User Journey, User Story vs Domain Story: What’s the difference? (2024)

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Alok Mishra

Journal of Distributed Software Engineering, Architecture and Design


While running DDD workshops with clients, I have had this question come up several times – “What is the difference between a Domain story vs a User Story?”

Here is a quick look at differences:

  • User journey story: Is a technique for describing how the user interacts with our business (and business systems) over time to realise an end goal
  • User story: Is a technique to describe specific functions the user must perform at each stage of a journey. It describes how a user interacts with our business or business system at a point-in-time
  • Domain story: Is a technique for capturing the behaviour and actions of the user (actor) with our systems and the deeper impact of this action to our systems and its sub-systems. It is a way to describe what happens to our business information systems when a user interacts with them
User Journey, User Story vs Domain Story: What’s the difference? (1)

So what?

Recognising these differences should help when domain storytelling. We do domain storytelling in our DDD journey to understand how we model our software better to handle specific business contextsd

Summary

The process of using Domain Driven Design (DDD) to model software and software interactions compared to other design techniques (system oriented, layer oriented, bottom-up etc) relied on foundational techniques such as Domain Storytelling, Context Mapping etc.

Domain storytelling is key to understanding what happens to our software system as user’s interact with it as compared to User Story which might consider only the superficial aspect of a user interaction (Portal, Mobile or CRM) and leave the rest as ambiguous technical stuff a solution team needs to figure out

As a DDD practitioner, I love the domain storytelling aspect as it builds a view of how user interactions are facilitated by software (how did information get here in the first place? what are the pre-conditions?) and the impact to the state of the information in our systems as the effect of the interactions propagate (when a user submits something what happens next?)

User Journey, User Story vs Domain Story: What’s the difference? (2)

Published by alokmishra

Alok brings experience in engineering and architecting distributed software systems from over 20 years across industry and consulting. His posts focus on Systems Integration, API design, Microservices and Event driven systems, Modern Enterprise Architecture and other related topicsView all posts by alokmishra

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User Journey, User Story vs Domain Story: What’s the difference? (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between user story and user journey? ›

User stories describe features from the end user's perspective, improving development prioritization and communication. User journey maps depict the entire user experience, whereas user stories concentrate on specific tasks or features within that journey.

What is the difference between user experience and user journey? ›

Both CX and UX are built through interactions with your brand. However, whereas the user journey stands for the whole picture, customer experience speaks to perception. A brand has the capacity to improve both CX as well as UX. Incremental changes to various functions can improve customer experience.

What is the difference between user scenario and user journey? ›

In other words, a scenario can be thought of as a singular situation and a journey can be a collection of scenarios that together form a narrative that defines the users total experience using your site. i like to add, that user journeys usually shows the emotional state of the experience.

What is the main difference between user flow and user journey? ›

The key difference between a user flow and a user journey is that a user journey gives a macro view of a customer experience, while a user flow gives a more zoomed-in view of the actions of a user. The key similarity between these two tools is that they're user-centered.

How to define a user journey? ›

A user or customer journey, sometimes visualized as a journey map, is the path a person follows as they discover a product, service, or brand, learn about it, consider spending money on it, and then make a decision to purchase—or not.

What is the difference between user journey and user lifecycle? ›

Customer lifecycles help organisations understand what to do. They describe how to deliver the right experience to each individual customer. Journeys are design tools that provide step-by-step descriptions of a customer's path as they interact with the organisation.

What is the difference between journey and experience? ›

Customer Journey is a strategy that describes all customer actions and interactions in their relationship with a brand. Customer Experience (CX) is how a business relates with its clients in all the steps they go through (from consideration all the way to being a promoter of your brand).

What are the 5 levels of user experience? ›

walk students through the five planes (or layers) of UX.
  • Strategy. Strike a balance between business objectives and user needs. ...
  • Scope. ...
  • Structure. ...
  • Skeleton. ...
  • Surface.

What is the purpose of the user journey? ›

A user journey is a path a user may take to reach their goal when using a particular website. User journeys are used in designing websites to identify the different ways to enable the user to achieve their goal as quickly and easily as possible.

What is the difference between user story and user scenario? ›

Scenarios, for example typically comprise a highly descriptive narrative detailing a user's engagement with a product or service within a particular context, whereas user stories tend to be brief, formulaic listings capturing specific activities and goals required for a user to achieve a particular outcome.

What is the difference between user journey and use case? ›

A use case is a description of the scenario and the user experiences and actions as well as the system responses etc... A user journey describes the need and emotion of the user leading to the scenarios and is often prefaced by a user persona.

What is the difference between user journey and process? ›

In summary, process mapping concentrates on internal workflows and operational efficiency, while journey mapping focuses on the holistic customer experience and aims to improve customer satisfaction and engagement.

What is the difference between user journey and user story? ›

A user story is a brief, concise description of a task from the perspective of the user. For example: “As a 'type of user', I want 'some goal' so that 'some reason'.” A user journey is a described series of steps that show how a typical user would interact with the web app that is being designed.

Is user experience the same as user journey? ›

User journey maps and user flows are tools used in UX design to improve the user experience, but they serve different purposes. A user journey map is a visual representation of the user's experience throughout their interaction with a product or service.

What is the difference between user story and user flow? ›

User stories place user needs and goals at the heart of the development process and enable teams to iterate and improve features based on user goals, needs and preferences. User flows are then used to map the steps a user will take across screens in your digital interface.

What is the difference between user story and use story? ›

User stories and use cases play a key role in capturing requirements. The main difference between the two is user stories focus on the user's viewpoint, while use cases focus on system behavior and interactions.

What is the difference between user journey and user personas? ›

Journey Maps are a UX visualization document that showcases the steps that a user takes in a process to accomplish a goal. Personas are created with information gathered from user and stakeholder interviews.As a result of these activities, you can identify the most important functionality an audience needs.

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