Storytelling for UX Designers

Jan 19

Storytelling is how you influence others

As a UX designer, you will spend the majority of your time convincing others your ideas and solutions are the correct ones. It’s a highly underrated skill that is rarely taught in school or boot camps but is expected in the workplace. The further you get in your career, the more important this skill becomes.

Pie chart that shows 80% Influencing others, 10% drawing boxes, 10% asking questions

This article is for deck builders & document makers

If you are someone that needs to present your ideas now, or in the future, this is the right article for you. While there are many ways to influence others, I will primarily focus on storytelling within the context of slide presentations and writing documents.

If you are looking for a tutorial on how to construct outdoor patios, this probably isn’t for you. da dum tss

Align your story to your audience

“Everyone wants to be a star, or at least to feel that the story is talking to or about [them] personally.”

— Chad Hodge

Great storytellers emotionally connect their stories to their audience, which requires them to understand their audience as people first. What are they interested in? What are their current goals/challenges? Why is my story important to my audience? Most people in tech care about one thing - making better products, faster. As a UX Designer, they also care about your perspective of the user’s experience (and not the things you’ve done).

Therefore, the best stories you can tell should be framed around the user, and provide metrics that speak to making better products, faster. Some other rules of thumb are making your story:

Digestible

Avoid jargon and acronyms
Use visuals in place of words
Use simple sentences (3rd grade reading level)

Trustworthy

Argue all sides, make sure all your stakeholder’s perspectives are represented
Bring data, quantitative if possible

Relatable

Have stories focused around users
Include customer quotes

Don’t make your audience wait

The diagram on the right (or bottom on mobile) is typically how people tell stories.

This is problematic because the most relevant information is often at the end of the story but attention decay occurs as the volume of information increases.

Start with what’s most important

I flip the script by positioning the most important information at the front when my audience is most attentive.

Your goal is to connect your audience with the value of your story by letting them know what’s at stake.

Barbara Minto’s book “The Pyramid Principle” does a good job illustrating why starting with the recommendation or key message is so much more effective.

Have an appendix

Including an appendix is a good way to help support your story with secondary resources and references.

But more importantly, an appendix helps me feel comfortable removing adjacent ideas from my story to the appendix.

Additionally, tracking down information in a large organization can be painful, so an appendix is one way to reach new audiences and keep existing ones coming back to your information hub.

Get to the point

Often times as a designer I want to show the audience how much work I’ve put in, how I’ve toiled, iterated and bled (metaphorically) for this project. But the goal is to not describe every detail but to instead summarize the salient points.

This also applies to visuals and diagrams. A screenshot of sticky notes doesn’t really do much for the audience. They want to know what you’ve learned from talking to people. What are the key highlights? Be Succinct, don’t describe every detail, get to the point.

An exercise I do when writing is asking myself “so what?” This helps me reconsider each piece of information’s relevance to the audience. If I’m unsure of the relevance, I add it to the appendix. This helps keep my main story short and concise to both elevate the relevancy, as well as maximize audience attention.

Exude confidence

“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”

— Dale Carnegie

The unfortunate truth is that people evaluate content based on their emotions. In order to appeal to people’s emotions, you need to sound confident, even if don’t consider yourself the subject matter expert. This means you need to do your proper research in order to make clear confident statements that are supported with facts and data. Additionally, you can appear confident if you:

Use an active voice

Active voice is when the subject of a sentence performs the verb’s action. Sentences in the active voice have a strong, direct, and clear tone.

Example:
The product was well-received by our users. (passive voice)

Our users loved the product. (active voice)

Remove windups

Windups are phrases that set up an idea to be expressed in a sentence. This can add unnecessary complexity to simple statements.

Example:
According to the survey results, our product has better brand recognition than our competitors. (windup)

Our product has better brand recognition than our competitors. (no windup)

Don’t hedge

Hedging makes your statements less direct and undermines your credibility. Replace words like “we think” with “we will.”

Example:
We believe that our users dislike the onboarding process. (hedging)

We have learned through 30 user interviews that users dislike the onboarding process. (not hedging)

Avoid weasel words

Weasel words are words that give an anonymous authority the credit. You can combat this by making objective clinical assertations.

Example:
Most people think that our logo is boring. (weasel words)

45 of the 50 participants preferred colorful logos and round shapes. (no weasel words)

Pro tip: If are writing/presenting on a topic, it means others already see you as a subject matter expert.

Tell them what you want

What is the outcome you want to happen after your audience has heard your story? This requires you to have a clear idea of the outcome your story is driving towards. Your story should communicate the stakes involved if the outcome you are driving for isn’t fulfilled.

A prevalent example of this can be seen on Youtube. Most videos end with the goal for their audience - to like and subscribe. They contextualize the action by iterating the stakes. If you want to see more like and subscribe and if you don’t like and subscribe, you may not see the content you like.

Pro tip: making your audience laugh is a great way to simultaneously exude confidence and keep your audience engaged.

Spice Girls - Wannabe. I can’t explain the joke. If you know, you know.

In closing…

Mastering storytelling can be difficult. There are a lot of perspectives and information to consider, and choosing the right words and information can seem like an insurmountable feat. This gets better with time, and no one is perfect the first time. The most effective way to improve is to surround yourself with a trustworthy group of product people that are willing to provide feedback and critique.