 Yn ymgyrch o'r pwylltau, mae'r pwylltau ymgyrch yn gwahaniaeth. Yn ymgyrch o'r pwylltau, mae'r pwylltau, ymgyrch o'r pwylltau, ymgyrch o'r pwylltau, er mwyn. Byddai'n pwylltau yn ymgrifiad, sy'n rhai cyflym, ac yn rhai cyflym o'r pwylltau, mae'r pwylltau ymgyrch yn cyfnodd. Rydyn ni'n gwein i'r chymdeithasol ar y canfeyl. Mae'r pwylltau yn ymgyrch o'r pwylltau. We grow up hearing stories and they continue to resonate with us, telling the story of the product, making us connected to them. When a story is good, the bond with a product is incredibly powerful. This connection, the remembering, the actual emotional bond made by a passionate emotional experience, this is what you want from a product. Think about the reason you buy a particular brand. Think about the reason you use a particular site or an experience. Likely you have a deep bond and a connection with that, the story is strong. The things we own also have stories, the experiences we've had with them, for example. Maybe it's a ring that someone beloved gave you, or your favourite t-shirt that when you wear it, really good things happen to you. Or the stone that maybe you carry in your product that you are convinced brings you good luck every time you have it there. If we have emotion when using, that connection becomes even stronger. From clothing to things we own, it's actually human nature to attach the experience to the object. For example, let's take a simple t-bowl. There's a story to the experience of using that. The tea that maybe you make on a cold day and you wrap your hands around the bowl to a warmth. I have one myself that I drink daily from and as I do, this feeling of calm embraces because it's that ritual of the experience that I have when I use it. And digital experiences also have stories attached to them. That time, for example, you got to life using a particular filter in Instagram of a really amazing moment that you shared. Those moments, just like any story unfold in the experience. And our digital footprints tell stories. Your Instagram feed or perhaps your Twitter memories. Google actually taps into this with something called Remember at this day. Our digital stories are powerful and catalogued. Timelines show the life we've led, telling our story in binary. Stories are actually tied to our genetics, our very essence of being. They have been shared in every culture as a means of experience and entertainment, education, and in storing models or actually cultural preservation. When we have a good experience, we share it. We tell the story because as humans we are storytellers. You likely have already told one, if not many, many stories already today through the people that you've interacted with. We even actually tell stories in our sleep. I saw this tweet a few weeks ago from the Obama Foundation. The shared story allowing you to see through someone's eyes resonated really strongly with me. This shows the power of stories. By being told, stories can bring about change. This is because storytelling actually predates writing. Earliest forms of storytelling combine gestures and expressions and we're entwined with rituals. For example, rock art is thought may have actually served as storytelling. Indigenous people in Australia painted symbols from stories on cave walls. This was a way to actually help the storyteller remember the story. That story was then told with a mixture of spoken word, music, rock art and dance. This kind of combination. People have used even the carved trunks of trees and even sand or leaves to actually record stories. Tattooing has also in complex form represented stories and information about genealogy, affirmation and social status. Stories bring about connection. They bring about empathy and insight into someone else's life. They convey often more than facts. They are narratives that activate certain parts of the brain when we hear them. This allows connection and by linking to your own experiences relacibility is one of the essential ingredients of all stories because you have that, you relate it. And this connection also tightens recall. An experience is shared. This is the reason as children we tell ghost stories at night during sleepovers or around campfires we tell the stories and parents read to their children. Through stories you learn and humanity is passed on. Stories actually have a structure and by knowing that and these basic principles you can use this in creating a product. I'm going to take a little bit of a look at that now. There are some critical elements of a story and these are plot, characters and narrative point of view. It's important that most stories also have a conflict of some form. We're going to get to that a little bit later but it's really important to think of when creating a product. A classic structure could be seen something like this. I'm going to go through each section and as I do you're probably going to start making connections of how stories form. This though isn't a smooth arc and it's represented as a story arc is a lovely smooth experience. I would encourage you to start to see the bumps, the staggers and not think of this as literally an arc. These points also aren't set. They shift and adjust with each story. More or less though most have these. We start with the beginning. This is a setting, an exposition. This is the once upon a time where the heroic character starts generally from humble beginnings and this sets up the tale to be told. Next you have the conflict, a problem. All good stories, as I said, come from a point of conflict. Something happens to trigger a change and then this reaction happens, the story. And then you have a rising action, something that solves the problem. The aforementioned crisis is now being solved. At this point, often stories can get a little bit more complicated and layers and layers happen, sometimes more and more add up and turns and plot twists spiral to reach the next point. Then