Speaker: Hannah Hyatt
Tell us about a time when storytelling had a positive impact on your work.
Hannah Hyatt: So I use UX stories and UX storytelling in my job quite often, I not only am a UX researcher, but I also have a background in anthropology. So the majority of the time the skill set that I am using at work is ethnography. Um which really helps me understand what's going on with the user. And then how do I present that back to the user? So, a time when it was incredibly successful telling uh using UX storytelling um was I was working for a small start up in Seattle and was doing some observations uh for users on the platform. Um And the CEO I, I spent about five days doing ethnography with the users and the individuals in there. And um I was very fortunate that the CEO liked an engaging story. I don't think that's always the case. I think sometimes the CEO S and, and um the executives really just would like a small slide deck with the adequate points. They don't actually want to be brought into the story. And um in this case, I was able to walk him through the entirety of what had been happening um who his users were who was using his platform, you know, why they were using it and why they wanted to use it and why they had to use it because those were two very specific different things. Um you know, really helping him understand. Um not just the context of it, but just the the entirety of how, how the platform was being used by the companies as well. Um Because it was not just being used by individuals, the individuals are being asked to use it through their company. Um And so I, I was able to adequately weave a story, explain it to him, uh tell him about what was going on and then share the insights that I had found um which were in my mind pretty compelling. And uh fortunately, he found it the same way and um was able to just kind of finish that off with um you know, some, some live quotes that I had been able to pull from the audio portion of, of the ethnography that I had been conducting. And um yeah, it was, it was really helpful and I mean, they ended up implementing all of the changes that I recommended and also implementing uh I like to do a, this is what I think you should do. And then here are next steps. If you would like to continue the research, I like to offer both, even if I'm no longer working at the company, I want them to have that option and he implemented all of the options and all of my suggestions and then went on to um take that idea of the next steps and integrate it into something that the users themselves were doing um to almost like a live feedback for what he wanted. Uh So I think he ended up getting a lot more than what he was expecting just because of the way that storytelling was welcomed at that company.
Is there anything you want to add about the previous story that you were not able to answer in the five-minute limit?
Hannah Hyatt: No, there's nothing I wanna add about the previous story, but there's also no option for me to skip this. So.
Now, tell us another story. Tell us about a time when storytelling did not work as you planned/hoped.
Hannah Hyatt: I was working at a large red shift company and had finished completing a myography with a number of engineers, specifically site reliability engineers uh to understand their pain points working in a specific environment. And I had spent a significant amount of time with these engineers, um had got some great quotes, got some great understandings. Um I am not an engineer. So by the end of it, I actually understood the entire platform, understood what they were doing, felt as though I could have done it myself um and figured out what needed to be changed. So I was asked to present to the uh VP of art ORG and um created this whole presentation and I was planning on using storytelling um as a way of explaining through this highly, highly, highly technical material. And I ran it by one of my colleagues uh who had been at the company for much longer than I had been and practice the whole presentation with her. And she has a very similar background to, to me and I got through the presentation, you know, I didn't think I had killed it, but I thought I was doing pretty good. And she just like, shook her head at me and was like, if you present that to the VP, you're gonna get fired. Like he will just think that you are absolutely incompetent and have, will have no idea what to do with you because that's not what he wants. And I was beyond confused because it was really great data. And she was like, no, no, your data is incredible. Your data points are wonderful. Um Your storytelling ability is great too, but that's not what he cares about. He does not care about that. He wants to know in one slide what you found and what to fix and how to make this more profitable. Uh And I kind of like laughed because I think I thought she was kidding. It was earlier on in my career and she was very clear with me and she's like, you cannot, I will not let you present this. You need to rework this and you need to do it in an executive format. And um yeah, that was my first time understanding that the person that you are delivering this to is, is the variable for whether or not the storytelling will, will go well or not. Um I've had opportunities at other companies where I use storytelling with executives and it went well. Um But I think for larger companies that was not it, they, they want the data in about five minutes. Uh They wanna understand it at three and they wanna be able to ask a bunch of questions afterwards that maybe would have been answered in storytelling, but they are not willing to take that risk. They don't care about the storytelling they care about, I guess the data story.
Is there anything you want to add about the previous story that you were not able to answer in the five-minute limit?
Hannah Hyatt: No, again, there was no option to skip this. So.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us?
Hannah Hyatt: Um adding an option to skip the additional. Is there anything else you would like to tell us after each recording? Um There's no opt out. There's no, no. So the will actually have to record something. Um which just seems like a lot more work for you guys. To be honest, I have to parse through that recording itself just to get the word. No. Um Yeah. Additionally, I think, I think this was really great. I like understanding a little bit more about where you guys are going with us and I think, I think storytelling obviously is incredibly important. Um But yeah, I think maybe I know story, I know UX storytelling is very different than other types of uh UX explanations that may take a little bit longer, but maybe spell out the ones you are not interested in at the very beginning. Like we are not interested in personas, we are not interested in whatever else it is. Um Just so you don't accidentally get thrown to them.
