Skype: User Stories

Skype enables people to do things together whenever they are apart.

Background
Microsoft had acquired Skype and had a new vision and direction for the company. They were looking for ways to integrate Skype within their existing product suite and asked the question how Skype can blur the lines between work life and personal life.

Challenge
Find a way to help communicate the new direction for Skype to their product and engineering team. Get the product and engineering team to cross-collaborate and begin brainstorming new ideas for where their product can align with the new vision for Skype.

Solution
To help align Skype’s product and engineering teams to Microsoft’s new initiatives, we created user stories to help build a shared understanding and stimulate discussions amongst the groups. Starting with a work session, we brainstormed all the ways Skype can intersect and add value to a person's life. Both personal and work. We then took all the possible scenarios and grouped them into five different narratives. The comic approach was taken on to make these stories easily digestible and fun. Keeping these scenario's open-ended to help open up new ideas.

Results
We delivered a set of 5 stories that were used by Skype's internal team during a brainstorm session to kick off the new direction for Skype.