From http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/10/15/spoolcast-designing-with-scenarios-featuring-kim-goodwin/
Scenarios are comprehensive stories that describe the way a persona would interacts with your product or service. They are a powerful design tool that allowing you to make intelligent design decisions based on your user research.
If there is a grand dutchess of personas, scenarios, and design processes, it’s Kim Goodwin. That’s why we asked Kim to do a workshop on turning user research into action at UI15. Jared Spool spoke with her to preview that workshop, and clear up confusion surrounding scenarios in this podcast.
Jared suggests that scenarios have grown out of necessity. Requirement documentation simply doesn’t cut it when starting the design process. Beyond what’s “needed”, you need user research. Kim says that requirements are flawed without user input.
“Let’s all start from a shared understanding of our users.”
Two misunderstandings about scenarios involve their relation to Agile processes. It’s easy to believe that Agile and scenarios are not compatible. If you have your designers and developers sitting down together on day one, you can’t have part of the work done ahead, right? Kim asks, why not? Placing research and scenarios in front of your designers and developers gives them a great starting point.