Stories Are Only as Good as the Data Behind Them

Experience is what we take with us after an engagement with a business, product, service, or person. It’s the memories of the good and bad interactions, and we use this to build the story we tell ourselves about an experience. It is up to us as designers to create opportunities within the experience to influence the stories users tell to themselves.

I’ll never forget an experience that I had with Zappos, and this experience has solidified my feelings for their brand. I’ve used this experience with Zappos as an example in my own stories about how customer service should be. When the company was new, I placed an order with them, and they sent me the wrong size. Based on past online ordering experiences with other companies, I assumed that Zappos would make me jump through hoops to rectify their mistake. But they didn’t. Instead, Zappos apologized, sent me the correct size shoes, and told me not to worry about returning the shoes that were the wrong size. That one act of great customer service made me a loyal customer, and I still purchase 95% of all of my shoes from Zappos. I now tell myself and my colleagues their story of delivering happiness.

This is an example of how stories can guide a conversation around an experience and serve as a powerful tool in experience design. A story can be a powerful tool, but a story is not the most powerful tool in a designer’s toolkit. Stories must be built on facts that designers mine from doing hours of discovery, research, and interviews.

Stories sew the pieces together

Formulating a story that resonates with people is a talent. And this skill is helpful to communicate insights gleaned from research. The story sews together insights unpacked from creating personas, mapping journeys, building value maps, and documenting ecosystems. However, the modeling exercises we do to understand an organization are fundamental parts of the story. Experience models are the who, what , and when to the story.