by Donna Lichaw
Ideally, the falling action or denouement should happen as quickly as possible. As much as humans need closure, they’re also impatient beings. Once the action has died down, there is only so much that can keep your attention. Just because you want closure, doesn’t mean it needs to be dragged out with a 10-minute long ticker-tape parade. (I’m looking at you, George Lucas.)
FIGURE 2.9
After his adventure through time, Marty lands back home in his present-day Hill Valley.
End
Quite literally, the end is the end. Characters grow throughout a story and should be changed by the end. Remember that big goal established in the exposition? How did it all work out? At this point, the character should meet her goal and hopefully learn something along the way. Along the same lines, just like your cave-dwelling ancestors, you should be changed and have had a new experience, or have learned something by the end of a good story.
In Back to the Future, the story ends with Marty’s girlfriend asking him if everything is OK. “Everything,” Marty says, “is perfect.” They embrace (see Figure 2.10). Now, if this were a classic Hollywood film, the two would kiss, the screen would fade to black, and the credits would roll. The end.
FIGURE 2.10
All is well. Marty and his girlfriend embrace.
But as you may remember, this is the first installment of what would become a trilogy. Before you get too comfortable in your plush movie seat or sofa, you see a flash and Doc running up the driveway. Something’s not right. There’s a problem and Doc needs help. Where does he want to take them? To the future! And so a new story is kickstarted…a sequel. Just because a story has comes to an end and has closure doesn’t mean it can’t lead to another story…and another. We call those serial stories. Serials keep us engaged episode by episode. Serials are fun.
Building Products with Story
“…in real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera is on us, baby.”
—Stephen King,
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Let’s face it: you probably don’t make multi-million dollar epic movies like Star Wars; instead, you make websites, software, digital or non-digital services—all things that people don’t just consume, but actually use. Just as with a movie, story flows through how people find, think about, use, and recommend your products.
Consider this photo for a moment (see Figure 2.11). It tells a story of an Apple product that comes installed on every iPhone. You can probably guess what product it is.
FIGURE 2.11
A still image from an Apple commercial showing two people using a built-in iPhone app.
Assuming you guessed FaceTime, you are correct. If you guessed “Tinder for seniors,” that’s not an Apple product. But, as some of my past workshop attendees have demonstrated, a product like that also has a compelling story to it: a story that you can easily use to prototype to test out a design hypothesis. What we see in this still photograph is an entire story encapsulated in one simple frame. Rather than spell it out for you, I want you to take a moment to consider this narrative within the framework I’ve laid out so far.
What do you see?
How do you know that these people are using FaceTime?
Well, they’re older, so maybe they’re grandparents. They’re smiling. What makes grandparents smile? Grandchildren? And? Maybe their grandchildren are far away, and they want to see them. Why can’t they see them? It’s too expensive to fly and not realistic to do that on a regular basis. Why not call them up? They already have an iPhone or an iPad and use it to play the crossword puzzles all day. And so forth…they are calling them up. Just with video. Using FaceTime is as easy as using the phone. It is a phone. But with video. You just look at it instead of holding it up to your ear…like magic.
This is the type of computational math that your brain makes during a series of microseconds when you look at a photograph like this and try to understand what you see. Your brain seeks out a story in the data it consumes. And that story has a structure to it, whether you realize it or not. This behavior is so natural that you probably don’t even notice that you do it.
Story is not only a tool your brain uses to understand what you see, it’s a tool your brain uses to understand what you experience. In other words, the same brain function that you use to understand what you see in a photograph is the same brain function you would use if you were one of those grandparents using FaceTime. Life is a story. And in that story, you are the hero.
In Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra argues that creating successful products is not about what features you build—it’s about how badass you make your user on the other end feel. It’s not about what your product can do, but instead about what your users can do if they use your product.
Amazon, for example, is not a marketplace with lots of stuff. It’s a way for you to have a world of goods at your fingertips. Using this perspective, you can see how your job building products comes down to creating heroes. When I rush-order toothpaste with one-click on Amazon to replace the toothpaste I used up this morning—as boring as it sounds, I’m a hero in my household.
This job you have of creating heroes isn’t just an act of goodwill. In the time I’ve spent over the past two decades helping businesses build products that people love, I’ve seen what happens when people feel good about what they can do with your product. They love your product. And your brand. They recommend it to others. They continue to use it over time…as long as you keep making them feel awesome. They even forgive mistakes and quirks when your product doesn’t work as expected, or your brand doesn’t behave as they’d like. People don’t care about your product or brand. They care about themselves. That’s something that you can and should embrace when you build products.