you have the culmination, the core of a problem. Finally at some point you reach this and this could be the final race for something or maybe the monster is laid. Perhaps it's not an end as much as knowing what the quest involves to finally complete it. And there's maybe more story that can come after a crisis. The story doesn't necessarily end there. Whatever it means, the story arc has reached a peak. And often this point comes as a pause, a breath of relief after a hectic frantic emotion. And then you have this falling action. This leads to solving a problem. After you get to the core of the problem, this happens. Maybe this is the after effect, but often though this is the effect of knowing the core problem and solving it, for example knowing where the final treasure is. And finally, after the long journey, we come to the outcome. How something is solved. Usually this results in a change for the heroic character. Often the world is changed through the arc. They are back at a point, yet they're not right back. A change has happened, and yet this is the happy ever after. Folkloreists sometimes divide all tales into two main groups of Martin and Sagan. Really forgive my pronunciation. These are German words, and the rough translations of these is fairy tales and legends. The first is Martin. These are the once upon a time tales. The stories we are used to attaching the word story to. The tales of our childhood, the castle, the enchanted forest. This world is separate and other from the one that we exist. Then you have Sagan. These are the stories pass on to each other. They actually happened and are of a very, very particular time and place. This is actually their power. These are the stories you want to tell in a product. As we create products, we want to create legends. We want to enable our heroines and heroes to succeed. All products have a story. The stories hold the product together. In many ways, it survives based on its own story arc. A product has several different types of stories that is worth identifying now. The first is the story of those that experience it. Then you have the story you attach to it. For example, have you ever given your phone a backstory of emotional intent? I know what I have. The story of how something is actually made is the third story. People buy better versions of themselves over just products. You've likely heard the term selling the dream. Whilst you ethically want to be cautious of this, you have to think when creating a product about enabling a better self. If you feel icky, because it can feel icky to start talking about selling, but what if it's enabling someone to earn a living? What if it allows them to send flowers to someone in a different continent they haven't seen for years? Or what if it allows them to tell their really important story through a blog? Dreams can be big or small just like stories. Airbnb really get that storytelling is important. Stories are so important they have an entire section devoted to them. They are selling the future story, the one of belonging. And the story of the production of an object is often nowadays as important as a story trying to be sold. Production being ethical is also a story to sell in itself with brands like Everline. Their brand is built on these words. Know your factories, know your costs, always ask why. They believe in radical transparency and declare this on their site. And that and that actually embrace telling stories in their product. For example, in the label you actually see this, saying where the product contains. And it shows the production story in the lining. Many manufacturers are doing this, telling the story of how something is made, where it comes from. And companies like Patagonia recognise the stories you create with their products. They see the bonding, the value and the long-lasting relationships. They have this scheme called Warnware where they see and they're trying to have a lot more of their products repaired. There are even videos telling the stories of the years that people have spent with each of the garments. It shows also those that do the repairs and the letters that are sent in when the products are also sent in, telling the story of why it's important to be repaired. And products by their very form can cause stories to be told. Monzo, which is a kind of a banking system, has this incredibly strong colour. Every time I use the card I get asked, what is that? Being noticeable allows the product to be sold itself by existing. I tell the story because people see that bright card and they ask about it. I find myself over and over telling the product's tale. Because using the product is incredibly delightful, I'm telling that experience. I willingly tell that story every time because it's so positive. But just like a positive experience tells a story, so does a bad one. We then attach a tragedy to a product. It might not even be the product itself. What about if you've had a really bad customer experience? I've had this myself with Fitbit because products actually break, but my own experience involved repeated breaking and whilst in the end it was replaced, my trust had been broken. I had to also fight for a result and didn't have a great experience with that because my trust was just gone forever. You may tolerate using it, I used it afterwards, but the delight has gone from the experience. Our product hearts are incredibly fragile, delicate and easily broken. Similarly, a good support experience can turn everything around. I had myself this experience recently with Airbnb. I had a really interestingly bad booking and it turned good by a full refund and incredible attention to customer care. Products also tell their own stories and we attach stories to them. For example, this example of saying that the MacBook was breathing. Humanizing inanimate objects is a very, very human thing to do. I do this all the time and I suspect that most of you