What Happened to Scenario-Based Design in HCI?: A Scoping Review

Scenario-based design (SBD) was developed in human-computer interaction (HCI) in the early 1990s. It recommended the use of scenarios (narratives that describe episodes of human activity) as a focal tool for describing, analyzing, designing, and developing new human-computer interactions. In this context, a scenario describes the appropriation of a design that has not yet been implemented. SBD argues that narratives can serve as powerful design tools for HCI professionals, facilitating evocative but low-fidelity envisioning of design ideas, encouraging critical and imaginative analysis throughout design, highlighting human values and perspectives to designers, and enabling diverse stakeholder participation in design activities. SBD was developed in the SIGCHI community and has been used for 35 years. We examine the role of SBD over time, focusing on the decade 2015-2025. SBD has continued to develop design and method themes as in previous decades, but has also incorporated new themes, including speculative design and ethics.