above it.

The diagram has a number of lanes, which align to describe a story or flow of events. Each lane describes a different element of that story:

Step 4

Interpret the results using Affinity Diagramto spot emerging patterns regarding:

Step 3

Takeaways

Swimlanes: An Interview with Yvonne Shek at unify.eightshapes.comhttp://unify.eightshapes.com/page-pattern/yvonne-shek-interview/

References

Universal Methods of Design: 100 ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Method #72, Scenario Description SwimlanesBella Martin, Bruce Hanington, Bruce M. Hanington. Rockport Publishers, Feb 1, 2012

uxclinic.nearsoft.com

Telling the flow of events of multiple actors involved in the user experience of a product

1

2

3

Decision making

Tools

Barriers

Preferences

MotivationsContext

characteristics

Interactions

(Persona name)

Age: 41 years old

Lives in ( City )

[ Key attribute ]

Goal ( Goal, concisesly written ) Description [ Description, concisely written )

[ Key attribute ]

Sto

ryb

oar

dU

ser

exp

erie

nce

Bu

sin

ess

pro

cess

Too

ls &

Sys

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SHOW DESIGN(THUMBNAIL OR

COMIC HERE)

!

!

* Taken from Yvonne Shek from unify.eightshapes.com