do as well. This comes down to the very human nature of bonding. You attach and as a result infer around an inanimate object. This is a mixture of delight, emotion and attachment. So stories are really important, how do you actually discover them? Assuming stories or telling the story of someone else is far from the best route. You start quite simply by listening. Likely you are being told stories but you are not hearing them. From support calls through to testimonials, the stories are being told. Even issues or bugs reported have their own story. It's really just about listening to them. And just like a friend is there for you and supports, be there for your stories. Researching stories loosely forms, or I'm going to put it loosely into two types and these are going to be short and long. You can also see this is surface and deep. Just having surface stories isn't really going to be something to guide your product with. They are a good instant here. Great to have but don't fall into the trap of thinking they are going to be representative or give you deep insights. A good way of thinking about this is temperatures. But a word of caution. Short stories often because their real ease have a whole truckload full of bias. For example social media or reviews. A Twitter comment isn't a long story and really doesn't have an in-depth plot. Long stories give you a fuller picture but by their very nature are far more intensive to run. If you want to get deep stories to power your product then you need to dive into long stories but you can daily swim amongst the short stories. Phasing in and out is really important to not drain research and also keep those hunches that you have true when you're making the product. It's important to know when telling the stories of users you need to make sure you show all aspects and cover a wide wide range. Just limiting brings issues. So this is a story that's told in a lot of cultures about without seeing people describing for example an elephant by touch. So maybe someone who is feeling the head says this is a pot or maybe someone feeling an ear says it's a basket. The tusk, a plowshare, the trunk, a plow or maybe the foot they're saying a pillar. Without knowing the full picture how can you actually know what you're creating? This comes without knowing the stories. It's also important everyone involved in the product process gets involved in researching these stories. So once you've discovered all the amazing stories there's a step that quite often people miss. That's actually keeping them. The stories need processing, logging and to be available for everyone that works on the product today and will in the future. Otherwise what was the point in listening? This isn't just about presentation. It's important to have a place to store and easily search. That's like the baseline for these stories. I'm not talking about fancy personas or distilling either. It's about having a place to log these precious stories. Having it searchable for that future archaeology. Presenting the stories is going to be the next step to keeping them. Once you've logged them in the raw format you need to, depending on what works for your team distill them and present. There are many many different ways of doing this and not just personas. I'm not actually going to suggest the right way. I'll give you a guide here because it really depends on the team and who you are delivering this to. Make sure that everyone comes to the team is actually onboarded through the stories. This is crucial as it sets the tone and ensures rapid immersion. You then all speak the same language. Remember the tradition of stories being learning? Do that in your onboarding. When someone joins the team being able to have the stories told fast tracks them to the understanding. The product narrative should be shared as part of everyone's welcome. Once you have the stories, once you have them being listened to and are part of the onboarding, what now? Well now it's time to take the stories into the product themselves. This is where the stories begin to make real change. They come alive over just being told word for word. The value of stories can be directly seen in teams. You might be asking how can that be seen. They keep the focus on the user for a start. This perhaps is the biggest one as they're there right in the centre. You can't escape them as their story is being told. It also enables collaboration and sharing. This levels up as you listen to people saying, for example, what would Mary say about this and what would her experience be? And then telling the story of Mary. Stories also fuel creativity. They also enable faster product cycles by setting your team off on the right path. Everyone is on the same page being told the same stories, united. Stories activate people. You see this in children being told stories. It makes us experience and live that story. Crafting these into the product creation process taps into creativity that is otherwise sometimes locked. And this often leads to more exploration and safety to making those leaps when you have this creativity. Because there's that bond of the story mixed with the potency of the experience, it's a powerful conception to design a product in. These stories need to be told everywhere they can. If you have a physical space, put them around on your walls in your lunchrooms and in your breakout areas. Maybe you make physical story books. Whatever, they should be part of your space as a product team. And remote is no excuse either. These stories should be spoken in meetings. They should be easily seen everywhere the remote team actually interacts. This goes back to the presentation of the stories and adapting that to the team. Any product decision should also involve the stories because they back up and fuel it. Tell them in review meetings and ensure the voice of the users drowns out the latest hotness technique or design trend. Unless I did