Context

• Sample type: Excerpts from a conversation design role-play
• Product: Unified enterprise AI/ML platform
• Users: Data scientists, data engineers, and business analysts
• Role-play participants: Information architect, 2 UX designers, 2 content designers
• Constraints: The user role was played by a UX designer, not a real user

Approach

• Based on our understanding of the user journey from past research, we used role-play to script, evaluate, and refine the platform’s user flow and language
• Teammates played the user and product roles—plus we had a scribe (me) and an observer

Rationale

• Scripting the interaction as a conversation forced us to think about the user’s needs and wants, the sequence in which they want them addressed, and how they might articulate them

Outcome

• A script that accounts for the user’s needs and wants end to end
• User flow refinements for UI design improvements
• Language insights for the screen copy, some gained during the role-play and some gained later while studying the script

Artifacts (best viewed on a computer)

Reconstructed in PowerPoint from a whiteboard (in Miro), notes, and memory—and refined for clarity

Beginning of the conversation

Near the end of the conversation