Step 1: Identify Users and Scenarios

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Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition

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Design Patterns and Guidelines for Oracle Applications

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Step 1: Identify Users and Scenarios

Before you begin developing your application, you must identify your users and determine their needs. This page provides information to help you identify who will use your application and how you can design the application to help users complete their work.

One of the key user experience goals for these design patterns is to help you design role-based user interfaces (UIs) that organize content and functions around the way users actually do their work. Maintaining work context, showing the most important information first, reducing clicks, streamlining processes, and using dashboards to consolidate information and statuses across a user's functional areas are among the many features that support a role-based UI in Oracle Fusion applications.

Knowing the key characteristics of your users, the tasks that they perform, and the context in which they work is essential to understanding what kind of user experience is optimal for them.

When Should You Identify Users?

Product Managers

Product Development

Customers and Consultants

When determining requirements for a new product
When redesigning an existing application
Before the functional design and technical design phase of application development

When determining requirements for a new product

Note: This step is not required if product managers are involved in identifying users.

When a design change will impact a new set of users

Note: This step is not required if you are redesigning an application for an existing set of users.

Understanding User Roles

Consider all of the possible user roles for the application that you are developing. User roles are usually associated with a business function. Note that if one user performs multiple roles (for example, account clerk and payroll manager), you should consider each role separately.

List all of the possible user roles for whom you are designing the application.
List the key tasks that users need to perform for each role as part of their daily jobs.

Developing User Profiles

This task is not mandatory, but developing a user profile (UP) often results in a better understanding of your users.
The UP describes the range of characteristics that you can expect to find in people working in a particular role. Elements of the UP include:

Job titles
Responsibilities
Organizational overview
Qualifications and experience
Product usage
User motivations
Computer and software use

Additionally, you should identify the level of authority for all roles, particularly those roles that use analytic information. Ask these questions:

Does the user make decisions across business processes or within a business process?
Does the user make decisions at the enterprise, line of business, or territory level?

This information helps you determine the scope and level of detail that you should provide.

Generating Usage Scenarios

Consider all possible scenarios in which the user could use the application:

Identify the top four or five scenarios for your consideration.
Create a short description of each scenario using a narrative or a visual storyboard.
Analyze all of the scenarios together and identify the key user requirements, problem areas, and use cases.

Developing Key Use Cases

Using the previously mentioned scenarios, create a set of use cases:

List all of the possible use cases to cover the maximum user and business requirements.
Identify the unique use cases and prioritize them.