Posted by Whitney Quesenbery on August 01, 2008 | Comments (0)
Thanks to Victor Lombardi for his post How to Tell a Story and a great summary of elements of a good story. The post illustrates the viral nature of great stories. It starts with a story about how Victor got interested in stories:
"I remember the first time someone impressed upon me the usefulness of storytelling. Back in 2000 a researcher came to Razorfish to study how we worked in order to improve our knowledge sharing. He told me how Secret Service agents studied storytelling so that, if they suddenly found themselves in the back of a car with the President for 5-minutes, they could quickly summarize all the pertinent facts about a situation in a format that was more likely to be absorbed."
Now, think about your last presentation. I bet there was something you really wanted everyone to hear. Did you summarize it in 5 bullet points. Or did you weave it into a short story that would make it compelling and help everyone remember what you said...and why it's important?
Posted by Whitney Quesenbery on July 08, 2008 | Comments (0)
When you tell stories for user experience design, they can be either "impersonal" or"personal." Each can work equally well in different situations and each can fall flat, with the listener launching into a verbal defense like, "Oh how often does THAT happen?" or "Yeah, but that's just an outlier example." If a listener responds to your story in such a manner, then your story was received by their intellect, but didn't reach their emotional core. They understood it but didn't feel it. (Strange how the popular definition of understanding doesn't typically involve feelings.) In this case, try telling the other category of story you didn't tell at first (impersonal or personal).
For example, the story example in the last post is a form of personal story, since it begins, "Imagine if you..." Another form is, "I have a friend Jane who..." These are the beginnings of personal stories because they ask the listener to place themselves in the shoes of someone else or imagine that they were someone else. Some people can do this very effectively, allowing the message of the story to reach both their intellect and their emotions. For those people who aren't as adept at this, try an impersonal story.
"While a small percentage of the US population is visually impaired, so is a small percentage of the world population. However, a small percentage of the world population is A LOT OF PEOPLE. Also, think about all the farmers and people living in rural populations in this country that don't have access to DSL or broadband. These are the
tens of thousands of dial-up people who set their browsers to not download images." No names, just situated data. The "story" more or less happens in the "situated" part.
The intent here is not to make a value judgment, but simply to say that some people have a more empathic connection to the world and some less so. There are appropriate stories for all.
