Products and Storytelling
Although this topic has been widely discussed, we need to go a little beyond the cliché “What story does your product tell?”. Delivering a product or service is not your single point of contact with your customer and can not be seen as a story in itself, but as an element within a narrative. Experience always starts before and ends after the use of an item or service.
Storytelling is perhaps the oldest technique of sharing information, long before the invention of writing. Origin stories of how the world came about and how things work already existed and were passed down from person to person. In the end, each story is an experience that transforms the listener.
Why is storytelling is so important?
It’s pretty simple: people’s attention is the most valuable asset in our society. We are bombarded by information from all directions daily, with countless brands and products wanting some of that attention. In contrast, the ability of human beings to spend time exclusively on one thing is quite limited. Some of the more optimistic studies suggest that we can stay focused for 90 minutes at most on any activity, while more pessimistic research suggests that it is possible to focus on something only between 20 to 30 minutes before our minds start to wander.
The human mind wanders about a third of the time and probably as you read this text, you have thought about other, unrelated things. This is where stories stand out. They hold our attention and make us grasp and absorb a message more easily. Thus, narratives are excellent ways to keep the audience focused on your message.
Over time, people have been perfecting the art of storytelling to capture attention through the standard model of three acts, that has not changed much since it was created by Aristotle. Below is an image that sums up virtually all narrative structures we know:
Every story has some mandatory features:
· Context
Which slice are we examining? Which universe are we observing? Which story are we telling?
· Characters
Who is involved? Where are they?
· Incident
What happens that changes the life of the character?
· Conflict
What does the character do to solve problems that arise?
· Climax of history
What is the solution to the problem?
· Character Transformation
The character’s life and worldview is transformed.
· End
The character and context will never be the same.
· Human truth
The story points need to be credible within the context and need to resonate with the viewer. Human truth is what ties your story to the life of the viewer, it is what allows the person to identify with your message.
Yeah, but so what? What does all this have to do with UX beyond the product?
Basically patterns. All the stories and experiences have patterns. It seems hard, right? But it is not.
All stories, as well as use cases with a product or service, have two axes: the time axis, in which actions take place over time; and the tension axis, as every action influences the emotional state of the user (or character).
Below is a common model of a user journey:
Here a model of a Disney story:
This is Cinderella, but could describe any Disney story.
The two models above are similar, aren’t they? Actually, they are the same. Experiences and memorable stories have the same shape and structure, in that a person who has a problem needs to solve it in the best possible way in order to better his or her life.
That said, a great way to use storytelling for UX is to create user journeys and experience mapping. A good narrative structure can help you create a good experience, taking into account the user touchpoints with the service and the emotional response it generates in your user.
But what makes it a good experience?
There is a concept in psychology, coined by Daniel Kahneman, who says that people do not remember their experiences completely, but rather remember the average of the most intense moment, the peak, and the end. This concept is called peak-end rule . Therefore, the duration of the experience does not have much impact on our perception, an effect known as duration neglect.
Experiment 1
Experiment 2
In this experiment, the patients needed to evaluate the amount of pain involved in a treatment. Thus, patient B’s experience was theoretically worse because the duration was much greater. Surprisingly, patient A evaluated the experience (that was much shorter) as being the worst one, precisely because the average of pain peaks and the ending was much more intense.
When we think of a service like Uber, what are the peaks that impact us?
The fact that the car is nice and you do not need to reach into your wallet when you reach your destination.
What about in the story of Cinderella?
She loses her glass slipper and ultimately, lives happily ever after.
Basically we remember the worst or the best (in this case the most intense moment), and the end to the story or any service. And this is exactly what happens to our products. People judge the experience by the peaks and the end of its journey, and if the tangible part of your product is the only high point of your story, you will certainly have problems.
How can I control the negative?
In fact, you do not control the negative aspects, but rather minimize them.Therefore, the story mapping has to be clear so that you know your major issues and can compensate them with good peaks.
Again, Disney is a good example of this, with the theme park considered by many to be the “happiest place in the world.” There are very long lines, high prices, noise and other problems, but the “magic” of the place compensates for all these negative aspects. The high points are so memorable that failures come to have low impact. When you go to leave, all you walk away with are the good memories of the place.
Your experience must have positive peaks and a definitive final experience to make up for any problems that may arise during the use of your product. Example: When you finish reading an article on medium, there is related content at the end should you wish to read other articles. The experience could be different if the links were lures to sell bad products. Returning to Uber, the end experience that you can pay even if you have lost your card is much better than having the value of your trip rounded up and/or receiving the wrong amount of change.
We need to focus our efforts to create positive peaks and a final positive experience because this is the difference between creating a good product that no one cares about and a product with (minor, inevitable) problems, but that is perceived as fantastic and leaves a good impression.
For further reading:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/08/user-memory-design-how-to-design-for-experiences-that-last/
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/better-user-experience-using-storytelling-part-one/
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/better-user-experience-through-storytelling-part-2/
http://alistapart.com/article/storytelling
https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/simplifying-ux-design-through-storytelling/
http://www.wqusability.com/storytelling.html
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/09/08/6-storytelling-techniques-for-great-interaction-design/
https://hbr.org/2014/10/why-your-brain-loves-good-storytelling
