Why are we learning storytelling skills for UX?
Storytelling is at the heart of all UX work. Why? Because it lives in almost every deliverable as well as in organizational culture. Let’s look at UX deliverables and storytelling first…
Personas, Journeys, Blueprints all rely on storytelling
Personas tell a story about user scenarios, tasks, and roles. Journey maps tell a story about stages over time and pain and opportunities across channels. Service Blueprints tell a story about how customers and employees as well as back-end systems interact to execute a service or service/product interaction.
Even organizations have a UX story
UX management is measured by maturity or where your organization is at in the UX maturity lifecycle. UX maturity stages are characterized by stories. Coincidentally, organizations that have greater UX maturity, tell more user stories!
So, why is storytelling so valuable?
Mainly because storytelling transfers user empathy to stakeholders like product managers, business leaders, developers, and others. Stories share user “day in the life” snapshots of user context. Context of use provides a valuable window into understanding under what conditions (and where) your service, product, or experience is being used. Note this is different from ease of use which illustrates how easy your design is to interact with…
Storytelling for UX has 3 main purposes
- Storytelling acts as a communication essential.
- Storytelling acts as a design tool.
- Storytelling acts to communicate user insights and intelligence.
This is why I like to say storytelling is the “master skill” for UX designers and researchers. The more user story you have to draw from, the more relevant your insights and recommendations will be to your stakeholders.
In this upcoming Masterclass, we will learn Storytelling skills with an aim to improve design decision communication among teams.
Topics covered in this Masterclass:
- You will learn Story structure, and how to use it to aid in design decision conversations.
- Storytelling UX essentials- how to get the best user stories with the highest business impact (ROI).
- Microstorytelling- going viral with user insights.
- Improv- going into Mentalizing to activate ‘hidden empathy’ for user scenarios.
- Using Story as a Research tool- using ‘Story-mapping‘ to communicate your user journey.
- Using Story as a Design tool- using ‘Question-storming‘ to warm up teams to user needs discovery.
- Turning your team into a Story-centric UX group: communicating to stakeholders and non-UX teams.
Watch a short promo of what you will learn…
Learn more: Storytelling: strategies for getting user needs embedded in teams and designs (Masterclass)
