Story Map Templates and Examples
Learn new story mapping tricks and techniques from story map templates and simplified examples
What is user story mapping ?
User story mapping is an agile product design method. Design with user story mapping is one of the best ways to create a user-centered product. The process of product design should always begins with understanding the problem and the user's goals.
If you are new to user story mapping, read more about the process here.
Some examples here are not real-life examples, but rather simplified versions without additional details so that you can focus on getting a good overview of the technique and the tool.
PART 1
Fictional Story Map Examples
These story maps have been made up by our team and represent how a typical user might make use of story mapping. You might find that these examples may lack detail ... this is deliberate. It’s so we can encapsulate whole user journeys. These roughly finished projects are good starting points. We hope you can relate to them at least a litte, and maybe even add your own details, personas or journeys.
Story Mapping Basics
Webshop Example
Learn to build a standard story map without the extra details. This story map includes all core elements of product design: main goals (epics), user journey, user personas and the first six releases. We’ve used MoSCoW prioritization methods and added two user personas.
Open Story Map →Faster Story Writing with Story Map Templates
Chat Service Example
Use our template cards in the first column as hints during planning to avoid missing information. This template will help you build more consistent backlogs and promote shared understanding with developers. This example also shows you how to design both the backend and the frontend of a product at the same time on the same board.
Open Story Map →Add more info to the board
Farming Game Example
This story map represents several solutions that add visuality to a backlog. First of all, explore what different colours and tags mean and how to group unprioritized tasks such as bugs, ideas and requests under additional releases. Releases can not only be used for slicing our releases, but also to separate user stories.
Open Story Map →PART 2
Story Map Templates With Different Mindsets
In this group, we share story maps with different solutions for different needs. The core structure of this is the same, but some parts could be very different from the above-introduced examples. Go through these story maps and collect the best fitting solutions for your project needs.
Journeys
Accommodation Website Example
This story map was originally designed for introducing the tagging of user stories with emoji icons, and how to filter them with the Search&Filter menu. The story map demonstrates how a user persona can be identified and assigned to related goals and steps in the user journey. By adding user journeys to the map you can express a second dimension of user personas, because different personas (with different goals), can have the same journey on the product. Journeys can be visualized with the search&filter settings.
Open Story Map →Personas
Accommodation Website Example
Use our template cards in the first column as hints during planning to avoid missing information. This template will help you build more consistent backlogs and promote shared understanding with developers. This example also shows you how to design both the backend and the frontend of a product at the same time on the same board.
Open Story Map →PART 3
Inspiring Public Story Maps
It's always inspiring and interesting to browse someone else’s board to explore different mindsets. They might not follow the standard user story mapping rules but they could add hints for better usage of the method.
Coruja Games
We Must Survive RPG
This story map contains two interesting techniques. The first is, how to use the different levels on the story map. Putting goals or main requirements on the top level and putting feature groups on the second level (instead of user steps). The planning team added features but these were too big, and it’s likely they were broken into smaller parts after sending them into an issue tracker. This is a typical high-level backlog without specifications, releases and detailed user stories but it's perfect for product discovery.
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Useful resources for user story mapping
A collection of the best intros, advanced techniques, case studies and tools for user story mapping curated by us.
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How to add personas to an existing story map
Get rid of top level cards as persona cards and learn how to add personas to your story map like a pro.
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