We had Rachel Orr and Pearse O’Neill from Big Motive came in this week to speak us through how they use storytelling in their design.
Rachel and Pearse started off this weeks lecture explains what storytelling is and how we can bring this into our design process.
What is storytelling in Design
What makes a great story – Storytelling is a method of communication that has been around for centuries and with the use of technology we have the able to create relationship between the users of our product or services through storytelling.
It was presented to us how transferable storytelling is and how it can be used as a method of transferring information all by creating a story to present to your audience. It was made clear of the importance of developing the understanding of the story you area wanting to tell from the beginning of the design process to ensure you can portray your story accurately. Creating a narrative around the problem that you are wanting to provide a solution for can help the development of reaching the end goals and meeting the needs of your users.
Every great product behind with a great story – Sarah Doody
Big Motive presented to us; Aristotles 7 elements of storytelling in a UX setting:
- Character – This is the user of a product or service. We must aim to get to know our users and who we are designing for establishing the users wants and needs. Big Motive take the approach of gaining insight about their users by creating personas, mind-maps and empathy maps to create a better understand of their users mindset. The creation of personas, mind-maps and empathy maps will determine the needs and paint point that might take place in the development of a story.
- Plot – The plot is the definition of what the users goal is when using a service or product. Big motive mentioned how they use storyboard and user journeys to lay out the potential performance of their user in order to fully understand their needs.
- Theme – The them is where you develop your present when aiming to come away from competition. The theme might aim to come to the conclusion of the obstacle and barriers that user might be facing when trying use a competitive service already on the market.
- Dialogue – This is the focus point of designs when you are aiming to build a bond with the user using little but effect communication. The correct dialogue will open up the service you are providing to a certain audience for example in an informal or formal tone. Big Motive gave an example of changing children’s code and how this changes the layout and language that would be use to present information to a child in comparison to how it would be given to an adult.
- Decor – Visual and graphic elements of any project must be considered to ensure we are meeting the needs on the story we are trying to present. This point is down to the visual appearance that you are pressing to your users. Big Motive gave an example that if an application is design without visual identity consider then the appearance will not meet the users expectations and they could go find a more suitable service that looks more professional and user friendly.
- Melody – This is where design patters come in and how it is present to users and our expectation on how they will make them feel.
- Spectacle – This is the aim of creating a design that will stand out and catch the eyes of users and will make them want to revisit the service. This is the method behind giving the user what they want in a unique setting that they can’t find anywhere else.
Storytelling in Practice
Rachel and Pearce they gave us some examples of how storytelling has been put into real project recently.
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Aflo –
This is a application that provides assistance to user that need assistance with inhalers and an insight into help users with asthma and COPD and other breathing diffculties.
Big motive took us through their process when working on this project and demonstrated to us how they focused on their user and the ways in which they told their story behind this application.
They created empathy maps for the potential user and users with breathing conditions. From her they wireframes solutions to highlight the main issues that were occurring for example how to administer inhalers properly. Big Motive spoke through how they reached their themE by aiming to create a calming brand that represent bubbles to showcase air and breathing and that the tone that they were going for was clear, calm and understand to keep the user as comfortable as possible. They moved on from here to storyboard to determine the steps that would be taken by a typically user of an inhale this lead to feedback then given an insight on how to improve before finalising designs.
To conclude, I thought this was a really enjoyable talk with Big Motive this week. I got an insightful look it how I can develop a story further and methods behind this that I will aim to incorporate into my project. Getting to hear how Big Motive take on research was really interesting to hear them speak through each of there steps and the points they made I would like to focus on for further projects.