know it doesn't really matter how you show the stories, it's really quite useful and good to have some visualisation. Remember the Indigenous stories from Australia combining mediums? That's an incredibly effective way to tell the story and have it recalled by everyone on your team. A good tip is to get everyone to actually experience visualising the stories. This is where some people are going to cry, I am not an artist. But you can do this, everyone can be involved. Getting people to actually draw and interact visually with these isn't just for the designers in the group. There should be something for everyone. There are many easy methods you can use to visualise and anyone can do it no matter what their drawing ability. Story arcs are possibly one of the simplest forms and I don't encourage you to start exploring. You can read a little bit more with Donnelly Tell's resources and book that I'd encourage everyone to check out. You start with this current state of the character and drawing this can also be really helpful. Then the story arc. Remember we had this at the beginning. This seems familiar right now. A product can also have an arc. This experience is a story. Another basic but powerful method of telling stories is a story board. This literally can be stick people. Don't feel you have to create any great work of art here. One little tip is if someone resists drawing, get them to cut out pictures from photos or magazines and stick them together in a story board. It works just as well. User or customer journey maps are also a really easy format to follow. You have a timeline and there's actions along it and there are a variety of ways to present this. If you're in a workshop mode, having a post-it timeline is a really great experience for everyone. You can then distill this and really use it in something. I've even seen people use Trello for this to catalog or plot. There are many, many approaches but it's really key to physically do by placing on the arc or timeline. Just like with any of these visualisations, there are many key elements you need to ensure to be effective. The first is experience. The actual doing of the visualisation is crucial to recall. By creating this visual story, that's where engagement happens. Our brains are connected and the story is stronger. Then you have report. Anything that is done should also be reported to the entire product team. You might not have everyone there who's working on it, so making sure that you document and report it and always summarise the explorations is really important. Then archive. Keep a log of the work done. Don't throw it away. This could just be like the stories that you archive but this also comes back to my early point of if you listen to a story, never lose it. This goes for visualisations or anything in a workshop, anything created. If someone joins in the future, they can use this to onboard and be on the same page as everyone. But again, make it easy to find. And then finally review. Don't cast your work in stone and say it's done, put a bow on it. Your product will change. So will the stories. You need to go back, take the temperature and go back to listening is really crucial. Otherwise you're telling the story of the people in the past that used your product. So I've looked at both why it's important and how to find the stories and store them. How do you kind of take this into the actual product? You found them, you visualised them. Now is when you really take them, those arcs and think about what the ideal map would be. Storytelling in a product can be seen as shifting between various phases. At the start you explore, you imagine these stories, then you research, you listen to the stories. Next you tell the stories, you visualise. Then after the product is shaped by the stories. Working out product paths to achieve the ideal happy ever after is that stage. Remember the structure of a story? Think about an experience. There's a beginning, a conflict, maybe that's sign up, sign up is always a conflict. Think of the story arc. Maybe they get lost or end in a checkout just abandoning their cart because the experience jarred for them. Maybe they tried to look for something and they couldn't, so they'd go and find it somewhere else. Perhaps they're trying to put their name into a checkout and it doesn't let them because of character or format limitations. Knowing these stories of crisis allows you to remove those obstacles and move the customers to success away from those harmful experiences. There are several storytelling techniques you can employ in product design worth noting. The first is setting the scene. You need to ease in the experience. Every story starts with a once upon a time. Paint that picture. This is the welcome, the tone setting for the entire experience. Your first point sets this tone for interactions after. And expectations are set. Next you cast your characters. Every part of the interaction and the experience is a character in a sense. Make sure you introduce them, have specific roles and respect those interactions to keep everything in the flow. For example, make sure your characters stay true. Having a form field change character partway through without any reasoning is incredibly disturbing for the person interacting. And then engagement is key to the flow of the story. Keep the pace. Move the reader or customer through the experience. Here is where you use that story arc, the tensions, the speed variations or to bring the heroic success. The pace of an interaction is key. Just fast enough but not too fast. And then finally you close the story or experience. This is the all lived happily ever after. The end is often just as important as a beginning. The closure of an experience is something we often forget. Changing the narrative of a story from a tragedy to a heroic tale should really be your goal. It doesn't have to be a full sword wielding heroic tale either. Small