Exploring the Role and Syntax of User Scenario Elements: Toward a Structured Framework for User-Centered Engineering Specifications

Abstract

User scenarios are widely employed to communicate user research insights and design intentions through narrative descriptions of product use within specific contexts in user-centered product development. Nevertheless, their utility often diminishes when these narratives are transferred to engineering teams that require structured and measurable specifications. This paper explores which elements of scenarios persist through this transition and how they should be articulated to enhance usability in subsequent stages. To address this issue, the study examines the persistence of scenario elements during this transition and provides guidance on their phrasing to improve downstream usability. A three-phase collaborative workshop involving interdisciplinary teams of designers and engineers was conducted to observe the extraction, reformulation, and linkage of scenario details to functional requirements, component decisions, and target specifications. The findings resulted in a practical three-layer framework: behavioral elements (user actions, system events) consistently anchor functional requirements; contextual elements (goals, settings, tools) need to be expressed with measurable or behavioral specifics; and constraint elements (numeric targets, error cases) facilitate validation and feasibility assessments. By elucidating which scenario content informs user-centered specifications, this research offers practical guidance for composing and utilizing scenario details during the transition from design to engineering. Such guidance aims to minimize misunderstandings and to preserve essential user experience insights.