Storytelling: the ultimate UX skill
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world— Philip Pullman.
Why do humans run the world?
This is a question Yuval Noah Harari posed during his TED Talk.
According to his thesis, the answer has little to do with our individual, intellectual capabilities, and more with our social cooperation skills — We are inherently social creatures. In fact, according to Harvard research, the effect loneliness can have over the long-term on people is similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This is how bad we are at not being social.
It is true, albeit, that we are far from being the only species with a threshold of social capabilities; mammals, insects, birds, have also developed them.
What makes us different? What is the glue that holds us together and allows to cooperate flexibly and in large quantities, in contrast to the rest of the species?
Enter imagination.
Homo Sapiens is the only species capable of creating and believing in fictional stories — concepts that do not have a physical or biological reality.
Money, religion, corporations, and human rights are examples of fictional stories: concepts that a certain group of people decided to believe to make them real.
As Harari puts it in his book Sapiens:
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations.
Why is storytelling important for UX?
As designers, our very job consists of creating and sharing fictions — representations of a better version of the world through the design concepts we develop. It is our responsibility to assess the as-is state of a situation, and figure out its to-be version.
As Herbert Simon stated:
To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.
Change, however, is a word that seems inspiring in theory, but frightening in practice. This is in part because, as humans, we are inherently risk-averse — we attribute more value to our potential losses than to our potential gains, a theory developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky called Prospect Theory.
Loss aversion makes difficult for designers to persuade stakeholders or clients to explore different, potential avenues for solutions, instead of sticking to the “the way we’ve always done things around here” argument.
This is where storytelling becomes a powerful resource designers can leverage to open up possibilities, as it has been proved that a good story increases our levels of oxytocin (also known as the drug of love) which in turns makes us be more receptive to new ideas and more willing to collaborate and cooperate.
How designers leverage stories?
Chances are you’ve already used storytelling to your favor, perhaps during a presentation or throughout the development of a project.
This is a short list of storytelling applications within the day-to-day of designers.
- Kickoff meetings: Defining the structure and cadence of a presentation introducing a new project or endeavor.
- Personas: The story of a fictional character, with motivations, goals, and struggles.
- Journey Maps: The story of a character through time, with emotions, feelings, and actions.
- Storyboards: A visual representation of a journey or series of actions.
- User Story Mapping: A story told in the language of features and tasks to break down functionality.
What makes a great story?
There is no one-size-fits-all way of crafting a great story, although there are particular ingredients that can make them compelling and persuasive.
- Stories follow an arc: Beginning, middle, and end. You don’t want plot holes or cliff-hangers that lead to producing frustration in your audience as they don’t have a fair sense of accomplishment.
- Stories are character-driven: Without characters, there is no story. There is no way for the audience to identify themselves with the hero and establish empathy.
- Characters are driven by goals: Every character is looking to make progress in their lives — a better version of themselves (If you’re into Jobs-to-be-done, this is its core premise). The more honest and transparent the goals, the better we relate to the characters.
- Change is the only constant: Storytellers use plot twists and character arcs to move the story forward, to keep the audience engaged, and create an organic flow so the story does not fall flat.
- Conflict is essential: Without opposing forces playing against the characters, there is neither suspense nor tension. In addition, the more struggle the characters experience, the more reward they get down the road.
Structures of Stories
In 1863, after analyzing hundreds of stories and novels, playwright Gustav Freytag developed a 5-act structure for developing stories. He emphasized on the highs and lows that narratives have, as well as the importance of having a tipping point or climax that becomes a watershed in the story. This structure would later be known as the Freytag’s Pyramid.
- Exposition: Characters are introduced, their context, and possibly their backgrounds and aspirations.
- Rising action and crisis: After an inciting event , a series of events start to build tension in the story, where the main character is forced to face different challenges.
- Climax: The crucial moment of the story, the point of no return that changes the faith of the hero.
- Denouement: Loose ends are resolved and the rest of the jigsaw falls into place.
- Conclusion: The story comes to an end.
In addition to the Freytag’s pyramid, other frameworks such as The Hero’s Journey and the archetypes by Kurt Vonnegut also provide a great foundation for stories to thrive.
Applying Storytelling — A case study
I had the opportunity to apply some of the concepts mentioned early on a challenge I was presented at work.
We had an RFP (Request For Proposal) opportunity knocking at our doors, with a full-blown set of features spread across more than 50 pages. We had little, if almost no room for proposing new ideas or solutions, as the client only expected us to figure out the technology stack and platform architecture to support their vision.
We knew that following that path would not give us any competitive edge to stand out from other bidders, so we decided to embrace storytelling foundations, and leverage a technique known by Alan Cooper as working backwards: getting to the root of the problem to uncover goals (and fears) of the people with a stake on the RFP; users, executives, and team members.
We started analyzing the RFP document, which in a sense was a story, told in the language of requirements and constraints. It was not very compelling, as it only described the happily ever after part, everything already solved; no characters, no needs, no goals, no journey.
Then, we worked backwards.
We figured we would need to communicate the potential solution of our proposals in a tangible and interacting way, so we agreed on building prototypes and high-level mockups to give them a glimpse of our capabilities. But a prototype is based on a user flow, a narrative, which we explored through rapid storyboarding, achieving a happy path scenario as the outcome.
However, to successfully craft a scenario we needed to start with the characters, so we developed personas based on the information we had at hand. We also conducted secondary research, to better focus our efforts towards the goals and needs of the people who would be interacting with the digital touchpoints.
I could’ve thought that this was as far as we could go — developing personas, but we took one more step and identified the other characters of the story: the executives who would be making decisions with our response, and stakeholders, from marketing, technical or operations areas, with goals, fears, and personal agendas.
The experience we envisioned, the personas and scenarios we constructed, and the digital touchpoints we crafted, served as the overarching structure for not only the RFP response, but also for the presentation with the executives of the company at their headquarters. These outcomes allowed us to move the negotiations with the company forward and win part of the deal.
Denouement — Main Takeaways
As humans, we are wired to emotionally react to stories. Stories are the way we make sense of our world, as they were the only tool we had to gather information and share it with others for thousands of years.
As designers, we have the opportunity to become the storytellers of our organizations, to provide a glimpse of the value our designs can bring, and to help people become the heroes of their own stories.
Thanks to David Fore who introduced me to the concept of personas all the way down, and the power of meaningful stories and scenarios that changed my approach to human-centered design.
Resources
Lichaw, D. (2016). The user’s journey : storymapping products that people love. Brooklyn, New York: Rosenfeld Media.
Lupton, E. (2017). Design is storytelling. New York, NY: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
