User Stories

We’ve partnered with Matt Corrall, an experienced UX designer, to take you through a hands-on tutorial about creating user stories. Think of this tutorial as an interactive exercise.


This tutorial takes approx. 1 hour

It’s important that you work through these videos in the order they’re presented, as you’ll build off knowledge from each video. If you’d like to watch the videos at a faster speed, click the   settings icon and choose your preferred speed.

In this tutorial, you’ll:

  • Watch as Matt demonstrates how he creates user stories
  • Do a quick exercise to create user stories of your own to compare with Matt’s work

What Are User Stories and How Are They Used? 4 minutes

In this video, Matt will introduce the concept of user stories.

Watch Matt Create User Stories Demonstration, 6 minutes

In this video, Matt will demonstrate his process for creating user stories for a project he’s been working on. He’ll explain his decisions so that you can follow along with his process.

Watch Matt Organize His User Stories Demonstration, 8 minutes

Once user stories have been created, they need to be organized. In this video, you’ll follow along with Matt as he organizes his user stories using affinity and user story mapping.

Look at Matt's Affinity Map Look at Matt’s User Story Map

Create Your Own User Stories Hands-on work, 25 minutes

Think of this video as an interactive exercise. You’ll be briefed on the work you’ll tackle and create user stories based on the instructions and what you’ve learned about user stories.

Here’s the task in case you want to refer back to it while working on your user stories.

The scenario:

Someone’s bike breaks down on the roadside and they need to use our app to get help.

Please do the following tasks:

  1. Write out user stories for this scenario 10 minutes
  2. Make an affinity or user story map 10 minutes

Compare Your User Stories with Matt’s Work Hands-on work, 15 minutes

Matt will now walk you through the user stories he created and explain his design decisions. If you used the same reasoning and made similar decisions, you’re on the right track — even if your sketches look nothing alike.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. How were your decisions for user stories similar or different from Matt’s?
  2. What can you learn by comparing your work with his?
  3. What questions do you still have about user stories?

We hope that you feel like you have a better understanding of user stories after working through this tutorial. If these videos sparked questions about this topic, please bring them up with your mentor during your next call!

You can learn more about Matt by visiting his website at Corrall Design.

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About the designer

Matt Corrall of Corrall Design is a freelance designer based in London. During his fifteen years in the business, he's designed everything from Lego and chocolate packaging to VR applications and wind-farm software. Today, he specializes in challenging user interfaces and creating elegant digital experiences for professionals.

This tutorial is part of Springboard’s self-paced, mentor-guided UX design bootcamps, which emphasize hands-on learning. Find out more about the foundational UX Design Course and the more advanced UX Career Track, which includes a job guarantee.