UX storytelling with personas

What stories have to do with UX

From an early age, we all have a very clear idea of how a good story should go and what elements need to be in it to make it feel "right" and evoke satisfying emotions. Stuck in your head. That's because stories follow archetypal patterns: Hero's Journey or "From rags to riches," etc.
Likewise, customers have an idea of what they expect from a product they want to purchase. If that product meets that expectation, they have a good UX. However, that's not all. Customers expect a good product not only to serve its purpose, but also to look good and feel good to use. If this were otherwise, no one would need to worry about home furnishings - after all, the metal shelves from the basement serve the same purpose as the chic designer shelves in the living room.

The same applies to the path to the product. Customers also want positive experiences and emotions on their customer journey, not to be confused or go astray.

Storytelling is a proven way to do just that. 

User Stories in product development

User stories are worth their weight in gold in product development. They tell a story about the people who will use the product or service and their reasons for using it. With a good story, the team sees the product from the customer's perspective. This requires personas that appear in the story, including a primary persona who will buy the product. The design of the product and the customer journey are based on this persona, e.g.:

"I am Anne, 35 years old. In my circle of friends, someone recently lost his job due to the consequences of a bad accident and is now, in addition to the health consequences, also penniless. That scares me, so I'm going to take out disability insurance. ..."

The team already knows data-driven persona Anne, including her income, living situation, habits, channels through which she can be reached, and pain points. The experience from the story adds another pain point, the fear that something similar could happen to her. Based on this story, the team can now develop a product and customer journey suitable for Anne. If they get it right, Anne will have a good UX and recommend the company to others.

The advantage of storytelling is that stories are better remembered than dry data and requirement profiles. They also touch on an emotional level, lead to empathy and ultimately to a better understanding of what the product should do and how the customer wants to be addressed. Stories make complex ideas easier to present and can therefore ensure more efficient communication within the team and a better focus on the goal. If a story is not coherent and there is a risk of developing the product in the wrong direction, this is more noticeable with storytelling, so that any stumbling blocks in the UX can be eliminated even before the customer comes into contact with the product. 

Storytelling and UX design in marketing

We can think of the Customer Journey as a story where the customer is the hero who must lift a treasure (product) to solve a problem (pain point).

The story could be about Gerd, 63, for example: "I've finally become a grandfather and now I want to meet my grandchild. I want to travel in an environmentally friendly way to leave the new earthling as intact a world as possible. I will look for a suitable train connection on the Internet."

A good UX design helps lead the story to a happy ending: In the case of an online purchase or when the customer informs himself online, i.e. the hero starts his journey, the design must be such that he or she continues, clicks on. Right at the start, there needs to be a clear message, the title of the story. Further information must then be portioned and positioned in such a way that the customer doesn't lose his way and get stuck in the wrong place like Odysseus. Ideally, customers in the Western world follow the information from right to left, then down, then right to left again, etc., with little but important information in each chapter, clear paths, and a cliffhanger at the end of each section. In this way, the team guides the customer safely through the page, like the hero of a story through an adventure.

At the same time, emotions must not be lost sight of despite all the functionality. The pain points must be in focus all the time. After all, the goal of the entire customer journey is to eliminate the pain points by means of the product.

If a site or product isn't well designed on a visceral level, the "gut" tells the customer, "Abort the journey and look elsewhere," even if everything else is working well.

Usability testing with real users is a good complement to storytelling in UX design. Here, you can specifically ask about the emotions that the page has triggered in the customer.
However, if you know your data-driven persona perfectly and tailor both stories and product to them, you can be successful without this effort.

Storytelling on the product

Once the product has been purchased, there is first of all a win situation - for the company. For the customer, too, in the ideal case, namely when the product fulfills its purpose and evokes positive emotions: win-win. This can be further triggered beyond the product itself by linking the product with stories that stick, make people smile, make the difference to a competitor's product that may look the same, and thus create an emotional bond and thus customer loyalty. For example, the stories of Berry, the plantation bear on the Kaba cocoa, encouraging slogans in the yogurt lid, or an imprint on the Crunch muesli package from Ovaltine:

"How does Crunch actually sound? - Crunch muesli sounds like...

• the walk in the forest, when the branches break under the shoes...
• the jump into the ball pool, for which you are actually already much too big...
• the baking paper that baked in the oven crisp...
• scratching your head over an unsolvable math problem
• a dumped Lego pack, its bricks pattering on the floor."

Such mini-stories elevate the customer to the protagonist, make positive images appear before the eye and make you smile - the customer has a nice UX and associates the product with positive emotions.

If you know your data-driven buyer persona, you can perfectly tailor this type of storytelling to them and inspire your target audience.