Presentation on using stories in UX. Adding imagery, emotion, context and motivation to UX work.
Book from Rosenfeld Media
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/storytelling/
1. The Power of Story
Creating empathy & connection
in our process and products
Whitney Quesenbery
WQusability.com
@whitneyq
2. User researcher
Hi!
Theatre designer
Storytelling as a way to
understand user, culture,
and context in UX design
3. User researcher
Hi!
Theatre designer
Storytelling as a way to
understand user, culture,
and context in UX design
Designs new UI technologies
Performance storyteller
Storytelling as a pivotal part of
the creation, performance, and
design process
4. Changing a story can change the way we think
Our experience of the world
is shaped by our
interpretations of it, the
stories we tell ourselves....
so the key to personal
Timothy Wilson, author of “Redirect” transformation is story
transformation.
Maria Popova, ‘Redirect’: A New Way to Think about Psychological Change. The Atlantic, September 9, 2011 www.theatlantic.com
5. We are hardwired for stories
+
Based on blind spot test on Paul Grobstein’s Serendip site
6. Is storytelling like broadcasting?
Helen Cordero, “The First Storyteller” 1964 from the Girard Collections,
Museum of International Art, Santa Fe, NM. Photo by Michel Monteaux
14. The story is created by everyone
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Timothy Sullivan Center for Contemporary Opera, 1987
Directed by Stephen Jarrett, Scenery by Robert Edmonds, Lighting by Whitney Quesenbery. With Suzan Hanson
15. The story is created by everyone
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Timothy Sullivan Center for Contemporary Opera, 1987
Directed by Stephen Jarrett, Scenery by Robert Edmonds, Lighting by Whitney Quesenbery. With Suzan Hanson
17. Scenarios become stories when we add emotion
As a [role] I can [do something] so that [benefit]
+
18. Scenarios become stories when we add emotion
As a [role] I can [do something] so that [benefit]
+
+
Imagery + Emotion + Context + Motivation
19. Stories let us see the individual in the crowd
People are not just
part of a group of
demographic.
They are
individuals
with a history,
interests, goals &
relationships
20. Stories organize facts in memorable ways
Personas not only
organize data and
facts, but help us
recognize the persona
as someone we can
empathize with
21. Stories are effective
The NCI Cancer Bulletin: http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/101910/page6
22. Stories are efficient
Tanner was deep into a Skatepunkz game—
all the way up to level 12—when he got a
buddy message from his friend, Steve, with a
question about his homework.
He looked up with a start. Almost bedtime and
his homework was still not done. Mom or Dad
would be in any minute.
What can we learn about Tanner from this
short story?
24. FIGURE 5-2
Storytelling is already part of UX
FIGURE 5-5
Collecting stories
from and about Understand FIGURE 5-3
context and goals
Finding themes
and patterns
Story as test And then I...
scenario
FIGURE 5-4
Success Clusters of stories
Evaluate Specify
UX person
?
Usability participant
UX team
Usability Stories
evaluation is a
Design
way of trying the idea
story out
Design Design tells a new story that
UX team changes something about the
world
25. FIGURE 5-2
We just don’t call them stories
FIGURE 5-5
User research
Ethnography FIGURE 5-3
Contextual inquiry Personas
Site visits Affinity analysis
Card sorting
Story as test And then I...
scenario
FIGURE 5-4
Clusters of stories
UX person
Usability participant
UX team
Usability Testing
Walk-throughs Stories
Analytics Design
idea
Scenarios
Storyboards
Wireframes
Prototypes
UX team
26. Stories add connection and empathy
A richer understanding of people and context
Innovation from real needs
More persuasive ideas
People in the center of the process
Kevin - Taught me about performance storytelling\n\n\n\n\n
social behavioral change - instead of lecturing or practicing new behavior, focused on creating a context for the story, and then changing it.\n\nStory editing: students not doing well in first year; story of failure, or story of other students who learned to succeed.\n\nStory prompting: new information suggests new ways of building a narrative\n\n “do good, be good” approach was well-known to Aristotle, who said, “We become just by the practice of just actions” - volunteer work with at-risk kids changed them from outsiders to valuable part of community.\n
\nBrain fills in the spaces.\nBlind spot in our brain. Not small. A big huge one.\n\nPut + on your left.\nCover left eye\nStare at + with right eye\nMove paper until circle disappears\n
\nIt’s easy to fall into thinking about yourself, and the thing you want to talk about. \nBad branding sounds like that. It’s the companies that get on social media and treat it like a cheap commercial. \n(Add Claude Shannon and broadcasting theory here)\n\n
Claude Shannon and information theory: information as packets of traffic sent from one place to another.\nBroadcasting and completing the circuit.\n
The point of stories, their real power is to create connections and relationships\n\nWhat’s in the bubble that says story...that’s where the program goes. \nStoryteller=designer\nStoryteller=developer\n
If you are the UX person on a team, or the user researcher on the UX team... \nMaybe you have a strong connection. \nYou’ve gone out and listened to users, and you’ve heard their stories and their dreams, and what delights them.\n***\nSo you bring those stories back and you retell them\nThey become part of the connections and conversations within your own team\n***\nBut the real point is to create those connections in a place where we don’t often have them.\n\n****\n\nStory of Bill DeRouchey and Ziba and learning about another culture through intermediaries. \n\nBecause stories are powerful, you have to think about what stories you want to tell. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n
