Your stories
We've been talking to a lot of people about stories at UX Book Clubs. One of the best things about those events is the way people use stories to explain their ideas. As we say in the book, talking about stories makes people think of stories to tell.
We'd like to hear some of those stories in more detail, so this is an open invitation to share your thoughts about ways of creating and communicating stories as part of your UX work.
Comments
Okay, here is my story:
Inspiration to start NaanMap: ( http://www.NaanMap.com )
When I came in US, I was looking for a way to consume Halal Meal (As kosher for Jews, Halal is for Muslim). For that matter, I asked couple of Software Architects that I met during my Friday Prayer meet-up at local mosque in San Jose Downtown, they showed me the website known as "Zabihah.com", During my initial browsing of Zabihah.com, I found out that you actually can do the search, but it was not prominent, and when I showed it to my friend who was using the Zabihah.com for many years he surprised that they have that feature, basically the UI was a mess and still is, reason he didn't see the search box was because it was way at the end of the page that is filled with unwanted but from monetary point of view Ads & Banners.
At that time they had the ugliest interface and finding the halal restaurant from their website was pain in the butt. This become my inspiration that there should be something different and fresh, and then I came up with the NaanMap idea, although it took some time, but at the end it is a successful venture, at least for me. And then they copied our interface (http://blog.naanmap.com/post/578960129/good-artists-copy).
Posted by: Mohammed Mudassir Azeemi | October 27, 2010 7:35 PM
I was inspired by our Usability NJ book club meeting with WQ and Kevin - and created a story for a new project. Initially wrote the first chapter (scenario) in a Word doc with illustrations, and got this response from the company's Global Director of Solutions and Strategies:
"- just wanted to tell you this is brilliant. We should consider serializing this and selling it as a companion product. I can't wait to see what happens to Fred next!"
Eventually, I took both scenarios and put them in a Powerpoint, adding many more illustrations, and telling the story in audio voice-overs.
(By the way, our hero Fred ended up with a big promotion due to the way the product helped him do his job!)
Posted by: Paul S. Hoffman | October 30, 2010 4:19 PM
If you´re looking for more UX stories: Jan Jursa and his team have compiled an epic bundle of short stories written by 42 User Experience professionals. It´s a free download http://www.scribd.com/doc/40698393/UX-Storytellers
Posted by: Rob Goris | November 5, 2010 5:46 AM