Documents are files attached to a scenario: the templates, transcripts, case details, and forms that give a session its paper trail. A claims scenario might carry the incident report and a medical certificate. A lending scenario might carry the application form and three months of bank statements. Documents matter in every shape, but they carry the most weight in decision tasks, where they typically are the case material: the operator reads the documents, weighs them, and produces a judgment. In conversation scenarios and journey simulations, documents supplement what the persona reveals through dialogue.

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What to attach

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Visibility controls

Each document declares who can see it: Visibility is what keeps the simulation honest. A claimant who can quote the internal case notes breaks the scenario; an operator who can read the persona’s private correspondence skips the work of asking about it.
Check each document’s visibility against reality. Ask: would this person actually have this file in front of them? An operator-visible document the operator should not realistically have gives away information they should be earning through state.
Documents and hidden state work together. A test result the persona has not seen can live as a document the operator sees, while the hidden state records the fact itself. The persona stays genuinely unaware either way.

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Documents in decision tasks

A decision task gives all inputs up front and asks for one judgment, so its documents do the job that dialogue does elsewhere. A well-built decision task usually means:
  • The attached documents contain everything needed to decide, including the details that should give a careful reader pause
  • The briefing frames what judgment is being asked for
  • The output captures the decision itself
If the deciding detail is buried on page three of a bank statement, that is good design. Spotting it is the skill being measured.

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Next steps

Briefing and opening

The framing the operator reads before opening the documents.

Scenario shapes

How decision tasks, conversations, and journeys differ.