 Welcome to Constructing User Stories, part of the Research and Assessment Cycle Toolkit offered by the Association of Research Libraries and made possible by a grant from the US Institute of Museum and Library Services. This presentation is part of a module that describes ways to articulate the focus of library assessment projects. It includes strategies for structuring user stories. We hope the content is useful to library practitioners seeking to conduct assessment projects. At the close of the presentation, you will find a link to a feedback form. Please let us know what elements were useful to you. Most library assessment projects are intended to close a gap, solve a problem, or answer a question. To design effective assessments that result in increased knowledge and understanding, it's essential to begin with a clear conception of what the precise gap, problem, or question is that is driving the work, what specifically needs to be learned about the issue at hand. One way to attain clarity and refine away any initial vagueness around the information need an assessment project seeks to address is to express the needs succinctly. There are three common ways of doing so, articulation of user stories, research questions, and hypotheses. User stories are tools most often used in designing systems, but they can also be used to focus and scope an assessment project. In some ways, they are more clarifying than research questions or hypotheses, and that they incorporate the purpose for the project at hand. In a nutshell, user stories identify an individual or group that has a need or goal to accomplish. Describe an action that individual or group wants or needs to be able to do, know, etc. And provides a reason, rationale, or purpose for undertaking that action. So a user story encompasses who a user is, an action the user wants to accomplish, and why they want to be able to accomplish that action. In library assessment, a user might be a library user, an individual or group, segmented in any number of ways. A library colleague, a leader or administrator, a campus partner or collaborator, really the possibilities for the user are wide open. User stories can be formatted in a variety of ways, typically one of the following three structures are used. First, as a who, I want what, so that why, or as a user, I want some goal, so that reason, or as a stakeholder, I want to be able to do an activity, have an awareness or take an action, in order to achieve an outcome, solve a problem, or meet a need. In order to build a user story that can guide an assessment project, these three pieces are necessary. The user or stakeholder, what activity they want to accomplish, awareness they want to build or action they want to take, and the why. What reason or rationale do they have for wanting to take the action described in the second part? What is their purpose in doing that thing, whatever it is. In library assessment work, this structure forces clarity around who wants to know the answer to an assessment question or project, what they want to do with their knowledge, and why they want to do that, what beneficial action they want to take, for example. In this way, user stories describe students, librarians, faculty advisors, institutional researchers, administrators, or other partners and stakeholders need to know to solve problems and achieve goals. They also anticipate actions that might result from the assessment, and provide rationales and aims for those actions. Another way to think about the structure of a user story for an assessment project is who, what, why. Who will benefit, what will they be able to know or do, and why do they want to know or do those things, what positive, useful, or helpful outcome or impact is likely to follow the action undertaken. This list provides a few examples written from the perspective of a librarian. Of course, user stories for assessment librarians will often focus on users generally or specific groups of users, but these examples demonstrate ways in which user stories for assessment can also inform regular library work and decision-making. These examples also pack in quite a bit. User stories can be much more streamlined as well. For example, we have, as a librarian, I want to know whether students who ask reference questions earn better assignment grades so I can persuade more faculty to encourage students to engage with reference librarians. Such a user story would help guide an assessment exploring the role of reference work in academic success and learning and clarify the goal of the assessment up front. Of course, the assessment might not find evidence of a connection. If, on the other hand, a connection is found, at least one possible outcome of the results is already understood in advance. By including intent for use in the guiding language of an assessment project, library assessment practitioners can guard at least somewhat against getting to the end of a project and finding that no actual actions based on results have been considered in advance. User stories are one way to articulate the goals of a library assessment project. Like research questions and hypotheses, they can be used to link library offerings with intended outcomes. Like these other approaches, they can set up assessments that explore correlations between various experiences and factors. In addition, user stories articulate and emphasize the purpose of an assessment project, as well as the intended use of possible results, which, in a variety of contexts, can be an important and useful addition to project scope. Thank you for viewing this presentation on articulating the focus of a library assessment project. Please use the link provided to complete a feedback form on the usefulness of this information for your purposes.