If you are the UX person on a team, or the user researcher on the UX team... \nMaybe you have a strong connection. \nYou’ve gone out and listened to users, and you’ve heard their stories and their dreams, and what delights them.\n***\nSo you bring those stories back and you retell them\nThey become part of the connections and conversations within your own team\n***\nBut the real point is to create those connections in a place where we don’t often have them.\n\n****\n\nStory of Bill DeRouchey and Ziba and learning about another culture through intermediaries. \n\nBecause stories are powerful, you have to think about what stories you want to tell. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n
If you are the UX person on a team, or the user researcher on the UX team... \nMaybe you have a strong connection. \nYou’ve gone out and listened to users, and you’ve heard their stories and their dreams, and what delights them.\n***\nSo you bring those stories back and you retell them\nThey become part of the connections and conversations within your own team\n***\nBut the real point is to create those connections in a place where we don’t often have them.\n\n****\n\nStory of Bill DeRouchey and Ziba and learning about another culture through intermediaries. \n\nBecause stories are powerful, you have to think about what stories you want to tell. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n
UX is a team sport\nYou use the stories to get everyone on the same team, so that when they go off to do their own work, \nyou are all working together\n\nThis is important because if you don’t\nsimple things - you’re not all working towards the same goal\nsocial things - you’re not all talking in the same way \nAnd, because if you are taking the time to listen, the stories that come back from the audience will change you, so that your work fits better with the things that delight them.\n
UX is a team sport\nYou use the stories to get everyone on the same team, so that when they go off to do their own work, \nyou are all working together\n\nThis is important because if you don’t\nsimple things - you’re not all working towards the same goal\nsocial things - you’re not all talking in the same way \nAnd, because if you are taking the time to listen, the stories that come back from the audience will change you, so that your work fits better with the things that delight them.\n
UX is a team sport\nYou use the stories to get everyone on the same team, so that when they go off to do their own work, \nyou are all working together\n\nThis is important because if you don’t\nsimple things - you’re not all working towards the same goal\nsocial things - you’re not all talking in the same way \nAnd, because if you are taking the time to listen, the stories that come back from the audience will change you, so that your work fits better with the things that delight them.\n
\nAnother example: theatre\nMany people have to work together to realize a vision - all creating the same production.\nI was a lighting designer. Very difficult, because abstract. Don’t get to really see how it’s all coming together until the last weeks before opening night. Until then, it’s all wireframes and blueprints, and rehearsing against marks on the floor. \n\nThis is a sketch from the set designer, describing a vision for how a one-woman opera might look. \nI didn’t even have the score. We had only heard the piano part for the vocals. \nA couple of months after we sat around a table and talked about this sketch, we finally got on stage. ...\n
\nAnd this is what that scene looked like when it was lit. \nThe set, the lighting, the costumes, the direction... even the performance all aimed at being able to create this moment.\n\n
Shifting gears here...\n Let’s talk about what makes a good UX story.\n Some definitions, that a story has a beginning, middle and an end\n or Characters, events and resolution\n may be fine for some uses, but they aren’t all that powerful.\n
Demographics to profile to person\n\nStory power comes when we get beyond facts and start to reach beyond plot into the info behind the the facts\n
Demographics to profile to person\n\nStory power comes when we get beyond facts and start to reach beyond plot into the info behind the the facts\n
I’ve been thinking a lot about what we really mean by story. \nUser stories = bare bones of the plot: who, what, why and maybe how\nScenarios = tend to focus on what and how\nStories = explore the how\n\nI think one of the reasons that stories have become so important now is that we’re creating products that do more than digitize a routine task. When we start to weave digital experiences into our lives, it becomes much harder to create simple models that do them justice. \n\nModeling is all about reducing complexity to a simple pattern. \n
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NCI = cancer research. \nBut helping people understand important - because they need the information to make life and death decisions, and because it’s how NCI shows its value.\nLots of peer reviewed content, treatment summaries. All great, trustworthy, authoritative information.\n\nBut there’s another way to look at it. This video is about a new way to do diagnostic testing for prostate cancer. \nIt weaves together four stories: the patient, the doctor, the researcher, and the science. \n
Short story fragment… how much to we learn from even this \n\nInteractive:\nAge: early teens\nFamily: \nCulture: US\nHistorical setting: buddy message\nRelationship to technology\n