As a user, I'm tired of bad user stories

If you claim to know how to write a user story but if you ever written a user story starting with "as a user", we need to talk. Writing effective user stories drives clarity, facilitates better communication and increases user satisfaction. However, many struggle with the format since writing stories is often seen as a tedious task that delays progress. Here are a few tips for you to write much better user stories:

Concentrate on users. User stories should be concise but precise about who the target audience is. What motivates them, what their situation is, what goals they have and how they are feeling at that moment. 

Identify a valuable pain point. When you understand the audience, you should also understand their pain points, hurdles in reaching their goals, or repeated but unwanted tasks. 

Define a desired outcome. An ideal outcome should be measurable and clear in both user terms and business terms. 

We can easily construct an effective user story as a formula of X - Y = Z.
X being the target user (X marks the spot)
Y being the pain point (the golden "why")
Z being the measurable outcome (the end goal)

Combine as: "As an X, I don't want to Y, help me so that Z"

Some common pitfalls teams face when writing user stories are:
We create user personas with bias towards demographics overlooking motivations. You can overcome this by focusing on archetypes which highlight user goals given a certain situation. 

We write wants instead of needs or pain points for the target audience. The wants are often vague reflections of surface-level desires clouding user insights. You can overcome this by simply observing users' real life behavioral patterns before any interview or survey. 

We fail to define the outcomes as positive change in user behavior and business metrics. You can overcome this by testing the desired outcome against the question: "will this change be worth the investment of time and resources?"

At the end of the day, writing a great user story is not that hard but requires clear focus which in turn provides the highest focus for the team. What if we stopped writing user stories like "as a user, I want to login" and started focusing on outcomes?

Then suddenly, multiple new horizons will open in front of you. Instead of just designing a marginally better login page, you will notice that no user ever "wanted to login" - ever. If instead you can articulate the X - Y = Z as:

(X) As a returning but infrequent user,
(Y) I don't want to login once more,
(Z) Help me so that I can finish my checkout faster than your competitor site.

Now, you can safely focus on the problem rather than the solution. Suddenly, you are not shackled by the login page but perhaps you have noticed that the timeout on your login cookie or certificate is causing the real problem here.

As product makers, we are all in the business of removing pain points from target users so that they can change their lives for the better, while business grows in a healthy way.

A great written user story is the simplest way I know how to create a mini strategy on the go without much fuss. Hope you find it useful.