You are probably already hearing these stories. All you have to do is make a conscious effort to recognize them as stories and collect them. You can also make a note of what pieces of the stories might be missing that you can fill in later with additional research.
In the human-centered design process, this is part of the understanding stage. Your story focus in this stage is to listen for stories that provide an interesting experience, viewpoint, or way of describing an experience.
When you are exploring user research and other information
The stories you collect complement other data, from site logs to functional analysis. They can provide explanations for what surveys, usage analysis, or other data are telling you, or point to places where you need more information. During your analysis, you can select the stories that illuminate the data, as shown in Figure 5.3.
Figure 5.3
Stories illuminate data during analysis.
Although the user research team is still the primary audience for these stories, you are already thinking about which stories and which story images will resonate with designers, developers, managers, or anyone else who may rely on your work.
In the human-centered design process, this is part of both understanding and specifying, as you transform your first understanding into a view of the needs that the project must meet. Your story focus in this stage is to select the stories that are compelling examples, those which illustrate patterns and personas.
When you experiment with design ideas
Stories are raw material for design innovation. Story fragments can stimulate new ideas. Stories from the field can describe problems to solve or scenarios of how things might be improved. They can help you explore new ideas or test an early draft of a design (see Figure 5.4). Because stories focus on people and their motivations, they can help realign a drifting or divergent design process back toward the people who will use the product.
Figure 5.4
Stories can lead to design ideas.
In this stage, your audience begins to grow. The stories you create are valuable to the user experience team, but also must be credible to the full product team.
As you and your colleagues become accustomed to using stories, you will find that you have a wider choice of story formats and more ways to use them.
In the human-centered design process, this is part of the design stage, as you start to envision a new design and user experience. Your story focus in this stage is about using stories to help generate ideas and keep the emerging design grounded in real user needs. You can also create new stories that show the design in context and action.
When you want to test your designs
Stories even have a function in evaluation (see Figure 5.5). They can give you a scenario to kick off a task or define what you want participants to do during the test.
Figure 5.5
Stories make good scenarios for testing tasks.
Going back to these original stories will ensure that the new product has stayed true to your user needs and initial inspiration.
In the human-centered design process, this is part of the evaluation stage, as a check that the design works as intended for real people. Your story focus in this stage is on reusing and adapting your stories to be suitable as test scenarios.
When you need to share (or sell) yourideas
We may like to think that a great design or a great idea will sell itself, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, a story can be just the right number of words needed to explain what that picture (or design prototype) is all about. Stories become part of the connections between the user research and design (see Figure 5.6). They can explain why a design will work because they connect the design with the inspiration for the designer’s idea.
Figure 5.6
The team can share ideas by sharing stories.
More reading
“Notes on Design Practice: Stories and Prototypes as Catalysts for Communication,” Tom Erickson, in Scenario-Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System Development, edited by John Carroll
Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human Computer Interaction, John Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson
Software for Use by Larry Constantine & Lucy Lockwood: www.foruse.com
User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, JoAnn Hackos and Janice (Ginny) Redish
AIGA, An Ethnography Primer: www.aiga.org/resources/content/3/7/4/5/documents/ethnography_primer.pdf
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