Scenario planning may be used in a variety of disciplines
Scenario planning in design practice refers to the creation of a hypothetical narrative illustrating a usage event or series of events. In user-centered design, personas are frequently used by design teams to represent archetypal users of the product or service being designed.
Whereas a persona characterizes a user’s needs, goals, and motivations, scenarios are used to animate the persona through a realistic though fictional event crafted to ground the designers in the world inhabited by the user. In other words, personas portray motivation, while scenarios portray context.
Scenario planning may be used in a variety of disciplines ranging from architectural design to software design, but the goal is the same: to represent veridical users doing veridical tasks. Scenarios help the design team anticipate concrete interactions rather than potentially idiosyncratic, non-representative abstractions.
For example, in an airport terminal redesign project, the team might create a story about a business person named Susan, traveling with a garment bag and a laptop bag, whose goals are to check in with minimal effort, grab a quick, healthy meal, and check her e-mail messages before boarding.
Susan’s scenario would be constructed to walk her through the steps and obstacles associated with reaching these goals. The designers can refer to Susan, among the other personas and travel scenarios constructed, when planning the redesign. Scenario planning is most often performed early in the design process to help orient the design team.
It provides a powerful heuristic device and facilitates brainstorming focused on end users. Scenarios can be captured using a variety of techniques including storyboards, high or low fidelity prototypes, or simple text-based narrative.