The use of SO THAT in user stories

recently, I found a good example of why (or how) to use the SO THAT clause in a user story. The use case is simple: a web site where the visitor should not be required to sign-up or sign-in.

The US would look like:

AS A visitor I WANT to access the site without any sign in or sign up SO THAT …

What to put in the SO THAT clause? try not to read the below and stop a bit thinking about it. What would you put?
I am pretty sure most of you is thinking “it depends by the reason why this is needed”…. EXACTLY! the SO THAT clause tells something about why we want that US; it tells something about the value to the user. It is important, because differently than use cases or formal specifications, it does not give the exact intended behavior, but just the goal from a user perspective. This tells us a lot in terms of what we can think of and what we should not if, for example, we want to provide the functionality in increments.

Back to the US, one version could be:

AS A visitor I WANT to access the site without any sign in or sign up SO THAT I do not give any personal data to the site

Or:

AS A visitor I WANT to access the site without any sign in or sign up SO THAT I can easily and quickly access all functionality of the site

As you see these two USs provide very different perspectives on what’s the real value to the user: in one case is privacy, in another case is easy of use. This can bring to very different strategies to split the story if necessary.

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