User story/acceptance criteria for page with a lot of content

Question

I've recently been tasked with writing user stories and acceptance criteria (GWT) and would like to ask for advice since I'm relatively new to such approach.

A bit of context:

1. Project is a web app somewhat similar to Reddit;
2. Acceptance criteria should be written in Gherkin format (it's mandatory);
3. Some user stories are already written but lack acceptance criteria

I'm currently struggling with writing acceptance criteria for the "View" type of user stories. For example, here's the user story: As a guest user, I want to view the platform home page so that I can get the platform overview

My acceptance criteria start with this:

Given I haven't logged in to the platform

When I navigate to the platform home page

Once I get to the "Then" part, it becomes tricky. The thing is, there's a lot of stuff on the home page. Think of Reddit - there are things like "Trending today", feed and related sorting/filtering, list of suggested communities etc. Moreover, I can log in or sign up, navigate to the subreddit, navigate to post, upvote/downvote post and so on and so forth. Here's the screenshot: https://prnt.sc/xlxfqz

Putting all that into "Then" doesn't look like a good idea - the list of "And"s will be infinite and messy! Like,

Then I can view the posts

And I can sort them

And I can view the post details

And I can log in

And I can sign up

And dozens of other "ands"

The question is, are there any kind of best practices for writing AC to such user stories? Be it a home page or personal account with a lot of available actions (change avatar, view setting (again view!), log out etc.)?

I apologize if it's a silly question, but I couldn't find a good answer through googling. Any feedback is appreciated, will be glad to share more info if needed.

Thanks in advance and have a great day!

Answer 1

Your user story is too big. Instead of just saying "get the platform overview", there should be something much more specific that the user should want to do or see that provides them benefit or value. Once you identify this, the acceptance criteria also get more focused since you can ignore other aspects of what is or should be on the homepage and only include what must be present or happen in order to accomplish their goal.

Answer 2

Start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Welcome to pm.stackexchange!

the list of "And"s will be infinite

As pointed out by @thomas-owens your user story is too big. I suspect that is because you are trying to copy a mature product such as Reddit, which has been actively developed likely by hundreds of developers for over 15 years. This is the reason why you are getting overwhelmed.

Instead think of Reddit in the very early days. If you were to do a very limited user trial, say in 3 months, what are the absolute must-have features. Write the stories needed for that first. Then you can add the next set of features to add on top of that... and so on.