Storytelling Through Experience Design
In order to create remarkable experiences, one must know and understand the intent of the story that’s trying to be told.
Storytelling in Experience Design (XD) is a fundamental tool that designers need to use to effectively communicate intent.
What’s the reason for your story?
This can be categorised into the 4 A’s of Brand XD:
1) Awareness
2) Alignment
3) Affinity
4) Activism
Brand Awareness
Creating stories to build brand awareness focuses on gaining traffic, gaining an audience, getting found, addressing the need for information and making a presence in the market.
“You’re fired!”
— Donald J. Trump
The brand doesn’t necessarily need to be well known or established. The aim is to gain a greater presence in the market.
Brand Alignment
This focuses on creating authority through the alignment of views, values and thoughts. The story which is told becomes more meaningful and personalised.
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well”
— Jeff Bezos
This elevates a brand to become thought leading within a specific space or niche. The brand becomes an authority that dominates the market in which is plays in.
Brand Affinity
This creates evangelists within the market where consumers buy into the story and actively promote products and services.
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour”
— Elon Musk
The narrative is so rich and engaging that consumers tell the brand story both online and offline.
Brand Activism
Brand activism tells a story that supports a particular view. It’s often political or viewed as controversial but extremely impactful within the marketplace.
“This disaster has grown beyond the choice that the individual makes”
— Leonardo DiCaprio
Often the experiences in these stories are emotive, passionate and empowering.
— fin
If you found this helpful,👏👏👏👏👏 like you’re at a concert waiting for the encore on the side or down below. Follow me for more articles on XD, BX, CX, UX, UI, IxD, User Research, Human Centred Design and Service Design.
— ST
Designologist I/O is an exclusive global Slack community of design technologist, evangelists and thought leaders. We strive to innovate, challenge and evolve the TxD (technology/experience/design) industry. We’ve got a global social following of 40k+ and we’re currently taking sign ups for our Slack channel in countries around the globe. Once we hit 50 members in a region, we will officially create that regional chapter.
Join the conversation for FREE at designologist.io or follow us on twitter.com/DesignologistIO to get curated industry updates.
Curating Remarkable Experiences Through Experience Design
The ability to design remarkable experiences is a capability which is an ever growing desire for businesses to have. A focus on User Experience (UX), Customer Experience (CX) and Brand Experience (BX) have proven to elevate brand affinity as well as customer satisfaction.
As time goes on, it is becoming harder and harder to innovate as experiences tend to mimic one another in the name of best practice principles. Through experience design thought leadership there are underlying key themes which allow organisations to break through the noise and create truly meaningful experiences with technology.
— Sherwin Torres
About the author
Joining international consulting firm Ippon Technologies and reporting into the Managing Director of Ippon Australia, Sherwin is the head of Ippon Australia’s experience design consulting practice. A thought leader in experience design, he is tasked with building up the firm’s XD capability and oversees all aspects of BX, CX, UX, UI, IxD, User Research, Human Centred Design and Service Design.
With over 10 years in the industry as a design technologist, Sherwin is the former Head of Digital CX Development at The Good Guys, former Head of eBusiness Operations at AAMI and former Head of eBusiness Support at Melbourne IT. He holds a Double Masters for the Master of Information Systems Management/Master of Business Administration, a Double Degree for the Bachelor of Business Information Systems/Bachelor of Business and a Diploma of Information Technology (Network Engineering).
