Storytelling UX Research Results - Getting Buy In You Need to Make an Impact

I see the role of the User Experience Researcher is to help everyone on your team have empathy for the users of our products. This helps product managers and stakeholders make decisions that are impactful and help our users rather than making decisions based off of hunch and assumptions from a biased viewpoint. 

While trying to help other team members see the product through our customer’s eyes, there can be challenges getting buy in for what we have to share. You can do a ton of high quality research and still not have stakeholders empathize with the people who use our products and therefore they take no action on your insights. What gives? You have all the data and insights. Why won’t they listen?

I have been there, reading out research results and getting a “thank you” and seeing nothing come of it. I am sure you have been there too! (Why else would you be reading this article?)

Let me tell you a story about a researcher who overcame this obstacle and helped build empathy for the people who use her product. Meet Reese, a user experience researcher for a company called Red Enterprises.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Reese had been hired by her company, Red Enterprises, to help them improve the user experience. Her colleagues are new to having user experience research available to them and are unfamiliar with best practices. 

Reese jumps right on board and begins to conduct usability testing projects to baseline the usability of their product, Red Raptor. She presents results to her stakeholders showing that 4 out of 5 users couldn’t figure out how to complete the task. Yet, no one seemed to be motivated to change anything. Reese tried showing them video clips, and the response she got was “Oh, but that was only one person who had trouble.” 

Reese took some time to think. How can I illustrate my results differently?

Knowing that the researcher’s job is to build empathy for the users in order to get things changed to help them complete their tasks successfully, she changed her approach.

Reese now tried again, sharing the research results with her team. Instead of showing numbers and video clips, she turned the results into a presentation that could be printed and shared among more than just the immediate team. 

It started something like this:

Comic created with MakeBeliefsComix

Bob, the customer, was trying to sign up for a new account with Red Raptor. He found this product to be useful for him in his business.

When Bob started the process searching for how to sign up, he saw an error message. “hmm, what does this mean?” Bob was unable to progress due to not understanding what he did wrong and his error not being prevented.

After sharing the challenge, Reese would then share the numbers, such as 3/5 users experienced this problem. She continued on.

Bob then navigated to get help, but couldn’t find a way to get assistance. He struggled for a few minutes because he had heard such great things about Red Raptor. 

Again, Reese shared a slide overlay with a number of users who had the issue, 2 out of 5 users tried to get help but couldn’t figure out how. 

She repeated these types of slides until she completed the flow that she tested in usability testing. By restructuring how she presented her research results, her stakeholders responded completely differently than they did in the past. Reese heard “Oh, wow, I would be confused there too!” from her stakeholder that was unmotivated to make changes earlier.  

Reese continued to work storytelling into her research presentations resulting in a lot more change at Red Enterprises. If she had kept presenting results in her previous format, it was unlikely that she would have created as much impact at Red Enterprises.  

The story I shared, of Reese, is my story. This is what I experienced in a previous role conducting research. In my experience, turning research results into children’s stories has been the best way to make skeptical stakeholders able to put themselves in the shoes of our customers. I have yet to receive pushback on numbers (e.g., only 1 person acted this way) when presented in a way that stakeholders can really empathize with the user of their product and put themselves in their shoes. 

Here’s my formula:

Step 1 - Provide Background

Give a little introduction to the character that represents your participants for a particular point you want to make. This is not a persona or representation of your persona. This is a character to help you tell the story of you users’ experiences. Stick to a flow or a narrative. I like to create alliteration to make the character memorable (e.g., Bob the Broker, Reese the Researcher, Sal the Shopper, etc.).

I like to use a different character than a persona to keep to the learnings of that specific research, as behaviors may not line up with the behavior segmentation of your personas. The information can later be used to edit personas, if appropriate, but I want to ensure it doesn’t muddy the persona’s value by bringing them into stories unless it ties very well.

Step 2 - Think Children’s Story

Go through a scene that narrates the experience for the character that you want to illustrate. This could be part of a task in a usability test when someone hit a roadblock, or a frame in a story from a more strategic study. 

Step 3 - Follow up with Data

After making a point, it can help by showing the data. This is particularly true for usability testing, as you can show an issue and then follow with how many people had that issue. 

Repeat 2-3 

Repeat 2-3 until you have wrapped your short story to illustrate your point. You want each story to narrate a flow. For example, with a tool like Shopify, you would have a shopper and a business owner, so you can create two stories/characters for each experience / flow. 

How can you use this in your work?

• Start with a smaller project and trial it out before going large to gauge how your stakeholders take this presentation format. 

• Have each slide tied to one or two sentences, think children’s book story

• Ideally, use cartoons or stick figures along with screenshots, this separates a character from the story. By using cartoons or stick figures, it allows people to put themselves in the shoes of your users more easily than using photographs or videos. 

What kind of research can I use this for?

I have had success using this from usability testing results to sharing results from deep research to build empathy for the context users would be in when they needed to use a product. In a deep research effort I structured it a little differently by repeating step 2 and then ending with step 3. This way I told the story of the context of use and then followed it with insight data.

I’d love to hear how it went!

I have shared this as a workshop with UXPA DC and will be as a mini workshop at DCUX on November 9th with some practice exercises and feedback opportunities. I have heard positive feedback from those who have tried it out. I would love to know how it worked out for you, what you adapted to make it work in your environment, and how you approached storytelling to your colleagues. 

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Andrew Maier for brainstorming and holding me accountable to actually writing this article in 2018 and encouraging me to turn it into a presentation. I’ve been saying I would do this for years, so I am grateful for the push. 

Final Notes

Red Enterprises with Red Raptor, is a fake entity for the purposes of illustrating this concept.