User experience is critically important in any type of technology.
The overall design of an app, game, website, and beyond sends vital signals to the user—even if they don’t notice it. While the majority of user experience design is geared to make software easy to use and navigate, the very best UX goes far beyond that basic role. In other words, it can weave narrative into the overall design of a project.
That’s important today because software should be branded. Branding allows a company to signal to their users who they are. As in, what is their mission with this product? What is their overall vision as a company? And how does every part of the software reinforce that mission and vision?
Many UX designers are rightly focused on functionality—but those who are able to adapt user narrative in their design can take things to a totally new level. But what does that actually look like? And why is it so important? Let’s explore.
Lessons from Games & Gamification
Let’s look at an example from the gaming world. Slots are incredibly popular for gamers around the world—and they’re also very short-form. Players simply spin the reel, and then wait to see which combinations hit. To help players get more out of the experience, developers and designers zero in on the details to infuse each one with deeper context.
For example, Book of Dead is a popular slot game that follows an adventurous hero on his path into ancient temples. The slot’s design includes graphics inspired by ancient mythology, which is reflected in other elements like the game’s typography, color scheme, and audio.
Though the game has a limited scope in terms of development, these design elements help keep players immersed in Rich Wilde’s adventurous plots. Let’s dig even deeper to explore why these small design points and UX features are important regardless of the type of content being developed.
Design Adds Context
The slot example above is pretty straightforward. But what about more subtle design projects, including functional projects like a weather app? In these examples, design is even more important because it must be subtler—without forgetting the overall context of the app.
If it’s weather at play, then even the colors, symbols, and layout should reflect this ‘narrative’. It helps infuse the entire app with a sense of continuity and cohesion. In other words, it helps create an even deeper context for whatever topic is at play. In a weather app, that might be as subtle as using white and blue color schemes that reflect a summer sky.
Design Elevates Understanding
Aside from using design to help convey narrative, there’s also the idea of a user narrative. A user narrative is simply the mindset and goal of the user. As in, what do they want to get out of their experience using a certain type of software? Once developers know what their users are after, they can create a design that reflects their journey.
Design in Book of Dead reflects the user’s desire to be entertained. In a weather app, by contrast, the design should be more informative and direct. In other cases, the user narrative might not be so direct, which adds even more challenges for designers.
Design Cuts to the Core
The goal of creating a design around the user narrative is to create a truly seamless experience. Just like great service is said to be invisible, so is great design. But designers can only create these types of successful projects when they’re able to cut to the core of the user journey, including their pain points.
Designers need to get into the mindset of their users, which involves balancing their goals, their stressors, and the product or service at hand. On top of that, they need to include the branding mentioned above, including mission and vision goals. Only designers who do their research beforehand to nail the user narrative can create such fulfilling software.