The role of storytelling in the user experience

Absrtact: This digest is from the first chapter of "Storytelling for User experience". Why tell a story? We all tell stories, it's one of the most natural ways to share information, and it's as old as humans. This book is about how to make a new way

This digest is from the first chapter of "Storytelling for User experience".

Why tell a story?

We all tell stories, it's one of the most natural ways to share information, and it's as old as humans. This book is about how to use a skill you have in a whole new way: To apply storytelling to the user experience (UX) design field.

As part of the user experience design, stories help to lay the groundwork for your work in real situations. They allow you to showcase a design concept, a new product in development, and a burst of fresh ideas or inspiration. But most importantly, they help you put your users at the center of your work. No matter how you start a project, it will be used by people in the end. Stories are a way to restore users in the design process, even if they are not always part of your team.

Stories can be applied throughout all user experience processes in a variety of ways:

They can help us gather (and share) information about users, tasks, and goals.

They parse out a user feature through data.

They can inspire new design concepts and encourage collaboration and innovation.

They are a way of sharing ideas and creating a common sense of historical purpose.

They help us understand the world by giving us insight into others ' abilities.

They can even convince others to believe in the value of our contribution.

Stories help us to see the user experience more clearly

The Open University (OU) is the largest university in England. Its courses are provided through distance learning, so the site is critical.

One of the projects we are working on is an online outline-a catalogue of academic courses provided by the Open University. Originally, the outline should be presented in a typical catalogue or database, starting with a list of faculties and then delving into specific courses. This design assumes that most people will look for the details of a particular course.

But we were wrong. Instead, we find that students want to discuss their dreams. For example, one is tired of his work and wants to change something more challenging. Another favorite party planner, but I hope that his career from a hobby into his fiancee proud of the full-time business. They told us that the Open University helped to achieve more than their teacher expected success. How they find out they really love learning or discover their scientific talents through short courses. Few people's goals are straightforward, such as "getting a degree in psychology," but most people decide not only what they want to learn but also where they can take themselves.

In a usability test, an older Pakistani woman, Priti, had postponed her education to raise her family. Now she wants to get a college diploma that she missed when she was young. She thinks her first course should help her improve her English reading ability and return to good study habits.

She and a friend struggled to find and read every page carefully. They discuss each decision carefully and each link they choose has a good reason. But eventually they chose a higher-order linguistics course, which was completely wrong for her. The clues about course grade and content were so clear to us that they didn't find it. is a course called "English Language and learning" more appropriate?

The Open University happens to have an outline for people like Priti. The Open course briefly introduces college learning skills such as re-learning how to write, and they should be quite appropriate. So she didn't just pick a bad start, but also missed a starting course that really suited her.

This is not a single usability error case that can be fixed in a simple way. The site just does not consider the issue from her perspective.

This and the more stories we have gathered, the team is convinced that we need to get them involved in the course before they are prompted to choose their first course. We started to talk about the need for storytelling, about the courses you could learn at the Open University.

More importantly, we must find ways to help them find a way to plan their own education. The site provides a good guide to planning student time, but we find that when we present a personal story like this on the site, the best response comes:

David Beckenham obtained a Bachelor of Law degree (Hons) through the Open University. Here's how he manages his time:

Communication six years of unremitting efforts, for me to study more than 16 hours a week, I missed watching TV, but in the end it is definitely worth it. I have a Sunday break so I can relax and spend some time with my family, but I have to make sure that I set aside the right amount of time every night and I will follow the schedule in Saturday. Sometimes it means I have to work until one o'clock in the morning, but I always do.

This makes sense, stories like this or a welcome video from a course instructor to help students understand what really fits their needs.

What is a story?

Stories and storytelling are such great concepts that we'd better start by defining what stories are most helpful in user experience design.

In this book, we will focus on those goals that describe or convey the story of a particular aspect of the user experience. We will include scenes, user stories, personas, stories, narrative cases, and many other story forms that are part of different user experience methods.

As for the techniques used, we will include all the forms of storytelling.

A story that can be written or spoken.

A story that can be told by photos, moving images or text.

A story that can be told on the spot or through a recording or video.

A story can usually have a beginning, middle, and end--although not necessarily in that order--or it can simply provide a time and place.

