Unconscious Needs — The Emotional Beats of Lyft’s June Video
At Delve, LaiYee and I conduct a lot of research, and it can be helpful to have methods for framing that research. One of our favorite frameworks is the Story Circle (developed by Dan Harmon). When consulting with organizations to help them conduct their own user research, we often use Lyft’s June Short to outline the Story Circle. In the short, we see how June, a grandmother, becomes a Lyft driver and finds a community. In the process, she hits every beat of the Story Circle.
A Quick Description of the Story Circle
I’m going to briefly describe the story circle, but I highly recommend reading Dan Harmon’s blog post which goes into very helpful detail. Harmon describes the Story Circle as the following.
1. A character is in a zone of comfort
2. But they want something.
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation,
4. Adapt to it,
5. Get what they wanted,
6. Pay a heavy price for it,
7. Then return to their familiar situation,
8. Having changed.
Summarized even further.
1)You 2)Need 3)Go 4)Search 5)Find 6) Pay 7)Return 8)Change
Visually it looks like this.
Breaking Down Lyft’s June Video
Okay, let’s take a look at Lyft’s June Video.
You — A character is in a comfort zone
This one is always the easiest, this short is about June, a grandmother with a sweet car but isolated life. The video quickly shows you how she spends her days, a lonely routine of getting her hair done at the salon.
Need — But they want something
When dealing with story it is helpful to break your need into two. Your character’s conscious need and unconscious need. The conscious need is the need that the character is aware of, and the unconscious need is the one that the character may not be aware of. In this case June’s conscious need is that her car is wrecked, and she needs to buy a new car. However her unconscious need is that she is lonely. Her husband is gone, presumably deceased, as are her old friends. She’s in touch with her daughter’s family, but they seems too busy to visit her. This is a pretty classic combination, where the conscious need is a material one, but the unconscious need is an emotional one.
Go — They enter an unfamiliar situation
The conscious need is what propels our main character into the Go beat. In this video, June’s need to replace her car propels her into the world of car sharing. This video actually has multiple possible Go moments, that all occur back to back. The most important aspect of the Go moment is that it HAS to be a choice made my the main character. The three Go moments that I see are:
- June chooses to get in the Lyft that her daughter sends to her
- June chooses to give the Marine a lift.
- June chooses to download the Lyft app.
In each one of these moments, June descends further into the unfamiliar world of ride sharing.
Search — Adapt to it
In the Search beat, the main character is fully emerged in the unfamiliar world. June is becoming a Lyft driver! In movies, the training montage always occurs in the Search Beat, which is exactly what happens. A fellow Lyft driver teaches June how to use the app. During this beat June becomes increasingly comfortable with being a Lyft driver. She starts out nervous as she picks up her first grumpy driver, but is soon meeting all sorts of interesting people.
Find — Get what they wanted
In the same way that the Go beat is connected to the conscious need, the Find beat is connected to the unconscious need. June’s unconscious need is that she is lonely, and craves a family and community. And that is what she Finds. With upbeat music we see June waving to her new friends. And in a moment of internal contentment she looks out at the beautiful city that she now feels a part of.
Pay — Pay a heavy price for it
The Pay beat is where the cold harsh reality disrupts the internal contentment of the Find beat. Did you think you could break your routine and become a Lyft driver and nothing bad would happen June? The upbeat music disappears, and June skids off the road and gets stranded in the snow.
However, unless the story is a tragedy, the main character overcomes this Pay beat. Often by using what they learned in the Search and Find beats. In June’s case it’s community. All of the people June has driven in the past, find her and push her car out of the snow. And with a well crafted bit of symmetry, they are led by June’s first seemingly grumpy Lyft Passenger.
Return — Then return to their familiar situation
June now returns from the unfamiliar world she has spent the majority of the story in. Lyft emphasizes this return to normalcy by repeating the visual from the beginning of the short, of June driving out of her garage.
Change — Having changed
Despite having returned to her familiar life, not everything is the same. June’s needs, most importantly her unconscious need, has been addressed. She now has community. We see her waving and laughing to new found friends, and the short ends with her driving with a smile.
How We Use Story Structure with Qualitative Research
At Delve we use story structure to frame our qualitative research. Story is a powerful tool, because it is a shared language of human experience that we all speak. The applications of story are of course endless, but some examples of what we’ve used it for:
- Agreeing on a user journey at a product company
- Designing a more engaging museum going experience
- Finding internal alignment around a non-profit’s mission statement
As you can see in June’s story, the unconscious need is a critical element to the story. It is introduced in the Need beat, but also impacts multiple other beats in the story. We use (and built) Delve to help organizations uncover people’s conscious and unconscious needs.
A Quick Shout Out
I always want to give a shout out to my Story Structure partner, Kendra Allenby, who is co-creator to all of the thoughts above. Kendra is a cartoonist and story structure extraordinaire whose work has appeared in the New Yorker among other places.
Want to learn more?
What to learn more about how to use Story Structure, leave a comment below or reach out on Twitter. Happy to answer any questions and write more of these.
Want to discover people’s conscious and unconscious needs, check out Delve! It is a tool for pulling insights out of human conversations.
