Designing a product that connect with users is the cornerstone of the whole User Experience field. It means that features and quality are no longer the only required aspects to succeed, it's more about connecting to underlying emotions and desires, fears and hopes, connecting with the real persona behind. The term product is wide-open used here, so it doesn't only refer to a physical tangible product but also to software, webs, design, brands and even individuals. In this product context, how to arise a higher and deeper connection is, actually, occupying most of my thinking. So, are there any tips to help increase this kind of emotional connection?
Actually, the answer is that there are no silver bullets, but there are some techniques borrowed that can help to obtain better results. Most of the products designed - now referring mainly to software - are created by engineers that try to show up high degrees of engineering expertise and avant-garde technologies. The average user is non-related to engineering or computing at all, so any effort on those areas will be overlooked. Hype around User Experience seems, to me, to attract people trying to improve experiences mostly by enhancing graphic design - obviously, it's not enough. At this point of my exposition, it's more than clear than Interaction Design, as a discipline, is the responsible of extending the visual design with all the flow of information - that is, managing, designing and creating the interaction and transitions between views, data and the user.
Interaction Design is the glue of the product, is the flow that sticks together all the separate parts and determines how everything is related. Relations can be visual, spatial, semantic, emotional, tangible or gesture-based, just to list a few - user's emotions are teased out through correctly chaining this powerful relations. As with movies, Interaction Designers need to create storyboards that sketch interactions and relations between states - as with movies, storyboards need to tell a story, have a continuity, something that weaves relations together into an higher emotional fiber. This secret ingredient is already known: storytelling - it's the art of telling a story, of setting up the environment, of engaging with user's emotions and flowing to a conclusion at the right pace. Including a concise use of storytelling and sketching in User Experience processes can make a real difference. If a product is designed to communicate with users and interact, then communication is the base of the overall experience - improving communication and narrative skills should definitely improve acceptance and connection with users.
As an engineer I lack certain narrative and sketching skills, or at least I recognize that they can be widely improved. I'm aware of the relevance of the use of contextual stories as guides of the user experience design. I guess this connection between arts & science are the main reasons why I recently decided to start coursing Sociology and Human Factors together with a couple of workshops on Creative Narrative - plus an extra workshop on Digital Journalism to improve my writing, although it's focused on Spanish and don't know how would it affect my English. In the process of improving my narrative abilities, I would also love to address storytelling and, as far as I've seen, one of the most relevant eminencies on the topic is Kevin Brooks - part of the User Experience Group of Motorola Labs. Kevin is co-writing a book with Whitney Quesenbery titled "Storytelling for User Experience Design" that looks quite promising.
What do you think about embedding stories in the user experience design process? Already applying storytelling to interaction design? Any tips, references or personal techniques? I would love to hear from you.
Related Content:
- Storytelling for User Experience Design, a book by Kevin Brooks & Whitney Quesenbery
- How to Tell a Story, a post by Victor Lombardi
- Effective Storytelling: A Manual for Beginners, an article by Barry McWilliams
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a book by Joseph Campbell
- A Case for Web Storytelling, an article by Curt Cloninger
- Storytelling 101, a presentation by Ethos3