Story telling and UI Design

What is the Similarity?

A story is a narrative of a sequence of events in a group of character's life. The story is the glue that binds the sequences together. Similarly the UI is what binds all the features together.

A story is a particular set of events that happen to a set of specific characters. The UI is a particular context of use for a specific set of target audiences.

A story flows from one set of events to another in a seamless and logical manner. Similarly in an intuitive UI the user moves from one screen to another in a seamless and logical manner.

In a story there are plots where all characters may be present and many plots where just two or three are present. In a UI there may be screens used by all in the audience and some screens used by a few of them.

The sequence of events are believable when they are likely to occur to the characters in the story. In UI the context of use is great when it actually matches the needs of its users.

The way a story is narrated brings a lot of interest and active participation in the audience. The way the UI is presented brings interest in its users.

A story is great when the people want to hear it again and again. Many other stories are based on the same plot. Popular UIs designs have always been copied and replicated to be used by all.

What are the dissimilarities?
The goal of a story is to entertain. The goal of a UI is to perform a task.

A story is linear, UI is non-linear. However UI does have a logical sequence of events.



How can we use Story for creating UI?
You can use aspects of story-telling to improve the UI. What story gives us is logical sequence of events, context of use, presentation and innovation.

When you create the personas for the UI detail out the personas using a story. Interaction of the persona and feature should be detailed out as a story that actually describes its context of use.