A Narrative-Driven Process for Product Ideas
The Persona Storytelling Process
The Power of Storytelling
In today’s fast-paced world, where attention spans are shrinking and information is constantly bombarding us, effective communication is key. Whether you’re pitching a groundbreaking product idea to stakeholders or explaining a complex concept to your team, conveying your message is a growing challenge. The challenge starts when strategic leaders, tasked with communicating a vision, strategy, and plan grapple with the complexity of the discovery phase. Consequently, as the project progresses, the initial vision tends to get lost in execution, leading to roadmaps that prioritize features and deadlines over the experience and strategic goals.
Vision without action is a Daydream, action without vision is a Nightmare. ~unknown
The magic of storytelling has been used as one of the most powerful human communication tools throughout our human existence. This is why Persona X has created a process that uses storytelling to bridge the gap between vision and action. But how do you connect storytelling to a product or service in a tangible, practical, and actionable way? In this quick simple guide, Persona X introduces a uniquely simple process for understanding, envisioning, effectively communicating, and planning a product idea using storytelling. Our process is inspired by Design Thinking and borrows from the entertainment industry’s film development model, designed to captivate, align, and take action. Let’s get started!
Step 1. Character
A great filmmaker meticulously crafts characters to resonate with the audience and create connection on a profound level. In the same way, think of building a Persona as crafting characters in a film, who are they, and what drives them? Personas embody the essence of your target audience, allowing you to understand their desires, pain points, and motivations in-depth. A disconnect with your customer can quickly become the demise of your product when it’s reflected in a poor experience.
The goal in this step is to anchor your persona on a problem or opportunity statement, this is very important! In this way your persona is specific to a problem rather than becoming a generic and static artifact. Human-centric products are built on the foundation of the user they are built for. The disconnect begins when companies rush to build, leaving the user’s needs as a secondary priority, instead focusing on features and capabilities. Establish what problem you’re solving, your value proposition, and your users’ mental model and pain points around the subject. Performing research is extremely important in this step. The investment will pay off, just like a great film that pays attention to the details.
Essential questions to get you started:
- What problem or opportunity are you solving?
- Who are the main characters in your story?
- What are they trying to accomplish?
Tip: Some products require multiple primary personas, if so, start with the consumer, then run the process again from this point.
Step 2. Storyline
The three-act structure is your product’s storyline, mirroring the rise, fall, and resolution found in cinema. In this step you will take the primary Job-To-Be-Done and create a scenario with pain points and measurable outcomes. Think of this step as the “plot” of your story. The rise and fall are the user’s current experience with pain points, the desired outcome is the resolution.
A common exercise known as an Experience Map can be used to map out the current experience and identify pain points, touch-points and opportunities. Now that you have a clear understanding of how the pain points appear in a customer’s life, what are the expected outcomes that would make for a happy ending? Think of solutions that lead to the desired outcome. This step will help place yourself in the user’s shoes and identify their pain points throughout their journey.
Essential questions to get you started:
- What is their current experience and pain points?
- What is the expected outcome?
- How would you know you succeeded?
Tip: If this is for a specific project a functional Job-To-Be-Done will hone the story to a precise solution, if this is for a product vision, an overarching Job-To-Be-Done Statement should do. This approach will help focus your vision on building around the user and their needs.
Step 3. Script
With all of the information gathered thus far, it’s time to make magic! Think of the script as the lifeline of your product’s story, giving substance direction, and life to your communication. A script helps you avoid disjointed experiences. When you put yourself in the person’s shoes it highlights critical touchpoints and opportunities to solve their pain points. Many subtasks and scenarios could occur when writing out a script, it is important to maintain the integrity of the story and not dive too deep into micro-interactions that veer the story off track, those details can come later.
Using the scenario from the previous step, script the details of the ideal user journey. Include specific tasks, features, and interactions with your solution that bring your narrative to life and drive them towards the desired outcomes. The script uses a scenario workflow to create a framework to expand into more detail with product, design, and engineering while staying rooted in the user’s journey. Each outcome is written in the form of a summary. If there is trouble associating an outcome with a scene, chances are the scene is not detailed enough.
Essential questions to get you started:
- What are the specific steps the user must take to achieve their goal?
- What habits and behaviors drive the script?
- How can you remove friction in steps and alleviate pain?
Tip: Persona X uses a beat sheet format borrowed from film that helps identify scenes (interactions) that keep the plot point moving forward. Download our AI-driven playbook to see how it’s done.
Step 4. Storyboard
Storyboarding is crucial as it visually maps out the script’s sequences, providing a blueprint for a cohesive story. They can simply be drawn with stick figures and shapes or full artistic drawings with details and color. It is up to your preference and visual style that best fits communicating your vision. You can use AI generative tools like Midjourney, Lenoardo.ai, or DALL-E to accelerate the process.
Break down scenes further into various storyboards to convey as much of the user’s experience as possible. Be sure that each frame stemming from the scene is significant and pivotal to the plot moving forward. Showcase the key touchpoints and interactions users will encounter within your product’s narrative leaving room for features and capabilities to be added.
Essential questions to get you started:
- What user actions are critical to moving the plot towards a happy ending?
- What are the pain points and frustrations your story should convey?
Tip: If you would prefer a more artistic approach but drawing is not your thing, there are great alternatives such as DALL-E and Mid-journey for image generation.
5. Screening
Part A, Test
Think of this phase as the test screenings before the big premiere — it refines your product based on audience reactions to ensure it delivers an exceptional experience.
Part A consists of going out into the field and conducting user tests with the work you have produced thus far. Show concepts, prototypes, storyboards, etc. Gather feedback and now adjust accordingly. Make the necessary improvements in any of the stages you discover new information through research. Your product or service will prove to the rest of the market that you have taken the time to resonate with the user and their needs, it will be strong and undeniable.
Essential questions to get you started:
- Did your target audience enjoy your production?
- What is the hypothesis you are validating?
Part B, UX-Outcome Roadmap
With all of our insight and adjustments based on user feedback, it’s time to plan. This harmoniously aligns your idea from discovery to delivery. To do this we anchor the roadmap to our UX Outcomes that were defined in the Storyline. Include the measures of success, features, and capabilities that surfaced in the Script. Each outcome can be broken into milestones according to the desired level of success. From here you can create Epics and persona based user stories with optional user testing plans. We strongly recommend end-to-end user testing at the outcomes and success level.
Your Done! What’s Next?
You have created a narrative structure for your vision! Just like a film director who creates the first draft of their story, you can now use this as a guiding light for product development. You can now use this powerful information to draft marketing messages and content across your service that are centered around the user. This is not the end, this is simply the end of the beginning.
Conclusion
Our storytelling methodology, provides a clear, structured path from vision to action. By understanding your audience, crafting a compelling narrative, scripting the details, visualizing, testing and planning, you can revolutionize the way you communicate and ensure your message resonates with your audience. Our iterative process allows for multiple personas with various storylines and endless updates! It’s time to take your product experience strategy to the next level! Good luck!
P.S. — What do you think of the process? Let us know in the comments. We accept all constructive feedback. It’s the only way we can improve to continue to help out 🙏.
