Comments on: From User Stories to… Stories

By: michael mahemoff

michael mahemoff — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:47:06 +0000

Excellent point. This is related to methodologies in hci like rich user scenarios and contextual analyses, which are antecedents to the more bland variety of story practiced in modern software design.

@fnd it might be argued they add noise to some tasks such as coding against the stories (I say *might*), but when it comes to high level user centered design, it’s vital to bring out the human elements – personalities, motivations, emotions, you name it!

Visualising these things guides the design in the right direction and can also be viewed as a form of risk mitigation strategy (to turn a visceral topic into a rather dryer one!). By that, I mean they can expose flaws in a candidate design you’re working on.

By: eastmad

eastmad — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:50:10 +0000

I quite like the idea, and I’m sure Ms Sierra* would too. Very customer centric. In the harsh enterprise reality however, it might be hard to make things exciting:

“You won’t believe it. I was using a cloud interface and I started to upload a kernel image then amazingly, I started this linux instance!”

Fucking amazing, yeah.

*Is that her porn name?

By: FND

FND — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:24:56 +0000

Frankly, to me that sounds like it’s just adding more noise, possibly even uncertainty/ambiguity…

By: BenJam

BenJam — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:11:37 +0000

Interesting. Particularly since, given the author’s (well, it’s almost a narrative)state of mind you might end up seeing a theme.

Eg. You won’t believe it. I was on WordPress for iPhone and I started to write a post about the market for lemons then amazingly, I deleted it, without notification of the fact I was going to lose upward of an hours work!

Which, annoying, happened to me on the train this morning.