Storytelling in UXD: It's Not Just for Content

Storytelling in UXD: It's Not Just for Content, Kids - writes Michaela Hackner in a recent article on forumone.com.

Stories can provide a good framework for understanding your users, including their needs, perceptions, experiences, and objectives, as well as how your design can align with or alter them.

It's a good article with several quite useful tips. Take this example, for instance:

... let's pretend you have been selected to redesign a company’s intranet. In preparation, you want to gather some information about the end-users. You decide to do a series of interviews with a representative sample of the client’s employees. During interviews, you ask them to recall and describe their most recent visit to the existing intranet. Why did they visit? What were they hoping find? Did they find it? If so, how quickly? What process did they follow? Were they satisfied with the outcome? Did they find the experience pleasant? How would it have been more pleasant? By such questions, and then just letting users “tell their stories,” you come to find some interesting patterns.

It's easy to see how useful storytelling can be in an everyday project. And the best thing about it: it's fun too. So, go on and give it a try.