Boost User Engagement with Scenario‑Based Design for Resume Completion

What Is Scenario‑Based Design

Scenario‑based design originates from Rosson and Carroll’s work on usability testing based on scenarios. It involves analyzing a context to uncover user pain points and needs, predicting user goals across preceding and subsequent scenarios, and designing solutions that increase efficiency while delivering surprise and delight.

The main elements of a scenario are the 4W+1H: Who (person), When (time), Where (location), What (event), and How (environment). Changes in any element can alter user perception.

For example, QQ Music shows a birthday‑themed playlist cover on a user’s birthday, creating a surprise. Similarly, Ctrip presents different recommended attractions depending on the city (Beijing vs. Chongqing), improving relevance and efficiency.

Purpose of Scenario‑Based Design

Designers often cannot directly observe users in real contexts. By analyzing and anticipating usage scenarios, designers can discover hidden needs, generate new features, and tailor designs for different situations, leading to more precise and refined experiences.

How to Conduct Scenario‑Based Design

1. Exhaust Scenarios

Apply the MECE principle to map user flows and behavior paths. List scenarios by extracting key moments from process diagrams. Example: when a user fills a resume on 58 Job, enumerate each interaction step.

Scenario examples:

User (Who) first (When) enters 58 Job (Where) and fills basic info (What) to find a job.

User browses positions (Where) then refines resume (What) after understanding requirements (How).

After applying, the platform suggests additional resume fields based on matching criteria (What).

When checking application status, the user enriches the resume to meet recruiter expectations (How).

During chat with recruiter, missing resume details are queried and filled (What).

Seeing a low resume score, the user updates content to improve competitiveness (How).

When changing jobs, the user updates work experience for new opportunities (What).

2. Mine Differences

Identify design opportunities within each scenario. For the “first‑time entry” scenario, research shows users are highly motivated to complete a resume, and comprehensive yet simple data collection improves later job matching. For the “start applying” scenario, users exhibit fatigue with extensive fields; offering modular, question‑style inputs tailored to industry needs boosts matching accuracy.

3. Implement Solutions

Translate opportunities into concrete design actions.

In the first‑time entry scenario, we reordered fields so the easiest items appear first, reduced secondary pages, and used linked controls to shorten the path. Visual hierarchy (size, weight, spacing) highlights key items, making the form more approachable.

For the “start applying” scenario, we broke resume data into bite‑size questions, used a Q&A format to reduce friction, and provided industry‑specific templates (e.g., hairdresser work‑years, sales channel reasons) to increase relevance and matching quality.

Write at the End

The case study shows that by tailoring resume content and interaction flow to specific user scenarios, resume completeness rose sharply in 2020 compared with 2019, confirming the value of scenario‑driven design. In summary, scenario design extracts real user needs from critical contexts, enabling precise, effective solutions that boost business performance.