A “Use case” is a term used widely in various contexts. In business, it is often used in reference to a business case, a process or a scenario that can be implemented as a product or part of that product. Referring to the context of User Experience (UX), a Use Case is a documentation highlighting the possible interactions between the users and the system.

Use Cases give us a precise idea about how the users should be able to make use of the product or application for the completion of the task. A Use Case depends on the “User Action” and the corresponding “System Response” to that particular action. It is a document that serves to highlight the set of actions that a user performs to achieve certain goals and the responses received from the system to the user’s action.

Use Cases in UX are an important tool for performing user research and user experience design. In a design-focused development environment, they serve to highlight the purpose and objectives of a system and its associated user roles by depicting a sequence of steps performed and the interactions towards a common, specific goal.

Use Cases are important because they provide information about how a system responds while it is used. They describe how the system helps the users achieve their goals. Contrary to a User Scenario, a Use Case is more orientated towards the behavior of the system rather than the user. In a Use Case, a comprehensive set of goals can be defined and an analysis can be performed as to how expensive and extensive it is vis-à-vis resource procurement, deployment and utilization to achieve the goals.

In projects, Use Cases are helpful in analyzing which areas of the system need to be focused and developed and what setbacks could possibly occur while performing a task.

It is a user-centric approach: One has to state “what actions will be performed by the user” and “what result will be displayed by the system”.

It is not a system-centric approach:  One does not have to specify “what inputs are fed to the system” and “what is its corresponding output”.

Objectives

• Use Cases serve to highlight the set of actions required to achieve a particular goal.
• They help you in developing a better understanding and clarity in identifying the problems the users may encounter while using your system, and identify ways to eliminate or minimize these issues.
• They help you communicate these problems to other stakeholders (internal and external) in an easy-to-understand format.
• They are helpful in ensuring a seamless collaboration between the Designer, Developers and the Product Manager.
• Use Cases are particularly useful in product management and road mapping as they help you in identifying how exactly your system is expected to perform, rather than just how it is performing currently.
• They are important in defining the project timelines.
• They help in identifying the scope of work for the different phases of the product.
• Since Use Cases lay emphasis on the product or application as a whole (and not merely the current usage), they are very effective in helping you envision the behavior and scalability of the final product.
• They are also used in other business areas such as user documentation and assistance or project management and planning.

Elements of a Use Case

A typical Use Case consists of a number of elements such as:

• User: The one who carries out the Use Case. This is typically an individual from one of your target user groups (TUG) who will be performing an action on the Product or System.