Data Nexus

Product and interface

The ordered path a person takes through a product to complete one goal, including what happens when it goes wrong.

Also called Пользовательский сценарий

01/What it means

A user flow is written per goal, not per screen: “return an item”, “add a second driver”, “pay an invoice”. It names the entry points, the decision at each step, the data the system needs at that point, and the exits — success, abandonment, and every error state.

The error states are the part usually missing and the part that decides the experience. A flow that documents only the path where everything works has described the demo, not the product; most of the support load and most of the abandonment lives in the branches nobody drew.

It is also the cheapest artefact in a build. Disagreements that would cost weeks in code are resolved in an afternoon on a flow, because a flow makes the missing decision visible: who is allowed to do this, what happens if they are half way through, what does the system already know.

02/What people get wrong

A flow made of screens multiplies as edge cases appear, because each new condition needs a new screen. A flow made of the states the system can occupy stays the same size and covers the cases nobody thought of yet. Model the states; the screens fall out of them.

Next

The definitions are the easy part. Whether the figure on your dashboard was computed this way is a different question, and usually the more expensive one.