The success of an enterprise app hinges on user adoption. If the app doesn’t fully meet their needs or if it doesn’t easily fit into their workflows, users won’t be motivated to incorporate it into their daily work.
Low adoption rates are often due to users failing to see the real benefit to using the app. So how can you ensure that your app will meet the needs of your target users? First, you must understand your users’ motivations, goals, and beliefs. And one of the most effective ways to accomplish this is by creating user stories.
Investing time and money developing an app that isn’t used or that has to be significantly modified after launch is a too-common but avoidable problem. In this post, we’ll dive into the foundation of an effective user adoption strategy: research-based user stories.
What is a User Story and How Does It Encourage Adoption?
Essentially, a user story is an informal description of one or more specific features of an app. It’s a short, concise statement that clearly answers these 3 basic questions:
- Who it is for?
- What do they want to accomplish?
- Why it is important?
A user story follows this general format: As a {who/user}, I want to {need/goal} so that {why it matters to the user}.
Here’s an example of a user story from a recent development project: As a member, I want to be able to login with a user id and password so that my personal information remains secure.
In this example, the user (the who) is a member of an organization. The need they have (what they want to accomplish) is logging in to the app with a user id and password. The value (why it is important to the user) of accomplishing this is being able to keep their personal information secure.
User stories help the development team get clarity on what they’re building, why they’re building it, and the benefits it creates. Which is essential to ensure user adoption.
3 Key Benefits of User Stories in the Development Process
Incorporating user stories into your development process has several benefits. Here are the top three.
- Keep the focus on the user. A collection of user stories, rather than a list of tasks, help keep the teams’ conversations centered around solving problems for real people. Tasks are about implementation, whereas user stories are about definition.
- Encourage collaboration. User stories help development teams work together and think critically about how to best solve for an end goal.
- Save time. By focusing on user-oriented goals and outcomes, teams can reduce the time spent on documentation and ensure shorter development cycles.
Steps for Developing an Effective User Story
When writing user stories, follow these steps to create succinct and accurate user stories:
- Define your users. Conduct user research to gain valuable insights that will help you better understand your target users. As a result, you’ll learn their viewpoint, expectations, and pain points.
- Think like your user. The entire team needs to think from the users’ standpoint. See their underlying needs and the expected value, and base development decisions on this perspective.
- Keep it simple. Simple, accurate language will help you create a user story that’s easily understood and to the point.
Developing an enterprise app requires a significant investment. So it makes sense to spend the necessary time up front to create user stories that accurately reflect your target users and their goals. Doing this gives your development team the tools they need to successfully create an app that will truly meet the needs of those users.
And with the right amount of internal promotion and an effective onboarding process, you can feel confident that your enterprise app is one that users will eagerly adopt.
Interested in learning about the role user stories play in our psychology-focused product development process? Get in touch.
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