Storytelling is the process of combining analysis and synthesis. Stories are always drawn from life. Both from general qualities that we extract from experience, and from specific qualities that we recognize through careful observation.
Storytelling is proposed as an intuitive way to support communication in user experience design.
In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of storytelling in the UX, and how it’s manifested.
Concept of Storytelling in UX Design
Storytelling is an early phase of user experience design, and designs are generally characterized by a mixture of research.
Designers must acquire contextual knowledge, gather information and feedback from potential users, make discoveries together, and develop inspiring designs.
Nelson and Stolterman (2003) describe the need for imagination and judgment in the design enterprise. Imagination allows us to create the “not-yet-existing” through a process of composing parts, functions, structures, processes, and forms in a way that fits the design situation.
Since early design for user experience is a creative process that both diverges, by creating alternative design ideas and converges, by discussing and ultimately selecting specific ideas, it includes a range of activities such as framing the problem, identifying design opportunities, representing, communicating and discussing ideas and developing them into specific design concepts.
Examples of how to use storytelling in UX design
The process not only involves designers themselves but also stakeholders such as engineers, managers, and users that help in defining the relevance and feasibility of specific design proposals.
Designers need to visualize, share, and discuss their ideas with others.
Online shopping becomes more fun when customers have the opportunity to add their own stories to the products they buy.
This is made possible by his UX design that leverages storytelling, allowing shoppers to connect with products on a deeper level and make every purchase unique.
Additionally, by leveraging existing customer stories, users can develop a sense of belonging and familiarity with the product.
Finally, the use of interactive elements such as gamification puts users in control of their experience, allowing them to advance the narrative through choices made throughout their virtual journey.
How to incorporate story elements into design?
- Stories and Narrative Interviews
Geven et al. (2006) are looking closer at the characteristics of meaning. They argue that research focused on the subjective aspect of experience must use methods that allow assessing the subjective structuring of the user’s world in their structured language.
They present the emotional content of the story as reconstructed during the narration and provide more direct access to the experience than evaluative questions. Therefore, it is important to make people tell the story about the experience rather than reporting about it.
By attempting to access user experience through storytelling, Geven et al. (2006) discovered through narrative interviews that when the users got more comfortable telling stories about their experiences, they got even more personal.
- Scenarios
A scenario is a story about people and their activities (Rosson and Carroll, 2002). Narrative methods can often be found as personas and scenarios, used in different phases of the design process, but mostly for user research (Tassi, 2009).
Pruitt and Adlin (2006) do not distinguish between a story and a scenario. They refer to a technique for creating sequential narratives, telling us what someone did, in what order, and what happened as a result of their action.
- Persona
Personas are fictional characters created during the design process to represent actual users and emphasize the end users’ characteristics during the early stage of the design process (Law et al., 2009).
Pruitt and Adlin (2006) present this storytelling form as a design technique, using narrative to make a point.
The goal is to communicate what you have learned powerfully and persuasively. Making a persona could be a way of understanding the user and this process could be regarded as a part of creating a story (Inchauste, 2011).
The story should help the participants get a common understanding of the main users and have these in mind when designing (Nielsen, 2013).
- Brand Experience Through Storytelling
According to Brakus et al. (2009), the brand experience is the customer’s experience concerning four brand experience dimensions: sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual. The brand experience varies in strength and intensity. It could be positive or negative, consciously or unconsciously.
Then how can designers design for a positive and holistic brand experience? A good start could be to make sure all participants have a shared understanding of the design goals.
Using stories as output, communicating with users, customers, and the organization, the design team should behave more like a film crew, which could result in a more meaningful product, service, brand, etc. (Chastain, 2009).
- Co-Experiences with Stories
Battarbee (2003) defines co-experience as the user experience, which is created in the context of social interaction, which seems to be the new business when selling products and services.
Further, she claims that the action for experience is creative and collaborative, which is descriptive of the design process. Looking at co-experience through a study on multimedia messaging she concludes that co-experience is driven by social needs of communication and maintaining relationships as well as creativity in collaboration.
Bottom line
Stories motivate and inspire the imagination. Stories have been a part of human life for centuries and still capture the attention of audiences.
As technology evolves, the way people communicate is rapidly changing. Today, information, like the stories we share, is spread across multiple platforms.
Story-based thinking allows designers to better understand potential user experiences and develop and discuss design ideas in context.