How to use storytelling to make your design presentations more persuasive
What can we learn about storytelling from The Wizard of Oz?
A few years ago, I was leading a UX team designing a new app from scratch. We had a list of features, user archetypes, and some whiteboard flows. We also had a presentation to give to our leadership team, who’d asked for an update. We didn’t have a working prototype yet, or even visual designs. What could we present to illustrate our ideas?
We decided to tell them a story.
Since humans have been around, we’ve been telling each other stories. Stories are memorable, much easier to recall than facts or numbers. Stories make us curious! When we see a person facing a challenge, we want to find out what will happen. Stories can cause us to feel happy, sad, or excited.
In our case, presenting our ideas in the form of a story helped our leadership team understand how our new app would make someone’s life better. The leaders were enthusiastic about our designs. And as a bonus, writing the story with our product teams helped the UX designers better understand what we were designing.
In this post, I’ll share with you tips I’ve learned about using stories for more persuasive presentations, especially when presenting designs to stakeholders and decision makers.
If this is something you’d like to learn more about, you can book me to bring my virtual class on storytelling to your team!
The elements of a (design) story
All stories, whether in a book, a movie, or a product scenario, should include a few key elements. They need, at a minimum:
A character—this is the user of your product
A goal—something your users wants to attain
A problem—something that is keeping them from achieving their goal (which your product will help with). Sometimes this is more of a need than a problem.
A resolution—your user has attained their goal
As an example, I like to think about another story: The Wizard of Oz. In this story, we have:
A character: Dorothy, a girl from Kansas
Dorothy’s goal: to get back home after she finds herself in Oz
Dorothy’s problem: she doesn’t know how (also, the pesky Wicked Witch of the West keeps getting in her way)
A resolution: she uses her ruby slippers to take her back home and is reunited with her aunt and uncle
In a working session with product managers and engineers, our UX designers came up with a character, a goal, and a problem. We based our elements on what we knew about our product and our users’ needs. We wrote bullet points on a whiteboard and created a realistic scenario for how our app would help our character to reach her goal.
Creating a compelling character
When we’re coming up with a new product, we often talk about user types and market segments. But to tell a good story, we need someone to identify with. Our main character needs to feel like a real person. They need a name and emotions. They probably need a job, or a role, and maybe even some supporting characters—friends, family, or coworkers.
If you already have a persona for your product, you can base your main character on your persona. If your company uses archetypes, you’ll have to add more details to make your character feel like a real person. User archetypes normally don’t include a name or specific identifying info, for example, so you’ll have to create those.
Don’t have personas or archetypes? You can create a character based on what you know about your users. It’s ok if you don’t know everything and have to make up some details. Just remember—creating a character for your story is not the same thing as creating a persona! Personas need to be rigorously researched; your fictional character for your presentation doesn’t. For more details on what personas are, see this article from Nielsen Norman.
Give your character just enough relevant details. You don’t need to write a novel! For example, we know Dorothy lives on a farm in Kansas and that she has an aunt and uncle, but we don’t need to know much else about her family or the farm.
Creating a true goal
Figuring our your character’s goal can be a little tricky. In the Wizard of Oz, you might think that Dorothy’s goal is to find the Wizard, but that’s really just a task she has to complete. Her ultimate goal is to go home, and finding the Wizard is a step to help her reach her main goal.
Your user’s goal (and thus, your character’s goal) is not to use your product. If you think you have figure out their goal, try the “why” test. Ask, “why does my character want to reach this goal?” Asking “why?” is a good way to figure out if you have a goal, or just a task to help them reach a goal. (Side note: this works when you’re creating personas too!) For our presentation, our character’s ultimate goal was to be successful at her job.
If you don’t know what your character wants, you might have to go talk with users, look at user research findings, or read some customer case studies.
Not sure how to find out what your users want? We can help!
Identifying problems
Dorothy encounters lots of problems on her journey, but her biggest obstacle is that she doesn’t know how to get home. In our story, our character’s problem was not having the data she needed.
In your story, choose one or two problems and tell your audience what they’re keeping your character from reaching their goal. You can state your character’s goal and problem in just a sentence or two. For example:
“Dorothy wanted to go back home, but she didn’t know how. She decided to try and find the Wizard to ask for help, but the Wicked Witch sent flying monkeys to stop her.”
Choosing what to show
Showing how your designs will solve your character’s problem is the most important part of your presentation! You can show this in many ways—just make sure you are using visuals, not just words.
What you show depends on where you are in your design process, and what type of response or feedback you want. A high-fidelity prototype, for example, gives people all of the details. This can be great for visualizing what the experience will look and feel like, but can also lead to your audience fixating on things like colors or typography. If you’re not ready for that and want to focus on the high-level features and flow, you could show a storyboard or hand drawn sketches.
During your presentation, you’ll introduce your character, give context, and tell the story while showing visuals that relate to each part of the story. It’s that simple! As this article points out, it’s also helpful because it means you don’t have to build out every single link for a high-fidelity prototype.
Pro-tip: Make sure the visuals match the details of your story. If you’re mentioning a specific error and showing a high-fidelity screen, the visuals need to show us the error. If you mention that your character is driving their car and you’re showing us a storyboard, make sure we can see that the user is driving (show us a steering wheel or an exterior shot).
Ending on a high note
Here’s where you get to the resolution! In the Wizard of Oz, we see Dorothy waking up back in her bed at home, surrounded by friends and family. In our presentation, we ended by having our character launch a successful project. Your story should clearly show that your character’s life is better because of your designs or product.
I also suggest ending with an ask for your audience. For example, maybe you need time to work on a new idea. Maybe you need your leaders to hire more people. Maybe you want the product team to just get excited about the product vision. Be clear about what you’re asking for, now that you’ve given your audience a compelling reason to take action.
Keep in mind…
Storytelling might not be appropriate for every presentation, and a story by itself might not be enough. Sometimes we need to talk about timelines and blockers. Sometimes we need to describe features or go into design specs. When showing designs, however, I always recommend presenting in the form of a story, even if it’s extremely brief. A story can be as short as three sentences: beginning, middle, and end.
TL;DR
Stories will help make your design presentations more persuasive, because they’re memorable, emotional, and make us curious
Create a realistic character with a meaningful goal
Clarify how your designs will solve your character’s problem
Choose an appropriate visual fidelity based on where you are in the process and what you want your audience to focus on
End with an ask for your audience
To learn more
For an overview about ways to use storytelling in design, check out my previous post
Does your design or product team want to improve their storytelling skills? You can book me to bring my virtual class on storytelling for teams to you!
