GOOGLE Storytelling
How can we communicate the stories of our clients and customers?
Google’s challenge for me was to interpret, convey, and communicate the stories of customers and businesses alike on mobile. They had assigned this task for me because I had told them that I thought this economy was now an economy of stories. I described this new, Gen-Z economy as an economy of stories due to the natural progression from commodities to goods to services to experiences, and now, to stories. The challenge was to convey these stories into a product that would fit into an unrealized mobile application design system.
Problem
How can I tell your story?
I wanted to know what the best way to tell stories was, so I read Chris Anderson’s The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking to understand the intricacies and nuances of storytelling.
From this research, I learned that a natural story progression had: an introduction, relevant context, main concepts, practical implications, and an encompassing conclusion. Questions I developed after this initial research, to frame my thinking, included the following:
What presence do you want communicated to your customers?
What is something you want us to know about your business and/or products?
What parts of your story do you want represented to other users?
Customer Research
From other research with clients and businesses, I learned that businesses were very proud of and humbled by other people enjoying their products. Additionally, businesses wanted to appear personable, and communicate the essence of their products in different potential interactions. Establishing further contact was another need, but would be addressed further along the user’s journey. Overall, I found that businesses wanted:
Online presences that were humanized
Personable interactions
Communicable products
Combining this research, I developed a schema of sequences that I wanted to use in my finalized product. This schema included aspects of the aforementioned storytelling formula from Guide to Public Speaking, Instagram’s, Apple’s, and Google’s own design systems, and the prior research that I had conducted from different businesses.
For me, the hardest part at this stage was understanding how the learned aspects of storytelling could be reconfigured in a product that would be personalized for each user.
Bite-sized stories.
This challenge was a two-part challenge for me: I realized I had to create a product design that was unique. At the same time, I also had to create a product design that would fit into an application and system that would communicate something that was intimate and relevant to anyone with a unique story.
This meant that the product I created would have to embody all aforementioned aspects, in a format that would surpass a single image.
Storytelling, breakdown
At this point, I began to ideate possible concepts of this unique experience. There were multiple trajectories I was considering, all of which I was exploring considering the different aspects of stories, products, designs, algorithms, and essence of the potential users.
Revisiting the problem
After this ideation, I began to look back to my initial research and reconfigure the scope of what I was attempting to create. I realized, again, that the stories of my clients and businesses were the most important aspect of the product, and that conveying these in a mobile format was the priority.
I realized I wanted to combine both text and images in the storytelling product, and that these needed to be personalized per customer.
After this understanding, I formed the bubbles, images, and system into something already being used in Instagram’s designs: The Fibonacci Sequence.
The solution resembles existing systems, reconfigures these algorithms, and also uniquely solves the problem of storytelling.
During development, I was considering what existing product system’s and designs I could combine to create my solution.
The idea of “descriptor bubbles” came to me after I had taken a break and realized that I didn’t want to read the text about the customers, only see a quick snapshot of who they were.
Using this system, I then developed all aspects of the product solution into a system that was both familiar but also new.
Product Solution
Combining all aspects of my research, ideation, and explorations, I created the final product for the main menu of a product communicating stories. The solution is personalized, relevant to the user and/or customer, and provides content in a recognizable format for all users.
“Amazing.”
— CDO @ NASDAQ, 2021