Title: How to produce better designs for complex apps
Context: User stories: the cause of — and solution to — all of your software’s problems.
Synopsis: Ernest Hemingway famously said about writing stories: “Write drunk, edit sober.” Unfortunately when it comes to most Agile user stories it seems that we tend to forget about the “sober” part. Agile suffers from (amongst other things) a general lack of writing ability amongst authors in terms of plot, character (user) development, and style. The building blocks of the Agile process are called “stories” for a reason, because they should advance an overall narrative using relevant and contextual prose that leaves the reader with a greater understanding than they had before reading. But how often does a user story add only confusion? (Hint: very, very often.) We assume that technical understanding is the only prerequisite needed for building quality software, but users crave narratives that make their lives better, not more technology. Maybe the folks creating user stories should spend a little less time writing algorithms and a little more time reading Papa.
Best Bit: “A common mistake in the design process is to attack a complex problem head-on and start drawing out a layout in Photoshop as the proposed solution.”
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