Aristotle’s Storytelling Framework

Jeroen van Geel, one of the brilliant minds behind Johnny Holland, wrote an interesting article about storytelling: Aristotle’s Storytelling Framework for Interactive Products.

Throughout the centuries people have told stories to share knowledge between generations, but also to simply entertain. Storytelling is an important skill each interaction designer should have. It helps us create more engaging products and services. But how should we start doing this? I’ve been thinking about a simple framework that provides a direction for interaction design work.

Jeroen goes on to describe his own storytelling framework, based on: Aristotle and ... 1. Plot, 2. Character, 3. Theme, 4. Diction, 5. Melody, 6. Decor and 7. Spectacle.

A very interesting article. Speaking of Aristotle and his other famous framework - Ethos, Pathos, Logos - this is a nice little YouTube video:

So, how does Ethos, Pathos and Logos fit into your webdesign? ui-patterns.com has a good article that tries to answer this question: Designing for logos, pathos, and ethos.

When speaking in public, Aristotle claimed that persuasion relies on the character of the speaker (credibility/ethos), the emotional state of the hearer (pathos), and in the argument (logos) itself. Although Aristotle’s principles only addressed how to effectively speak in public, they also ring true when communicating by other means: writing, photographing, painting, or even designing for the web.

Another article worth reading.