At the heart of it, how we build great products is by listening to people's needs and problems, and then devising solutions to them. We can communicate those solutions through storytelling and intentional visualization. When combined, these tools tell a better more compelling story and allow us to make real change in the world.

1. How To of UX
Intentional Visualization + Story Telling
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2. What UX is Part 1
• UX = User Experience = Empathy + Passion to Help Users
• UX is not UI
• UI = User Interface = Interaction +Visual Aesthetics
for Physical or Digital Product
• How do we design the UX of a product?
Through intentional visualization + storytelling

3. What UX is Part 2
• A intrinsic business commitment to serve customers and
users to meet their best interests, likely beyond what they
can even imagine themselves
• Willingness to be wrong about what we think customers
and users need
• Agility ($, time, systems) to change course if what we are
trying/testing doesn’t work out
• If all three of these are not met, the UX process is painful
and less likely to succeed

4. How do we Do “UX”?
• Many skill sets and disciplines can support it. Essentially it
boils down to this:
• First, we have to observe and listen to the customers.
By listening we can know the implied problems, by
observing we learn about even bigger problems that perhaps
they are not even aware of.
• Then, we tell stories and intentionally visualize what a new
world might look like for these users.We show them to the
business and the users, and see if they resonate, or how they
could improve.

5. Humans Love Stories
• People can relate better to stories than to facts
• Stories help people process a whole picture
• Stories can help common understanding, influence decisions
and cause change
• This principle is at the core of what allows people to design
better products, services and systems that truly serve

6. • All visualizations begin within ourselves.What we picture in
our minds can become real.
• When we express what is in our mind out into the world, the
act of creation allows us to communicate and resonate with
others.
• With intentional creation, we put purpose into our
expression.
VISUALIZING SAYS MORE

7. Words +Visuals =
•Better
Stories

8. UX Tricks to Tell Better Stories
• Personas that summarize types of customers/users
• User research findings communicated through story
• Mind maps, user journeys, story maps
• Anything that is user focused and story based that speaks
to the problems we are trying to solve
• Ideally something that is visually able to communicate a
whole picture

9. Personas
http://www.slideshare.net/toddwarfel/data-driven-design-research-personas/
More info
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10. Story Boards
• Essentially a comic strip or cartoon sequence of a customer
or user’s journey around a specific problem
• Often step based drawings of the early stages of a user’s
experience, outside of the context of software
• Representative of their daily work in which they also use
software
• May be quick or more visually appealing

11. Story Boards

12. Story Maps
• Coined by Jeff Patton
• Made popular to accommodate iterative releases in agile
software development methodologies
• Identifying product goals that delivery value
• Slicing the story map into valuable releases

13. Story Map Example

14. Application Maps
• Coined by Hagan Rivers. Users a hub and spoke paradigm:
• The hubs are the work areas – the place where the user creates things
and does things to them. From a hub the user can do many activities &
tasks (add an address, edit an address, add a group, export).
• In the end, though, he always returns to the hub when he’s done. In
complex applications (one with hundreds of screens, for example) there
may be dozens of hubs and their relationships may be complicated.
• We use the Application Map to help visualize these applications more
clearly and to act as a foundation for the design of the navigation
system.

15. Application Maps

16. There Are No Tricks
• Those are just a few common tools
• Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how you communicate, what
matters is you are getting ideas out of your mind and into
the world
• What matters is you are making things real, and involving
customers (or users) in the process

17. Thank You.
Now, go tell a better story.
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