Workshop Exercises: Understand

User Story Mapping

Understand and visualize the user journey collaboratively

Illustration of User Story Mapping
Run a User Story Mapping play

Timing: Planning

Run time
60-90 minutes

Group size
3-10

Why: Let teams identify feature gaps, prioritize features, and align on delivering a seamless user experience

When: Use to define or refine user experiences by bridging the work of cross functional teams

This workshop exercise is part of the Workshop Patterns printed card deck.

A collection of workshop exercises that will help you ditch dull meetings and facilitate with confidence. It will help you master the design process and have more productive time with your team. The card deck will be ready for purchase in the end of 2025 and is now undergoing rigorous testing.

Reserve your deck!

Instructions for running this play

  1. Identify your target persona
  2. Discover activities. Discover what activities users need to go through to reach the final outcome they aim to achieve by doing a Silent Storming session.
  3. Map the user journey. Let your group describe Steps needed to complete activities in the Journey Map step-by-step on sticky notes. Group the sticky notes below the activity.
  4. Come up with solutions. Create sticky notes with user stories needed to make each step possible in your product. Group the user stories vertically below each activity.
  5. Prioritize and slice out releases. Prioritize the user stories on a vertical line and decide which are necessary for a first release, second release, and so forth.

Tips to perfect this play

Master and adapt the play to fit your context and needs.

Tip: Tailor to personas

Tailor the exercise by creating user personas and mapping user stories specific to each persona, enabling teams to address different user needs and personalize the product experience.

This workshop exercise is part of the Workshop Patterns printed card deck.

A collection of workshop exercises that will help you ditch dull meetings and facilitate with confidence. It will help you master the design process and have more productive time with your team. The card deck will be ready for purchase in the end of 2025 and is now undergoing rigorous testing.

Reserve your deck!

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Ice Breakers

Relieve initial group awkwardness and establish a safe space

Educate

Broaden knowledge or insight regarding the behavior or situation to inform decisions.

Demonstrate

Show practical examples or models of the desired behavior for clear guidance.

Alert

Highlight current actions and their reasons, bringing unconscious habits to awareness.

Train

Develop necessary skills and competencies to enable effective action.

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