User stories can be a very useful tool for articulating the user’s perspective and intentions.
They help us understand how the users encounter their problems, as well as how a potential solution may solve them.
The core of a user story is action. What users do. Verbs. Lots of them.
A user story is a third-person depiction of someone doing things, like in a novel told that way.
As designers we should never jump to using verbs like “think”, “want” or “like” – anything that directly specify either the emotion or the intention, because in a user story, we’re not guessing about a user’s emotions and intentions, we’re articulating a user’s actions as if we’re observers. We’re not users. We’re the cameras of a documentary that explores the users; we are not going inside their minds.
The interactions are invoked by intentions, shaped by action verbs, and specialized by emotions.
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Noah Fang 