Storytelling in depth - 2 workshops

Posted by Whitney Quesenbery on August 9, 2010 | Comments (0)

Two opportunities to dive in to the practice of storytelling for UX coming up in the Boston Area:

Crafting Stories for Better Design - half-day workshop at UPA Boston

In April, Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks released their book, Storytelling for User Experience. In June, they gave an overview talk of the same title at the Mini-UPA Conference, with attendees clamoring for more. So back by popular demand, Whitney and Kevin return to UPA Boston to teach an in-depth, hands-on workshop for those interested in learning how to craft their own user experience stories.

Stories are an effective way to collect, analyze and share qualitative information from user research, spark design imagination and help us create usable products. We all tell stories all the time, but to craft a story for a particular audience, for a particular reason and effect, requires some instruction and modeling, a reasonable amount of practice, and a lot of listening.

In this half day workshop, participants will learn the mechanics of storytelling as it applies to oral and written presentation through instruction, modeling and practice. There will be a number of small and larger group exercises that reinforce introduced concepts and allow participants to practice telling UX stories in a safe atmosphere of constructive critique. Participants are encouraged to bring their own UX story material to develop in the workshop, with the understanding that their stories will be shared with the workshop public.

• When: Saturday, August 28, 2010
• Instructors: Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks
• Registration: Boston UPA website - http://www.upaboston.org/

Practical Storytelling: Crafting and Telling Stories for UX and Life - 2 day course in the Bentley College Certificate Program

Storytelling is the art of crafting and presenting life and all of its varied experiences in enjoyable, rational chunks that invite the audience to feel as much as think. As a part of user experience design, stories serve to ground the work in a real context. They are an effective way to collect, analyze and share qualitative information from user research, spark design imagination and help us create usable products. But most importantly, they help keep people at the center of the work. However a UX project is started, in the end it will be used by people. Stories connect what we know about those people (the users) to the design process, even if the users can't be part of the team.

In this course, students will learn to craft and present oral stories for UX work or from material in their personal lives. They will learn the mechanics of the craft, which includes listening skills, guiding the audience, story structures, and managing the relationships between the teller, the story and the audience.

• When: Saturday, August 28, 2010
• Instructor: Kevin Brooks
• Registration: Bentley College - http://www.bentley.edu/ux-certificate/index.cfm

Storytelling for UX: a UIE Virtual Seminar

Posted by Whitney Quesenbery on July 23, 2010 | Comments (0)

Registration is open for my UIE Virtual Seminar on August 5th.

I'll talk a little bit about the role that stories can play in your work and how they can help you present your design ideas in a more compelling way. When you tell your story well, you'll get buy-in for the design and you'll have everyone on the same page. I'll use some new case studies that provide solid examples of how this can work and examples of how simple an effective story can be.

There's a full description of the Storytelling for UX Virtual Seminar on the UIE site along with registration information. Use code WHITNEY when you register to get lifetime access to the recording.

Here's a short preview of what I'll cover: