A use case is a description of how users will perform tasks on your Web site.

A use case includes two main parts:

• The steps a user will take to accomplish a particular task on your site
• The way the Web site should respond to a user's actions
  

A use case begins with a user's goal and ends when that goal is fulfilled.

Description

A use case describes a sequence of interactions between a user and a Web site, without specifying the user interface.

Each use case captures:

• The actor (who is using the Web site?)
• The interaction (what does the user want to do?)
• The goal (what is the user's goal?)
  

How do you write a use case?

Generally, you write the steps in a use case in an easy-to-understand narrative. This engages members of the design team and encourages them to be actively involved in defining the requirements.

Kenworthy (1997) outlines eight steps to developing use cases:

• Identify who is going to be using the Web site.
• Pick one of those actors.
• Define what that actor wants to do on the site. Each thing the actor does on the site becomes a use case.
• For each use case, decide on the normal course of events when that actor is using the site.
• Describe the basic course in the description for the use case. Describe it in terms of what the actor does and what the system does in response that the actor should be aware of.
• When the basic course is described, consider alternate courses of events and add those to "extend" the use case.
• Look for commonalities among the use cases. Extract these and note them as common course use cases.

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