The types of stories that are not discussed include: Bedtime stories, stories of your childhood, news stories, stories of cats rescued from trees, stories of poodles, ghost stories, novels, Love Stories, confessions, how I Met your father (unless we were designing a dating service), the end of the world, The beginnings and dreams of the world (not to be confused with conceptual visions). We like these stories, but they are prepared for another book and have nothing to do with user experience design.

Multiple story types in user experience design

Stories are a natural and flexible way of communicating. The common values of stories include being a way to help people remember, a way to convince others, and an effective way to entertain the public. This is true both in the user experience and elsewhere.

User experience includes a variety of disciplines, each subject has its own point of view. The story connects the many languages you use in your work. By providing concrete examples, stories can provide a common vocabulary.

A story can describe a situation or situation.

The story can explain the problem.

A story can be a starting point for a design discussion.

Stories can explore a design concept.

Stories can describe the impact of a new design.

A story describing a situation or situation.

The story helps us to understand the world better by describing the present situation. They not only describe a series of events, but they also provide an analysis of the causes and motivations of these events.

Stories that accompany personas often describe things about their activities or experiences. A story from a cancer information site persona, for example, describes how a person with good internet and search skills can help a cancer patient find information. It describes how and why people use it, and most people don't use resources to find information about cancer.

Case: A story from a persona: barbara--specific "searcher"

Barbara has always liked to consult data. As a writer and editor of a technical magazine, it kept her exploring the new themes of the article. In addition to the Internet, she has access to information sources, legal and medical databases, and online publishing files. Recently, a friend was diagnosed with colon cancer. She helped him identify the best hospitals to treat the cancer and read the latest treatment regimen. She looked for clinical trials that might help him, and even examined some of the alternative therapies offered in Mexico and Switzerland. She was delighted to find articles in her trusted journals, which gave her the depth of knowledge she lacked on popular medical websites.

A story that explains the problem

Stories can also be used to illustrate the pain point of a problem--a change or fix in a new product or design. They help a design or product team look at issues from the user's perspective.

Case: A story about the pain point

Sister Sarah sighed. She and sister Clare, who run youth groups in their church, are taking their children to the Philadelphia baseball game today. They took everyone out of the parking lot, through the gate, to their seats, and no one left behind in the stream of people. When she realized she had left her money in the car, sister Sarah was going to buy some drinks.

She stood at the entrance of the stadium, trying to remember where they were parked. Usually their small buses are easy to spot, but today it seems like every church team in the area is coming. She saw dozens of similar buses.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember how she had come to the entrance. Do they turn right or left? Left, she thought. She went to one of the rows, but it wasn't her car.

After hovering 30 points in the parking lot, she would have to go back and tell sister Clare that she once again forgot to pay attention to where she was going and where they parked the car. The children may know, she thought, that she could bring one out. But she can't call. Their only cell phone was left on the seat. She sighed.

The story describes a current problem. In this case, it is in a huge parking lot lost in the bus, no one can find a good way to solve the problem. Does this story make you start thinking about innovative ways to solve sister Sarah's problem? There are many different potential solutions that you might think of. This is the main point of this story: in a form that helps divergent thinking.

A story that helps to start a discussion

You can also end up in the middle of a story with a clear call for new ideas, end up with a better ending, or identify a situation that might open the door to a new product. The story that will be used as the starting point for designing brainstorming is not only to have reasonable details, but also to set aside space for imagination. Their goal is to open up a design problem idea, to propose a general area of work or to initiate a discussion.

A story that triggers a design discussion

Joan was responsible for filling out the payroll when the office manager, Kathy, was away. Kathy left her a note to remind her of the special bonus check she was going to use this week.

Joan has not used the pay process for a while, only to remember that special checks are difficult to operate. The computer's side wall was plastered with a post-it note, and she scanned them and breathed a sigh of relief at the discovery of a bonus.

Based on these brief hints, she found the right interface. The first time she tried to print a check, she went wrong and had to undo all the operations. She tried it hard several times and finally corresponded the note on the post-it to the prompt on the screen. Finally, she printed the check successfully, and she also left a note on Kathy's desk to remind her to check it once she came back.

How do you make it easier to create special checks and fill out bookkeeping tasks? Does this story inspire the solution in your mind? Have you ever encountered anything like this?