tragedies add up to make a broken experience. But small wins also add up to a large pleasant heroic experience. Imagine once you see the story of a broken flow, you can't ignore it, you now create for it. That's the power of stories. It's worth noting a product also has this overarching story, but it also has little, even tiny subplots and stories of interactions. Write down to the story of a button click, the story of a form element. These little points are essential to understand. If you think of a great mystery, you don't know until the very, very end what the problem was. This is the same for an experience. Often you don't know that that button is going to really break it, but it sure will be that tiny little button that is the problem. The flow of experience matters just like story craft, craft that experience from start to end because these tiny little details matter. Maybe it's a new way to find tea like this from teapigs. Yet it's cute and it's not going to work in all cases, but having these little details adds up in the context of their sight and their experience, it's perfectly fitting to their tone. You need to look at little ways that you can bring this and bring the story alive. Whilst designing for crisis, it sounds like something you really want to avoid, however there's always a crisis in a story. There's the will there, won't there? Our brains love a little bit of peril, just a little, not too much. Designing with this in mind in the experience can avoid distrust because we tend not to trust things that work too well, that work too smoothly, too unreal. Something's too good to be true. A little way you can do this is with time because being too fast can often be just as bad as being too slow for an experience. It's about balance. As someone overcomes a little something, they emerge changed for better by the story arc. How can you actually have that in your product? How can you give someone that win and that heroic journey? You need to think about that. That has to be safe. The kind of thing I think about in this context is if you have an ice cream and it's melting, there's this will it, won't it, kind of with the melting? It's safe, it's not too traumatic, and that's what you really want to go for. Plot, twist, a basic part of storytelling. Maybe it's something that works positively and expected, such as if you do a checkout and you have 10% automatically applied, that's a double delight. You've got to be gifted something and didn't actually have to add a code in. It just happened for you. If you plot the story arcs, you can follow them and see the impact before creating. Then you build with firm foundations of insights. Before you add something, think about what is the story? What does this add to the overall experience? Because if you're following a story, adding something to it can actually unbalance it. If you have a story set in deep space in the year 4000, if you were suddenly to add gremlins from the 1980s, that kind of took a very different turn as a story. The story may start out to be vague, but it's one that appears over time. Let everything come into focus as you listen. Potent design truly focused on stories means every decision is thought of as it changes the plot, the features, the counts, everything how it impacts the experience. A lot of this comes down at the core of having a story-driven process, and this means all roles. Anyone working on the product, if stories are at the heart of what you're creating, then so are those of the stories you're telling. The product will be created from a place of authenticity and truth. Keeping a touch point on this is how you stay true to those stories. There should be this constant story stream from the sketches that you make at the start to the product's ideal story to research and the product's real story over the years. The story of those who use the competition at the start that you learn about, the story of those telling and using a product over the years. This stream flows through your entire product creation experience, carrying along the team making it. The seeds of stories land throughout the product and grow. Stories are powerful. They're part of our genetic heritage. They teach us, guide us, and move us through the world. They fuel creation. By using them, you can change the narrative from tragedy to happy ever after because they resonate with our very essence and souls. By putting stories at the heart of everything you do, your experience will improve. And yes, everyone will live happily ever after. Thank you. So we have some time for questions. It doesn't have to be a full story. Can be a shorter question. Who's first? That was a great talk. Thank you. Thank you. How do you take someone whose first experience is a bad story and help guide them to where a story is better for both of you? So, I mean, the first place would be listening to what their bad story is, but you need to find ways to empower someone. If you think someone in a heroic tale, they find a magic weapon, right? And that weapon enables them to conquer or vanquish the monster. You need to find that for someone. Find whatever is the way that they are empowered, the way that they can grow. And not the way that you support them or just carry them with them helpless. That's not a particularly great heroic story. Generally, heroic tales don't involve the characters being carried. So, yeah, it's just that way of just really empowering and finding, from listening, finding ways that you can give them back control and give them back that ability. Next question. Not a question. I just wanted to thank you for offering your slides online. OK, thank you. No more questions. Last chance. Everyone just wants to go to the after party. Yeah, I think so. Fortunately, the after party is not until 8. And before we talk about the after party, there's one more thing that we absolutely do have to talk about. But first, big hand for Tammy.