People: Motivation
People during goal-directed activities.
Experiences happen in a sequence that mimics dramatic structure familiar in storytelling. A person’s experience when sending an email starts by navigating to Gmail using a web browser. Next, they create a new email and enter address information. They then write a subject and the body of the message. The activity concludes when the sender clicks “send” and closes Gmail. Using Gmail is a pretty straightforward process.
However, not all Gmail experiences are the same. If a person is writing a breakup email to a boyfriend, or if they are using assistive devices because they are blind, the Gmail user experience will be very different—the story will include different twists and turns. Stories are seldom the same for all people in all experience design scenes. When designers embrace their role in interpreting and designing stories, they can facilitate usage scenarios in ways that match actors’ goals.
All storytelling aspects are specific to a moment when a person uses a design outcome. These aspects center on the use scenario, itself—the act of completing a goal by doing an activity. Use these aspects when examining ways people use design.
