Designer’s secret sauce: Storytelling
A powerful skill that empowers one to evoke emotions and drive outcomes. Here are two aspects of why storytelling matters.
1. Telling a Story to the users
It was only towards the end of my engineering degree that I started pondering about the other end of the code that we write, i.e. what connection do we have with someone whom we haven’t met, and might not ever meet. What emotions do we evoke with our expression (the software). This led me to delve into UX design.
As soon as one jumps into Design, one realizes it’s only a facade. The soul of it is in User Research. It adds all the unpredictability to the otherwise fairly process-oriented discipline of Design. Starting with generative research, to validating ideas along the way a designer tries to keep the user at the center of the solution. Any solution can be segmented into three buckets: the core value it enables, the experience it provides….. and the story it speaks.
The story is our focus today.
Let me elaborate with few analogies. In architecture, a building typically enables core purpose (as a hospital/hotel/home, etc.) using a particular layout, and a particular character (heritage/minimal/art deco, etc.). In industrial design, a product has a function, a form, and a personality. In fashion, in auto industry, in film-making, and in many other fields with creative influence the creator connects with its audience via an identity/a character/a personality i.e. a story.
In digital products similarly, a designer connects with its users via the story the product tells. However, given the short attention span of the users and the transactional nature of experience, storytelling is not prevalent here.
Some prominent examples would be: Winamp’s UI mirroring actual casette player, MS Word’s (infamous) animated character Clippy, Apple’s messaging of seamless perfection across its hardware and software and even marketing, Kindle’s feel that makes it stand apart in a crowd, Medium’s look and feel focus on reading, Pinterest’s flow focus on exploring images, Snapchat’s experience and features are all about its playfullness, any computer game is based around a core story, and all voice assistants have their respective personality.
In any of the previous analogies or examples, the function and the experience are good enough to solve a problem, but the story is the secret sauce.
- It makes a solution more relatable for its users. Hence, for its target segment, it might have higher affordance for what to expect and a more intuitive experience.
- And as with any story, it can make a moment feel meaningful, connected, and complete.
- It projects that the creator cared.
- It gives an opportunity for the creator to define the emotion the can evoke in the user. This is specially important, if you can engage your user emotionally then you can guarantee success. And if you can define that emotion, then thats a superpower.
- Additionally, with expectation built-in, it mitigates risk and enables greater depth of experimentation.
Relook at previous examples and see if these points apply. Let me focus on an example from digital world: Snapchat. It went all-in about its playful identity. Its users expected newer interfaces and hence even found them intuitive while others did not. It’s novel “Stories” interface in fact became an industry standard. Snapchat gets to try bold experiments knowing that its users will embrace. And its end-to-end experience, even with its novelty, feels connected and complete. In India, Cred app would be a good example of storytelling (overpowering the experience of the app itself). Also, digital products often use onboarding experience to tell their story. Google Assistant is the epitome of what not to do, while its peers personified their voice assistants using Alexa and Siri, Google has continued with rather tasteless name.
Interestingly, in the digital realm, storytelling is two-sided i.e. the creator can learn the user’s reaction in real-time, and can react to the same in the next release. Or in the (AI-powered) future, in real-time. A future example of this might be Netflix learning your behavior i.e. sad, happy, anxious, terrified, etc (based on pauses/volume/using earphones/screen size or even focus point of your eye) and accordingly changing the storyline of the movie you are watching, imagine Bandersnatch but auto-controlled.
Storytelling and Experience Design might sound interchangeable. However there’s a difference, while the latter optimizes flows for a given functionality, the former gives it a particular character. Character can be built via multiple mediums including experience design, marketing, company/founder amongst others. If ever confused, ask yourself, when are you evoking users’s emotions.
2. Aligning stakeholders using Storytelling
To be a great designer, one has to be a great storyteller. Period.
Story, noun: a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader.
Story, designer’s version: a future, either true or fictitious, in mocks or prototypes, designed to interest , amuse, or instruct the stakeholders.
Design is a discipline with its pillars in creativity i.e. to create. To communicate something that does not exist, one needs to become audience-centric (new jargon alert 👨🏽💻). The better one can communicate, or better a storyteller one can be, the better she can influence and lead her team and stakeholders towards a common vision, her vision!
Storytelling is the superpower that empowers designers to lead the vision of a product. For the audience, it allows them to proactively brainstorm loopholes from the perspective of their respective expertise. Additionally, an articulate and confident story assures the audience of the leadership capabilities and the hard work done by the speaker.
“Less is more”
As a designer, in the routine work mode, one’s frame of mind often revolves around exhaustive explorations i.e. considering all use cases, all user research, all competition, all data, all dependencies, etc. However, in storytelling mode, one should shift the focus on the primary pointers i.e. primary use cases, primary learnings from users, competition, and data, etc. This prioritization is the first step to a great story, followed by connecting the dots between priorities to build a seamless narrative. Ideally, the outcome (/climax) and the build-up (/plot) should complement each other, even when the order is flipped.
The storytelling mindset also acts as a forcing function for designers to solve with priorities while designing. If one is not able to communicate the story clearly, then one might have been weak in prioritizing various factors or might have missed gathering a subset of factors altogether. This is an opportunity to reconsider the work itself.
However simple it sounds, storytelling requires conscious efforts to master. Being so close to all the information, we often stay in the work mode (exhaustive) instead of shifting to storytelling mode. Remember, communicating quantum of work is not important for the audience, communicating the outcome is. Additionally, since a story is audience-centric it should be adapted per target audience set.
Define your narrative or someone else will do it for you.
How to tell a good story
This blog was focused on the Why, if you are now intrigued about the How then please use internet to learn more about storytelling (specially in film-making), and try out some ideas yourself, and validate with your audience. Follow your strengths and your heart!🖤
Does this blurb sound like a conversation starter? Please share your thoughts!
P.S. Here’s my first short-film (award-winning💪🏽), which was my sincere start towards understanding Storytelling.
All images in this blog are via various sources on internet. Cred app gif: Mayank Khandelwal.
