Cognitive Storytelling in User Interfaces

Building a Movie and Onboarding a User: Shared Principles 🎬📱 At first glance, crafting a compelling film and designing an effective app onboarding experience might seem unrelated. However, both guide an audience through a structured journey, capture attention, and lead to a satisfying conclusion. Here's how storytelling principles can enhance user onboarding: 1. 😡 Conflict: The Hook That Keeps Users Engaged - In Film: Conflict drives the narrative, creating tension and propelling the story forward. - In Onboarding: Identify the user's problem or need—the "conflict" your app aims to resolve. 2. 🦸♂️ Protagonist: The User as the Hero of Their Own Journey - In Film: The protagonist shapes the narrative; the audience connects with their journey. - In Onboarding: Empower users to feel in control as they progress toward their goals. 3. 🎯 Goal: A Clear Destination for the User - In Film: The protagonist's goal motivates their actions and directs the story. - In Onboarding: Clearly articulate what users can achieve with your app and how to get there. 4. 🧭 Structure: Guiding the User Through a Smooth Narrative - In Film: A structured narrative ensures a logical flow and satisfying resolution. - In Onboarding: A clear, step-by-step process keeps users engaged without overwhelming them. 👇 Applying the Six Stages of Screenplay Structure to Onboarding: 1. 📖 Exposition: Introduce your app's purpose and core features. 2. 🚀 Inciting Incident: Highlight the user's need or problem that your app addresses. 3. 🛠️ New Situation: Guide users through initial setup or key actions. 4. 🔄 Change of Plans: Offer alternatives or assistance if users face challenges. 5. 📈 Progression: Showcase advanced features as users become more comfortable. 6. 🎉 Resolution: Demonstrate how your app successfully meets the user's needs. By integrating these storytelling elements, you create a more engaging and rewarding onboarding experience. Users become invested in their journey, encouraging them to continue using your app and explore its full potential 😇.

🧠 Stories beat statistics. Always. Our brains evolved to process narratives, not spreadsheets. Ancient humans survived by remembering stories about predators and safe paths to water—not abstract data points. This created neural pathways optimized for narrative processing that persist today. 📊 Research proves it: After one day, people retain 67% of a story's persuasive impact but only 27% of statistical data's influence. Why? Stories engage multiple brain regions simultaneously—language processing, sensory simulation, and emotional centers—creating richer memory traces through "elaborative encoding." When you present raw numbers, you force users into unnecessary cognitive work. They must build their own mental models and extract meaning—a high-interaction-cost experience that increases errors and abandonment rates. 📉 Stories provide pre-structured frameworks. They deliver context, causality, and emotional anchoring that spreadsheets lack. A workplace accident statistic vanishes from memory within hours; a specific worker's injury story persists for years. 💡 Design implication: Use case studies and user scenarios, not metrics dashboards. Stories trigger "mental transportation"—users simulate being inside the narrative, creating quasi-personal experiences that drive decisions. Stop fighting human cognition. Embrace narrative. 🎯 My full article 👉 https://lnkd.in/gPymiYmm (using an illustrated storybook about usability heuristic 8 as an example) #UXDesign #UserExperience #Storytelling #CognitiveScience #DataStorytelling #UXResearch #DesignThinking #HumanCenteredDesign #ProductDesign #Usability #BehavioralScience #ContentStrategy #UserResearch #DesignPsychology #CX

🌱 UX Storytelling. We can’t build empathy with facts alone. Practical guidelines on how to present a strong case, get a buy-in and make a lasting impact. ✅ User stories build empathy by putting audience in users’ shoes. 🚫 Poor stories are predictable, unrealistic and hard to relate to. ✅ Good stories are unexpected, sincere and memorable. ✅ Powerful stories leave enough room for interpretation. ✅ Nothing is more powerful than a story that elevates emotions. ✅ An engaging story is a conversation, not a one-way broadcast.   ✅ First, set the context, state the problem and show the impact. ✅ Then suggest steps to take and a strategy to resolve the problem. ✅ If you seek a broad exploration of ideas, reveal fewer details. ✅ If you want a focus on a specific problem, reveal a lot of detail. ✅ Explain the context: time, project, team, background, goals, scope. ✅ State the problem: users, quotes, videos, photos, insights, findings. ✅ Show a resolution: activities, timeframe, people, recommendations. 🚫 Nothing breaks the story more than lack of meaningful resolution. ✅ To have impact, make your audience want your characters to win. Stories don’t have to be long and intricate to be impactful. When presenting, I always start by setting the right expectations first. I explain the problem we’re solving. Show current experience and why we are changing it. Showing customers and explain how they use the product. Whenever possible, I include video clips and direct quotes from usability testing. Then I walk through the entire process of what we’ve been working on. The design decisions made. Their impact on business. Decisions rejected. Revised. Tested. Revisited. Explain how we’ll measure if we are successful or not. And finally wrap-up with a suggestion for short-term and long-term strategy, and actionable next steps. Leave fewer questions to be asked, and answer questions before they happen. When no questions are left, and all concerns are addressed, the easiest thing to do is to agree and approve. Show the path there, and it will be taken more often than not. Useful resources: A Guide To Effective UX Storytelling, by Mayya Azarova, Ph.D. https://lnkd.in/efNm-7gV How to Use Storytelling in UX Research, by Allison Grayce Marshall https://lnkd.in/eZ2aGwkU Strategic Storytelling for Designers, by Saielle DaSilva https://lnkd.in/e3Bb9X7C Storytelling Framework: Pillars of Story (free PDF), by Peter von Stackelberg https://lnkd.in/epRvCuNQ Storytelling Design Principles (book), by Anna Dahlström https://lnkd.in/e43sWs-b Storytelling for UX (book), by Whitney Quesenbery, Kevin Brooks https://lnkd.in/ez_AXz2G Happy storytelling, everyone! 🎉🥳