What’s great about story and its underlying structure is that it provides you with a framework—a formula, if you will—for turning your customers into heroes. Plot points, high points, and all. Story is one of the oldest and most powerful tools you have to create heroes. And as I’ve seen and will show you in this book, what works for books and movies will work for your customers, too.
CHAPTER 3
Concept Stories
What Is a Concept Story?
How Concept Stories Work
Avoiding the Anticlimactic
Supporting the Story
Mapping a Concept Story
Finding the Concept Story at FitCounter
“Stories are about people, not things.”
—Chris Crawford,
Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling
When the first iPhone came out in 2007, the iPod was a popular device. If you were like me, you carried an iPod in one pocket and a mobile phone in another. Sometimes, you joked about how you wished you could duct tape them together so they could be one device. But really, you wanted Apple to invent an iPod that was also a mobile phone.
When Steve Jobs gave his keynote presentation in January of 2007, that is exactly what the media and pundits expected him to announce. And he did announce an iPod that made phone calls. Sort of. What he demonstrated to the world in that presentation surprised people because it was much, much more.
During his keynote presentation, Jobs presented a problem: smartphones are no good. Then he revealed a new smartphone that not many people expected—it consisted of not one, but three products:
• A widescreen touchscreen iPod
• A revolutionary new mobile phone
• An Internet communicator
As he cycled through three slides in his presentation that illustrated these three points, he repeated them a few times. “An iPod…a phone… and an Internet communicator…” he repeated this phrase until he finally asked the audience, “Are you getting it?” At this point, the audience erupted in applause as he announced that Apple was not launching three, but one singular device that did all three things. They were going to call it the iPhone.
No one had asked for a three-in-one communication device. Actually, most iPod owners in 2007 would have been content with an iPod that let them make phone calls. This moment in Apple’s keynote presentation was not just momentous because it changed the world of mobile computing, but also because it was the inciting incident that kick-started a storyline that flowed through everything from the actual product itself to the rest of the presentation that hooked and engaged not just the audience, but much of the world. What bolstered the presentation, more specifically, was a concept story.
What Is a Concept Story?
A concept story is the conceptual story model of your product: it illustrates the big picture overview of what a product is. At the highest level, it also outlines how your customers think about that product. It is the foundational story and structure that you will use to identify and communicate your core concept and value proposition both internally and externally, as well as weave into everything you eventually build.
Concept stories, when used to define products, help you answer the following questions:
• Who is this product for?
• What is their problem?
• What is their big goal? Secondary goals?
• What is this product?
• What is the competition?
• Why might someone not want to use this product?
• How is this product better than the competition?
• What does this product need to do?
• What is the straightforward solution to the problem?
• What is the awesome solution to the problem?
NOTE WHAT CONCEPT STORIES DO
At the very least, good concept stories get people excited about your product. As a requirement, the stories live within your product and how you shape it. At their best, they get people talking about your product. Concept stories help you achieve three goals:
• Communicate a shared vision
• Align toward that shared vision
• Innovate and prioritize against that shared vision
How Concept Stories Work
Because concept stories illustrate how your target customers do or could think about your product or service, they are either based on real data or are aspirational. Think of them as the mental calculation that someone makes when they first hear about your product. The story might only last a few seconds as your customer puts together the important pieces of what your product is and what they can do with the product. Even though it lasts a few seconds, this story sets the stage for your customer being intrigued or excited by what your product is.
Concept stories operate like this (see Figure 3.1):
• Exposition: The current state of things
• Inciting Incident/Problem: The problem your product will solve
• Rising Action: The product name and a brief description or market category
• Crisis: The competition
FIGURE 3.1
How a concept story is structured and operates—this is how people think about and see value in your product.
• Climax/Resolution: The solution and value proposition or competitive advantage
• Falling Action: The takeaway
• End: The goal met
Exposition
Exposition reflects the current state of things for your user who personifies your target audience (see Figure 3.2). Who is that user? What does he want? What does she need to do?
In the case of the first iPhone, the story exposition began with a character who loved her iPod and her mobile phone, but wanted a device that would let her listen to music and make phone calls on the go. If you asked why she wanted those things, you’d see that both of these things fall under the umbrella of communication: a basic necessity. Your character doesn’t want a two-in-one device, per se, but just needs to communicate with the world.
FIGURE 3.2
Identify your main character or user.
NOTE WHAT’S IN A NAME?
