This week’s lecture was quite fun as it involved a story telling exercise in which we had to use post it notes to draw a story of our morning routine to the gym; we basically had to draw scenes from the moment we woke up to the moment we arrived in class using 8 post it notes.

Besides this our tutor gave us a lecture on how designers are also storytellers. We tell stories though our journey maps, our idea suggestions (storyboards) and even our design process can be seen as a narrative to a movie starting with:

• The Setup: This is where characters are introduced and we also get to see what’s going on around them. The way I applied this to UX is that in the Setup we get to meet our target audience and learn about the issues they face in their lives.
• Confrontation: This is the middle section of a movie when the characters face challenges. In UX this can be compared to the problem solving phase, this is where designers find a solution from all the data gathered.
• Resolution: This is where the protagonist either achieves their goal or fails at it; at this point everyone gets a sense of closure. In UX this could be seen as the stage where the designer successfully tackles and overcomes the problem in hand.

Storytelling in UX Work

I had a glance over Nielsen Norman Group's storytelling study guide and I find new learnings on how it explains how storytelling is a valuable tool in UX design. It helps designers communicate gathered research clearly, build empathy, and get stakeholder support. The guide covers how storytelling can be used to turn user data into relatable stories, find ways to present data effectively to teams, and how to use visual tools like storyboards to explain ideas. Overall, it shows how storytelling is a strong tool that can be used to present ideas, this can make UX work more impactful and easier to understand.

Storytelling in UX Work: Study Guide

Reflection

Overall I found this lecture very helpful as it got me to understand that storytelling can be used to make UX more comprehensible and not boring when it comes to new presenting ideas, or even showcasing data gathered from a concept a designer has in mind. I find this very excellent becuase I feel like I can heavily rely on this to showcase a user’s journey map on how and why an idea is good and should be worked on