In this presentation, I explain how using storytelling to get your message to users. The presentation covers the importance of using empathy and personality to evoke actions across the various devices that access the web. It ends with a brief discussion on talking authentically with users rather than at users.
Story telling has been around for centuries.
Even before we had any understandable language we told stories.
40,000 years ago
Evolved into oral story telling through song, spoken word
beings to cast their experiences in narrative form
written word came along.
Stories have been carved, scratched, painted, printed or inked onto wood or bamboo, ivory and other bones, pottery, clay tablets, stone, palm-leaf books, skins (parchment), bark cloth, paper, silk, canvas, and other textiles, recorded on film, and stored electronically in digital form.
where do we go from here?
The internet. Full of cat videos, unicorns and rainbows.
All the content in the world you could ever hope to read in one place on one little screen.
When the internet first started, it was about talking at people. It was like standing on a soapbox shouting out to a crowd. Hoping that someone was going to listen to what you had to say. This lead to a lot of this type of web design
But what should you do instead
The web is the future of story telling.
Future designers, project managers, account executives and anyone else who will ever touch a digital project needs to find a way to relate to their consumers rather than shout at them. We’ve seen a lot of success with this in the rise of social media and blogs.
Like Medium. Allow you to blog but each post feels like it is part of a larger story.
Accomplished by page transitions at the bottom that load the next page without actually leaving the page you are on. Indicators of how long a particular post is as well
Sites like the evolution of the James Bond car tell a story of 007 and his cars throughout the decades.
These sites create an experience for the users. Rather than just browsing them gain an invested interest in the content, both emotionally and physically.
This is creating empathy.
A good design requires knowledge of various design techniques, design principles, business requirements, technical constraints and the most important, understanding users, their problems, motifs and eventually goals. Understanding people (in this case users) to the extent that we can understand and share their emotions is empathy. That is an essential characteristic needed for a successful design, yet many web designers miss it. I would go even further and say that humility and overcoming your own ego are necessities. At least, it is necessary to create a balance between ego and empathy.
Understanding your users is one of the most overlooked aspects of every design. Brands and companies focus on the business goals rather than the people who they are targeting.
not just as a much of numbers but who they are, what do they like, where do they go, what’s their home life like. This all helps you create a persona.
Use your knowledge of your users to then create a personality for your site, whether it’s Newfoundland Tourism, Coke, or Marie’s MiniMart. Your site is your story teller and they need to be engaging.
People seem to have an easier time seeing through smoke & mirrors through digital environments than they do just speaking to each other. Always be authentic.
Use simple one-word options to create your personality. Using pictures of people you think match your personality can help you craft that perfect site identity.
MailChimp and Freddie Von Chimpheimer III
Just like a real person, the way the site speaks to users carries the personality.