How to use clone characters to design better experiences for your users

Clone characters are used in storytelling to reflect aspects of the main characters back at themselves. Here’s how you can use the same principles when designing and building products.

Photo by chester wade on Unsplash

I’ve been writing articles about how storytelling principles can help us to design and build great products, covering the 3-act structure, and the characterisation of your users as the protagonists of their own story. In this article, I want to talk about another storytelling principle that can help us to design brilliant products: clone characters.

What are Clone Characters?

To understand what clone characters are we need to first understand how and why they exist in storytelling. Clone characters are devices for the purpose of highlighting, contrasting or directly reflecting aspects of main characters back at themselves, intended to drive their decision making, create or resolve conflict, or directly answer a question a character has. Jesse and Brian from Belief Agency go into more detail in their series ‘You Are A StoryTeller’ about how and why clone characters work in storytelling and beyond.