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WhatIWantMost User Stories

Published to Blog on 7 Dec 2006

To help define some of the functionality I am looking to bake into WhatIWantMost.com I listed out a few user stories. Because the stories can be a little complicated (userA sends email to userB to ask if userC…) I created a couple of personas. None of my personas are named “Mort”, my personas are:

Bobby - a 15 year old boy who has a birthday coming up soon. He wants an easy way to disseminate a list of things he would be interested in getting for his birthday to make it easier on his family to shop for him. They have used emails in the past, but sometimes that system can break down or get out of hand.  Bobby will become a member of WhatIWantMost.com.

Rico - a 28 year old man who is getting married soon. While his wife has spent the last three weekends at all the stores in the local malls and shopping centers filling out gift registries, Rico has been thinking that it would be cool to have a place where he could put a couple of things that he likes, too. Man cannot live by China alone. Bobby is Rico’s neighbor’s kid. Rico will become a member of WhatIWantMost.com.

Grandma Winnie - Winnie is Bobby’s 59 year-old grandmother. Winnie is very active but does not use the internet much. She will probably never visit WhatIWantMost.com 

Grammy Edna - Grammy is Bobby’s 55 year-old grandmother. She feels much younger than her age and she likes using the internet, listening to her IPod and riding her Segway and thinks Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” is funny. Grammy will be a guest at WhatIWantMost.com.

DanH - the cool, good-looking, and extremely charming site administrator.

Ben Kangpurn, Mark Clarx, and Tad Champlin - evil, mean hacker-types. Stinky, too. … Oh, and ugly.

Llex Aowe, Watt Scattermasysk, and Hob Roward - DanH’s bosses who give him a big raise after realizing out how smart he is from reading his clever writing on his blog.

Bave Durke - records DanH’s (mis)adventures in the Daily News.

So here are my user stories - for now I identify the priorities for each of these with a little MoSCoW identifier next to each item: M(ust have), S(hould have), C(ould have) or W(on’t have):

Bobby creates account (M) DONE

Bobby logs in (M) DONE

Bobby edits profile (M) DONE

Bobby adds item to wishlist (M) DONE

Bobby views wishlist (M) DONE

Bobby edits item in wishlist (M) DONE

Bobby removes item from wishlist (S) DONE

Bobby invites Rico to join the site (S) DONE

Bobby reviews list of people he has invited to join the site (C) DONE

Bobby sends email to Grammy to view his wishlist on the site (M) DONE

Bobby reviews list of people he has sent email to for viewing his wishlist (C) DONE

Bobby prints out wishlist to give to Grandma Winnie (M) DONE

(Rico became a member, too)

Rico browses/searches other member’s wishlists. (C) DONE

Rico sees that Bobby has a Zune on his wishlist and realizes that he wants a Zune, too. Rico copies the Zune to his wishlist. (C) DONE

Grammy logs into the site using the guest password she was sent (C) DONE, but not using guest password, providing direct link instead

Grammy views Bobby’s wishlist (M) DONE

Grammy subscribes to RSS feed for Bobby’s wishlist (C) DONE

Grammy sees that Bobby wants a Zune, decides to buy one for him, and clicks a link to mark it as “purchased” so nobody else in the family buys him a Zune, too. (S) DONE

Grammy clicks a button (Read Reviews) that pulls up a list of sites that have reviews for the Zune. (S)

Grammy clicks a button (Shop Now) that pulls up a list of sites that sell Zunes with pricing and links. (S) DONE

Grammy clicks a link to go to store XYZ to buy the Zune. (S) DONE

Store XYZ sends DanH money! (S)

Rico sees content aware advertisements on the site (Adsense). (S) DONE

Rico clicks on one of the Adsense ads. (S) DONE

Google sends DanH money! (S)

Rico sees that the Zune is one of the top ten most popular items in wishlists (C) DONE

Rico sees his name and Bobby’s name in the list of most recent members (C) DONE

Rico sees Bobby’s wishlist in the list of most recently updated wishlists (C) DONE

Rico sees the Zune shown is the item of the day under “Hot Gift Ideas” (C) DONE

Rico clicks on a link to learn more about the Zune (on an external site for now) (C) DONE

Rico clicks a link to read reviews about the Zune (on an external site for now) (C) 

Rico decides that he wants to get a Zune now, clicks the Zune link, goes to Amazon and buys it. (C) DONE

Amazon sends DanH money! (C)

DanH views administrative reports. (S) 

UPDATED: Add stories for users to keep track of the gifts they have marked as buying.

Ben Kangburn, Mark Clarx, and Tad Champlin hack into site and steal DanH’s money (W)

I do have some questions about whether just anybody should be able to mark an item in someone else’s wishlist as purchased. Also, should Bobby be able to see what has been marked as purchased from his list? My wife says that most gift registries work like that, but it seems like cheating, doesn’t it.

That’s about all I have for now. Do you think I’ve covered most of the basics?


Dan Hounshell
Web geek, nerd, amateur maker. Likes: apis, node, motorcycles, sports, chickens, watches, food, Nashville, Savannah, Cincinnati and family.
Dan Hounshell on Twitter


  • On 8 Dec 2006 """ said:
    All personas are purely fictional. Any similarities to any individual are completely coincidental. )
  • On 8 Dec 2006 "Community Server Daily News"" said:
    news of the day a grab bag for what's happening in Community Server Ageing Forum, a new integrated Community
  • On 8 Dec 2006 "Daily News List Blog"" said:
    Bave Durke here, reporting live from the scene of WhatIWantMost. In our last report we covered the technical
  • On 8 Dec 2006 "Prog"" said:
    news of the day a grab bag for what's happening in Community Server Ageing Forum, a new integrated Community
  • On 8 Dec 2006 "Community Server Daily News"" said:
    news of the day a grab bag for what's happening in Community Server Ageing Forum, a new integrated Community
  • On 21 Dec 2006 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    I've been getting cards and letters from people I don't even know asking, "Hey, how about a status update
  • On 11 Jan 2007 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    I finally got back to writing some WhatIWantMost code again. My new goal is to implement quite a few
  • On 13 Jan 2007 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    The next pieces of functionality I'm adding to the site are all about flair. I really like a lot of the
  • On 24 Jan 2007 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    Between preparing for and attending CodeMash last week and catching up on work that was waiting for me
  • On 16 Feb 2007 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    Because of personal and family bouts with the flu I have not done anything new this week on the WhatIWantMost
  • On 5 Mar 2007 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    Up to this point in the development of the WhatIWantMost project I have chosen to implement the simplest
  • On 12 Mar 2007 "Community Server Bits"" said:
    Bave Durke here, reporting live from the scene of WhatIWantMost. In our last report we covered the technical
  • On 6 Jul 2007 "Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell"" said:
    Following is a list of all the posts of the WhatIWantMost series. I'm listing them all here mostly for