Cover image for Storytelling for User Experience

Storytelling for User Experience

Author Kevin Brooks , Whitney Quesenbery
Release Date: 2010/04/01
ISBN: 9781457102431
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Book Description

Stories help communicate user research, put a human face on data, communicate design ideas, and create a sense of shared history and purpose. This book will help you find techniques you can put to use in your practice.

Table of Contents

  1. Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design
  2. Dedication
  3. SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly
  4. List of Stories
  5. How to Use This Book
    1. Who Should Read This Book?
    2. What’s in This Book?
    3. What Comes with This Book?
  6. Frequently Asked Questions
    1. Why stories in user experience design?
    2. Is storytelling a new UX methodology?
    3. Can I start using stories in the middle of a project?
    4. I don’t think I tell stories well. What do I do?
    5. How do I create a good story?
    6. How much does the audience matter?
    7. Is it OK to use other people’s stories?
    8. Is this a book about performing stories?
    9. Do you cover storytelling in games?
    10. What’s next for storytelling in user experience design?
  7. Foreword
  8. 1. Why Stories?
    1. What is a story?
    2. There are many types of stories in UX design
      1. Stories that describe a context or situation
      2. Stories that illustrate problems
      3. Stories that help launch a design discussion
      4. Stories that explore a design concept
      5. Stories that prescribe the result of a new design
    3. More work? Not really!
    4. More reading
    5. Summary
  9. 2. How UX Stories Work
    1. Stories are more than just narrative
    2. Stories have many roles in user experience design
      1. Stories explain
      2. Stories engage the imagination
      3. Stories spark new ideas
      4. Stories create a shared understanding
      5. Stories persuade
    3. Maybe you’re not convinced
    4. Summary
  10. 3. Stories Start with Listening (and Observing)
    1. UX design requires good listening skills
      1. The users
      2. Business stakeholders
      3. Our colleagues
    2. Listening and observing leads to better understanding
    3. Being listened to is addictive
    4. Learn to be a good listener
    5. Teach your team to listen
    6. More reading
    7. Summary
  11. 4. The Ethics of Stories
    1. Good research ethics—good storytelling
    2. Professional societies give us relevant ethics for stories
    3. Acknowledge your own influence
    4. Tell the story accurately
    5. Keep the story authentic
    6. End the story well
    7. More reading
    8. Summary
  12. 5. Stories as Part of a UX Process
    1. UX is a cross-disciplinary practice
    2. Using stories in user experience design is not a new idea
    3. Stories can be part of many UX activities
      1. When you are collecting input
      2. When you are exploring user research and other information
      3. When you experiment with design ideas
      4. When you want to test your designs
      5. When you need to share (or sell) your ideas
    4. More reading
    5. Summary
  13. 6. Collecting Stories (as Part of Research)
    1. The best stories come from being there
    2. Other sources of stories are all around you
    3. Listen for stories
    4. Get groups to tell stories to each other
    5. Explore memorable incidents
    6. You can observe stories, too
    7. Tips for collecting stories
      1. Don’t get distracted
      2. Create a structure that supports story collection
      3. Keep the conversation flowing naturally
      4. When all else fails
    8. Write stories into your notes
    9. More reading
    10. Summary
  14. 7. Selecting Stories (as Part of Analysis)
    1. Your first audience: yourself
    2. What are you looking for?
    3. Finding the stories
    4. Finding stories in data
    5. Building stories into personas
    6. Summary
  15. 8. Using Stories for Design Ideas
    1. Stories evolve through the design process
    2. Brainstorming for new stories: Generative stories
    3. Brainstorming helper: The storytelling game
    4. Developing user research stories: Generative stories (again)
    5. Incorporating your user research into the brainstorming game
    6. Moving from brainstorming to concept: Expressive stories
    7. Stories that document design: Prescriptive stories
      1. The tech-spec story
    8. Stories can be part of the brand story
    9. More reading
    10. Summary
  16. 9. Evaluating with Stories
    1. Using stories to create usability tasks
    2. Turn user stories into “instant” usability tasks
    3. Turning tasks into stories
    4. Collecting stories just in time for usability testing
    5. Using stories for reviews
    6. Collecting stories during a usability test
    7. More reading
    8. Summary
  17. 10. Sharing Stories (Managing Up and Across)
    1. Don’t worry—everyone is a storyteller
    2. Help the audience build the story you tell
    3. If you don’t know your audience well, try listening
    4. A few audiences you may meet
      1. Stories for leaders
      2. Stories for managers
      3. Stories for a technical audience
      4. When you have several audiences at once
    5. More reading
    6. Summary
  18. 11. Crafting a Story
    1. What do we mean by “craft”?
    2. Stories get better with practice
    3. Sometimes stories fail
    4. Think carefully about your goals
    5. Summary
  19. 12. Considering the Audience
    1. The relationship between the audience and the story
    2. Details from user research help ground stories
    3. What if they think they know, but they don’t?
    4. Mirror stories are stories about ourselves
    5. The relationship between you and the audience
    6. How much are you like the audience?
    7. Is your relationship to the story the same as the audience’s?
    8. Do you bring different pieces of the puzzle?
    9. Help them get from here to there
    10. Use stories to advocate
    11. Bring them home safely
    12. More reading
    13. Summary
  20. 13. Combining the Ingredients of a Story
    1. Perspective
      1. Your own relationship to the story affects your choice of perspective
        1. Realist tales
        2. Confessional tales
        3. Impressionist tales
      2. How to add perspective
    2. Characters
      1. How to create characters
      2. Screenwriting offers good lessons for developing characters
      3. Personas can be your characters
    3. Context
      1. How to add context
        1. Physical context
        2. Emotional context
        3. Sensory context
        4. Historical context
        5. Memory context
      2. Context exercise
    4. Imagery
      1. How to add imagery
    5. Language of the story
    6. Putting the ingredients together
    7. Summary
  21. 14. Developing Structure and Plot
    1. Story structures are patterns
    2. Story structure helps the audience, the author, and the story
    3. Useful story structures for UX stories
      1. Prescriptive structures
      2. Hero stories
      3. Familiar to foreign
      4. Framed stories
        1. Me-Them-Me
        2. Now-Then-Now
        3. Here-There-Here
      5. Layered stories
      6. Contextual interludes
    4. Using plot
      1. Playing with plot
      2. The structure/plot balance
    5. Choosing a story structure and plot
    6. Stories are more than the sum of their parts
    7. More reading
    8. Summary
  22. 15. Ways to Tell Stories
    1. Telling oral stories
      1. Telling a story in person lets you connect with the audience
      2. Telling a story in person adds performance elements
      3. Practice, practice, practice
      4. Develop your own performance style
      5. Manage the pace of your story
      6. A few words of caution
      7. Telling a story when you can’t see your audience
      8. Choose the right moment to tell a story
    2. Written stories
      1. Written stories allow you to reflect and edit
      2. We fill in the blanks in stories
    3. Visual stories
      1. Comics let you share a conversation
      2. Storyboards can communicate a story visually
      3. Visual images can add detail or show the big picture
    4. Multimedia, video, or animated stories
      1. From writing to shooting
      2. You can make a video without a camera
    5. Putting stories in your reports
    6. Make presentations a story of their own
    7. Choosing the medium for your story
    8. More reading
    9. Summary
  23. 16. Try Something New
  24. A. Acknowledgments
    1. From Whitney
    2. From Kevin
  25. B. About the Authors
    1. Whitney Quesenbery
    2. Kevin Brooks
    3. How they got together to write this book
  26. C. Contributors
  27. Index
  28. SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly
  29. Copyright
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