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.