Scenario

A **scenario** is a synthetic description of an event or series of actions and events. It is also an account or synopsis of a projected course of action, events or situations. Scenario development is used in policy planning, organisational development and, generally, when organisations wish to test strategies against uncertain future developments. A scenario is a description of a person's interaction with a system.

Scenarios help focus design efforts on the user's requirements, which are distinct from technical or business requirements. Scenarios may be related to 'use cases', which describe interactions at a technical level. Unlike use cases, however, scenarios can be understood by people who do not have any technical background. They are therefore suitable for use during participatory design activities.

Designers will first create personas or user profiles that are reflective of their targeted user group. From these personae, and the patterns of behavior observed in the research, designers create scenarios (or user stories) or storyboards, which imagine a future work flow the users will go through using the product or service.

The following is a sample scenario describing a customer withdrawing money from an automated teller machine (ATM). __It's Friday afternoon and Joe is flying to Sydney. He doesn't have enough money for a taxi to the airport, and he's running late. He goes to the local ATM and identifies himself. He specifies that he wants $100 from his savings account. He'd like the money in $20 notes so that he can give the taxi driver the correct change. He doesn't want a printed receipt, as he doesn't bother keeping track of transactions in this account.__ Note that this description specifically avoids references to transaction cards and PINs. This leaves open the possibility of considering a variety of identification and authorization regimes.

Below is another example of how scenario based on design flows:


 * [|Alan Cooper] & Robert M. Reimann: //About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design//, Wiley, 2003, [|ISBN 0-764-52641-3].
 * [|Stephanie Houde] & [|Charles Hill], "What Do Prototypes Prototype?" in //Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction// (2nd ed.), M. Helander, T. Landauer, and P. Prabhu (eds.), Elsevier Science B. V, 1997.