How to design great products: learn to tell stories

I think the best way to eliminate this is to adopt a narrative-centric design approach. The core idea of this technique is to put forward a series of descriptive use cases for the products, and to describe each step of the product design clearly from the user's point of view. I recommend this design to a lot of startups, and it always lets the design team ignore the cosmetic and make better decisions about what users really care about: how to make the best of the product.

Design should not be a blueprint

I've noticed that some teams often muddle through the UI (user interface) design when proposing a product blueprint. Each screen shows how the product will look under different circumstances, but the screens are not somehow linked. The crux of the problem is that when the design is presented in this way in front of everyone, the user is only a general understanding of the product appearance.

The design team does not focus on the working mechanism of the product, nor does it simulate how the customer interacts with the product. So, when some teams view design as a product blueprint, their ability to fully infer product interaction is severely limited.

The best product designers, often proficient in narrative-oriented design techniques, and the use of this method of excellence. They start with a few stories that let the customer know how to interact with the product, and only after they have achieved it can they design the screen to tell the story of a product interaction.

The main design line of narrative

In a narrative-oriented design process, the design team first has to analyze dozens of sequential-sorted models, which are like a picture on a slide. Then they want to read every sentence that the customer reads, each action they make, and the entire system responds to every screen that emerges.

From the initial triggering event to the completion of a goal, the designer must always listen to the customer's suggestions and demonstrate how the design supports each step in the process. I have recommended this narrative-oriented design to many startups that apply to mobile applications, marketing websites, data analysis, and business IT departments.

The design process should be familiar to engineers. Narrative-oriented design core, similar to the test-driven (test-driven) development process. It's just that we're not using tests to check the code, but instead we're just testing the design with a story. Like the test-driven development process, narrative design processes can have an astonishing impact on team execution and product quality.

Story-telling stories in layers

1, Whiteboard Story

At the beginning of the design plan, the designer should write clearly on the whiteboard, how to let the customer interact with the team. First, draw a large stack of 1 square feet of box on the whiteboard, and then fill in the box with every small case of customer interaction with the product and connect each important part together. Finally, sketch out every place that the user will touch or click. This step will take a long time, but once the entire team has agreed on the core of the story, the rest of the steps will be much quicker and less time wasted.

2. Replacement tool

Most design tools are designed to make posters or books, so designers are no use for designing interactive stories with lots of frames. So give up Photoshop early and choose tools such as Keynote, omnigraffle, or fireworks that support multiple page design and help designers focus on creating end-to-end information flow.

3. Never evaluate a single screen

If someone sends one or two models for evaluation, be careful. Make sure your team is always evaluating the full story. If you are submitting the design in person, please print each screen on paper and post it in every corner of the room. In this way, everyone can see the overview and details on each screen. If you have to send a design through e-mail, be sure to take a screenshot and capture the whole process of merging each screen into a complete story.

Why the narrative-oriented design process is so efficient

Simulate the user experience. Narrative-oriented design practices, will force us throughout the design process in every aspect of the customer experience as the starting point. In this way, from designers, engineers to CEOs, the entire team will have a complete system, can be based on people experience the specific feelings of products to make design decisions.

Identify problems ahead of time. Because narrative adds a time dimension, all kinds of design mistakes can be highlighted, and if the team sees the product as a pile of screens, they tend not to notice the mistakes. Narrative also makes it easier for the team to notice when the desired expectations are not met. At the same time, they will find some unnecessary and completely unworkable UI links, and solve them more quickly. All these seemingly trivial details will ultimately enhance the usability and interactivity of the product.

Predetermined design objectives. When the team starts the product design in a way that is a story-telling, everyone must agree on the design goals before they can solve the specific details. This is a great benefit to product design, because after a few hours of research into a detailed UI model, the scope of the evaluation is often narrowed down to the question of whether the design is up to the pre-set goal.

More scientific. Carefully recall the customer from the initial triggering event (such as email or information push) to the final goal, we will find that the whole process is in fact in line with the behavioral patterns advocated by Dr. Fogg (Dr BJ Fogg), that is, triggering, motivating, and ability are three factors that occur simultaneously. Narrative-oriented design, so that we can easily check the above three elements are all in place, so as to encourage user behavior.

Accelerate the entire design process. Part of the story can be reused in the rest of the team's work. The models created to show stories can become quick, clickable product prototypes for studying user behavior. The same story can also be used to build channel analysis to help uncover the answer to the question whether the user is practicing the story in a real product. QA team can also fully screen important stories to ensure the rationality of each new product.

This article compiles from Gigaom

(Xuan Chen)