While writing this book, I struggled with what to call the main character. This “person” can go by many names: person (obviously), character, hero, user, customer, target audience, persona, etc. In the end, I settled for using the words character or user, as those two names seemed most apropos. A character is typically characterized in a story, and a user typically represents the business customer. If I used other words occasionally, they are intended to mean the same thing.
Inciting Incident/Problem
The inciting incident is the problem or need that your users have. They have a big goal, but…wait…there’s a problem. Why can’t they meet their goal?
If there isn’t a problem, then there is no solution…and without either, there is no story. The problem doesn’t have to be very serious or a matter of life and death. It can be as simple as boredom. This problem might be one the users know they have or one that you need to show them they have. Both are valid. Additionally, this is a problem that they can likely solve through other means. Rarely will you be inventing a product that is exploring completely uncharted territory. Even the iPhone was solving a problem that other competitors were trying to figure out: it’s difficult to communicate while on the go.
In the case of the iPhone, the problem that the user knew she had was that it sucked to carry two devices. The problem that the iPhone ultimately solved, however, was more broadly focused on improving mobile communication. In this case, Apple solved a problem that people didn’t know they had. As such, the 2007 keynote, as well as the device itself, not only had to tell the world what their problem was, but also show what the problem was and highlight how the solution could look and function.
Rising Action
The rising action occurs when your product, service, or feature comes to the rescue. The product should have a name, a brief description, or a market category (see Figure 3.3). For example, the iPhone is a smartphone, specifically, and a mobile communication device, more broadly. Because concept stories are short and conceptual in nature, the rising action shouldn’t be too complicated or wordy.
FIGURE 3.3
Give your product an identity as well.
NOTE CONCEPT STORY: A VISUAL ELEVATOR PITCH
Think of a concept story as a way to visualize and bolster a short, impactful, bulletproof elevator pitch. Both concept stories and pitches describe your product, brand, or business, as well as purpose, market, value propositions, competition and competitive advantage (more on elevator pitches in Chapter 7, “Using Your Story”).
Crisis
Think of the crisis as the competition. This competition can be another product, service, or feature. It can be abstract, as in an alternative way that people currently solve their problems or meet their needs. Or it can also be something emotional, such as resistance to change or people not wanting to adopt something new.
In the case of the first iPhone, the crisis involved a little bit of all of the above. Users might already own an iPod, mobile phone, or both and not want to buy a new device. If they were interested in buying a new device, however, they might not want to pay a lot for it. If they’d ever used a touchscreen device before, knowing that the iPhone featured a touchscreen was also a huge crisis: touchscreens were as awful as the smartphones they accompanied those days. Wouldn’t a touchscreen make the iPhone difficult to use? And no keyboard? Typing would be impossible. At least that’s what the few people who owned Blackberrys and Palm Treos thought at the time.
Climax/Resolution
The climax is where the problem outlined in the inciting incident and the additional hurdles that surface during your crisis are resolved and overcome. The way that your product enables users to resolve these problems becomes its value proposition. Implicit in the value proposition is that it’s not only different, but also better than the alternative ways your customer has to solve this problem. A concept without a conflict and a resulting climax is a flat story—literally just a line.
In the case of the iPhone, if the character wanted a two-in-one de
vice to communicate, what they get with the iPhone was the best way to communicate. With the iPhone, not only could they listen to music and make calls, but they could also access the Internet, maps, and email.
Granted, other smartphones would let them do some of these tasks, but as Steve Jobs emphasized over and over during his keynote presentation, the iPhone worked like magic. It was easy to use. Those simple capabilities and value propositions fit neatly on a business school competitive advantage graph, like the one Jobs mentioned in his keynote. And they gave a strong climax to his story at the conceptual level. Who doesn’t want a bit of magic in their lives?
Falling Action
The falling action is the part of the story where your hero has some kind of takeaway—when he envisions a path to try out, use, or purchase the product. Think of this as the then what? or …and? Your product solves a problem and overcomes the competition in a compelling way. So what? If a product falls in a forest and no one hears it, what’s the point? Use the falling action of your concept story as a chance to empathize with your character and imagine how you want that person to think or feel. Is what you want to happen plausible? If so, how? If not, why?
For the iPhone, the falling action for the character at the center of this story was that either she was convinced that she wanted this device (early adopters, fanboys, and fangirls), was intrigued and needed more convincing to try it out (she might wait and buy the iPhone 2), or she stayed skeptical but curious (your grandparents waited a long time and eventually bought an iPhone). Falling action for concept stories should still remain in the realm of thought, rather than action. Your customer hears about what she can do with your product and thinks something. In the next chapter, you’ll see how you can move that person from thinking to doing.