Exploring the story of design philosophy

Stories can help you explain and explore a new idea or concept and its impact on experience. Even before all the details are complete, they can be shown by action to help shape a new design.

One way to create an emotional story is to use video, although this may be more difficult than a comic, story or verbal narrative. Bruce Tognazzini, now a member of the Nielsen Norman group, led a project in Sun Microsystems to envision the future of computing. The result is the movie "Spark", which imagines the life of a knowledge worker for a day after 12 years. The spark was created in 1992 and set the scene for 2004 years. It features a working space made up of a few hand-controlled displays, much earlier than the movie "Minority Report" or recent innovations like the Microsoft Surface tablet computer.

The story explores a new way of interacting rather than taking the time to describe the problem to be solved. The story is quite simple and shows how a designer is doing his job. It says, "What if all the technology is now realized?" And tell the story like that. Spark's goal is to evoke new thinking rather than specifying a design with the exact details needed to develop a new product.

The next story explores uncharted territory in which an interactive entertainment system subverts the regular shopping and reality TV shows.

Real Interactive TV

Bob,carol and their 17-year-old son Robert Jr. replaced their old wired systems with a new Acme IPTV system. Not only do they have access to all the media in the old system, but they also have special channels with interactive content.

Carol likes soap operas. Through an interactive remote control, she turned her favorite show, "My Moving Baby" (All my restless Children) into a shopping directory. If she likes the heroine's earrings, she can order them. If she likes her blouse, she can also order--on TV. And the best part is, no ads.

Even Bob liked it, and in the course of the program, he could get into the soap opera car race with the remote control and screen interface. The first prize was the heroine of the 1970 Corvette convertible.

Little Robert joins a different game, and the winner can have dinner with the heroine. Instead of playing the actress, she has dinner with her role.

But Carol loved more than they had. Because interactive options are also available when viewing on demand. Late one night Carol the latest episode and took part in the nanny contest on the show. The first one will receive a free night service for the male lead. Carol have any babies? It would be a shame if she won! She will have to come up with other ways to occupy the hero's time.

A story that foresees the results of a new design

The story of predictability describes the world in more detail. They are similar to descriptive stories, except that they describe a user experience that does not yet exist.

Software specifications often include predictive stories in the form of scenarios, including use cases or other narrative methods that describe the user experience. These stories can be quite detailed, especially when they are used to clarify requirements documents.

A predictive story.

JOHN,32, working in a medium-sized company. He recently decided to start his own consulting firm, now a wholly-owned operator.

John wants to raise money from his former employer's annuity plan and open a new account in Yourmutuals, where he can deposit an annuity without having to think about taxes and then renew it every year.

He first logged on to the Yourmutuals website with his username and password. He found the opening link and filled in several tables with the account type information he wanted to create. When he finished, he saw the new account lined up with his IRA account on the personal homepage.

He opened an email about the annuity plan. There is an option to transfer his money directly to a new account. After clicking on the account, the option to "transfer funds from another account" appears. He entered the name of the annuity scheme, the name of the bank, and his old member account. When he had finished, he received a message that once the transaction had confirmed that he would be able to dispose of the funds. He prints out the message and quits.

The next day, he received an email from an annuity plan confirming the transaction and giving him a phone number to call to prevent information errors. When he logged into the yourmutuals, he saw that the new retirement account showed the correct amount of money deposited.

Now he can decide which mutual fund he wants to invest in.

This story can continue to describe more steps in the process or other features that John might use. This is not a program design specification, but a descriptive narrative of interaction.

More work?

Maybe you think using a story will increase your workload and don't worry. If you already have a good user experience process, you may already be collecting and using stories. This book can help you to do this more consciously and effectively.

If your process does not include too many user contacts, this may be a good time to start. You will find that it enhances your work and gives you more confidence that you are creating what people will find really useful and usable.

Either way, collecting stories and telling them when you design them will make your job richer and more innovative.

American National Public Radio has a radio program "American Life" (this Anglo) tells the story of People's daily lives. Each episode picks a theme and observes it from different angles, each time based on a real person story. Program producer Ira Glass has created an extremely compelling image with a combination of news and storytelling.

"You don't know what you're talking about until you hear the story and you really understand that experience," he said. After you hear the story, you form a picture of the concrete in your mind. Otherwise you know nothing, because you are dealing with information in a defective way. "–ira Glass, American Life, 2007