I want to tell you a story....
Once upon a time, a girl had a dream. It was an exciting dream about creating solutions for visual problems, the girl combined psychology, intuition, and a desire to make her clients happy. She talked, shared and solved her clients problems and everyone was super excited by the results. Hi FIVE!
The flow of the story a beginning a middle and then end, is not the entire story. As a designer your contact with the client is perhaps the second part of a flow, as once that meeting has happened you delve into their past to find out how they have come to you and what issues they have had before. I find it important to see how the client has solved a business problem before as it gives and insight into their flexibility and openness. The end of the story "Fin" is not actually the end - is it? A solution to a problem needs to have some future thought on how the design or product will need to adapt in the short, medium and long term. Design is like a seed, we plant that idea from that the plant develops, it adapts to environment and can have some unexpected changes because of this.
‘The story spine’
Is a technique developed by Kenn Adams who used this technique for improv theatre, it helps to keep a narrative front and centre for any customer story we want to tell. See below...
Once upon a time __,
Every day___,
But one day___,
Because of that___, (and so on)
Until finally____,
Every day after that____,
My research found this quote from Tom Treanor a content marketing expert:
“Help Your Customers Reach Their Destination The days when marketers could only do a few things to cause customers to passively fall through the standard-issue marketing funnel are over. Today, marketing journeys take countless shapes, with many diverse touchpoints. But one thing hasn’t changed: The goal of all your marketing efforts is still to help customers—who come to you through many different media, channels and paths—to realise that your brand is the best solution for a particular problem. A good customised customer journey map will help you understand how your customer searches for a solution. And ultimately, it will enable you to meet the customer wherever they may be, and become a trusted guide for the rest of their journey.”
Tom Treanor - Follow him on Twitter @RtMixMktgThis is a great example of a visual of a journey map...
The journey map Tom Treanor talks of allows us to see the visual process of a customer journey dependant on the product. A UX designer take these questions into account to tell an effective story : What is the customer thinking or feeling? What actions does the customer make? When does the customer make contact with the business? What do we want to change about this? How or why do we want to make this change?
The above questions are key to user interface design: usability, accessibility, information architecture, and human computer interaction. My proposed Anxiety App must carefully consider these areas so it can provide a useful companion to the user and their interaction with it. Especially as the interaction is to emotionally assist someone, this isn't going to be just a game of candy crush...
Trying to fathom the best format for the app, in class we used Unity to create a landscape, the application of this made me question the app format. The texture and environment was amazing from a first person camera view. The Unity space did feel more like a game rather than instructional interaction, the customer story and journey is so important to the end product I am struggling to decide which format to create the final outcome in.
So this is my dilemma:
Game play v's process app
Content delivered by questions v's engaging a customer in another reality
Suspending disbelief v's belief in a reality
Engagement to a task vs simple consumption (eg a movie clip).
The suspension of belief seems to be my key question for my customer journey, defining the suspension of disbelief, I have found some useful research by D. Brown (pg61, The suspension of Disbelief in Videogames Douglas Brown - Falmouth University, Research, June 2016). He talks of the variety of forms that escapism is used by a consumer: theatre, film, gaming, literature.
I need to define my extent of disbelief for the app to engage with the customer in the journey I am attempting to take them on and assist them in their choices, and if that is even possible.