Presentation at UX Camp Copenhagen, May 2018
We all love our user research data… but why is it such a struggle to use the insights we uncover to create direction for our project? Storytelling is the missing link, getting past charts and graphs to dig into data. Whitney will show how stories put research insights into context, communicate the entire user journey, show problems through the eyes of your users, and help you ask better questions to gain deeper insights.
5. Use your left hand to hold
the paper out in front of
you, with the + on your
right.
Use your left eye to look at
the +
Move the paper towards
you slowly…until the circle
seems to disappear
+
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html
6. What happens when the circle
disappears?
Your brain doesn’t leave a hole, but fills it in with the
surrounding background
18. Things you hear from more than one source
Have a lot of action detail
Have details that illuminate user data
Surprise or contradict common beliefs
And are clear, simple, and compelling.
Stories start from juicy fragments
20. Stories change how we think
Our experience of the world is shaped by our
interpretations of it, the stories we tell
ourselves.... so the key to personal
transformation is story transformation.
- Timothy Wilson, Redirect
22. A story is a way of looking at the world
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one
chooses that moment of experience from which to look
back or from which to look ahead.”
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
26. What’s the trigger to commit?
Rachel, Enthusiastic dreamer
28, finished one year at uni, works in an office
Lives in North London with a partner
Hasn’t settled down to a plan for her life
First contact: OU ON TV
Insomnia led Rachel to the OU, watching programs on the telly. She
starts to enjoy the programmes and thinks about doing something to
improve her career. It takes her a long time to act on this idea, but
finally, she visits an Open Day. She spends ages thinking about it,
sometimes browsing the web site, but also reading the brochures
she has taken from the Open Day. On her third trip to an Open Day,
she finally registers for an Openings course that’s about to begin.
Lighting design to UX
Live, Ephemeral, Collaborative
Most of all about telling a story
To be more accurate, it’s about supporting a story told by the script, the actors, the directors.
Like all the disciplines of UX, each of the people working on a production adds their skills to the whole.
So the audience can have an experience .
One of the problems with data, is that too often it looks like this.
Visualizations help because they start to shape the story by what they show and what they leave out. But if I don’t explain this to you can you tell what story I’m trying to tell?
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four
Let’s look at how stories work
Story triangle
Or how we can hear stories differently
Stories go wrong when you treat them like a broadcast.
But it turns out that even a radio broadcast isn’t really one way communication.
Why are radio antennas put in someplace as inconvenient as a marshy pond?
Collecting stories helps us understand people and ]goals, context....
Finding themes and patterns is a step in understanding the audience
Stories help us explore how our work can change the world
Usability evaluation is a way of trying the story out to see if it works for other people, too.