Based on course “Psychology of Design” - An efficient way to create a good customer story for empathy is the “6P Story“. It’s a one-pager comic with six panels depicting what your customer is going through for a given experience.
Why
- Stories are crucial for customer empathy.
- Customer empathy helps you build better experiences.
- You can create minimum viable stories by using 6P Stories.
- Stories are often better than screens to understand what your users really need and the context of interaction with your product. That’s because:
- Screens merely tell you what happens. Only journeys can tell you why and how.
- Screens make you focus on your product. Not the problem. It’s dangerously easy to become attached to existing solutions you’ve put a lot of effort into (🧠 Sunk Cost Fallacy). On the other hand, stories focus on the customer first.
Psychological Insights
The following psychological insights are at play with storytelling:
- Narrative Bias: You’re wired to make sense of the world through stories.
- Singularity Effect: You empathize more with a single person (vs a big group).
- Character Identification Effect: Stories make your brain feel like you are experiencing the journey, so you develop more empathy for the hero.
- Closure: You constantly try to fill the gaps in comics. Stories and panel gaps are like open-ended questions for your brain. They act as a forcing function for creativity and help you find solutions.
- Miller’s Law: The average person can only keep 7±2 items in their working memory. This makes 6P Stories short enough to grasp the overall meaning quickly, while leaving enough gaps to imagine improvement opportunities.
- Pareidolia: Humans tend to interpret faces and emotions even in abstract shapes and inanimate objects. That’s why even the most basic stick-figure drawing can help build empathy and understanding.
What to look out for
💚 You start with empathy - Your 6P Story focuses more on your customer problem. You don't merely go through the steps in your app, but rather how the customer feels. Remember that the goal of your story is to build empathy to find better solutions.
🎭 You capture emotions - Empathy requires emotion, so your story highlights emotions. Try to convey a mini roller-coaster of ups and downs from the customer's perspective (e.g. smiles, frowns, expression).
💬 You focus on actions - Your 6P Story doesn't just describe steps. It makes others feel what the protagonist is going through in a real-life context. (PS: Imagine if our case studies were just a series of screen description… they probably wouldn’t be very exciting.)
🎢 You highlight the hero's struggles - It's not enough to include an Exposition in panel #1 and a Denouement in panel #6. Great stories focus on the conflict. Don't hesitate to highlight your customers' main doubts in panels 2, 3, 4 or 5. Review the point "Story Arc" if needed.
👀 You look for improvement opportunities - Your 6P stories will naturally highlight some gaps in the customer experience. Make a mental note of what they are. You'll revisit them in the next lesson.
Template
Examples
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