See a photo of Whitney, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Q&A with Whitney Quesenbery, Question 5:

Q: What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?

A: My favorite moments in UX stories are when a story can make a point and help a team see a problem or opportunity clearly. Without going too deeply into the specifics, perhaps this example will work.”

“On our web site, some people seemed to get lost on the opening page of some great information. They missed all the navigation and links to get started, and would just… wander off. We’d seen this behavior, but never really understood it, until we looked closely. They were reading the page, and clicked on the first link, ready to dive in when.. WHAM. They were thrown into a page to order bulk copies of printed literature. Someone else skipped that link and took the next one. WHOOPS. She was back at the same page she’d started from. So she tried again. And it happened again. She went around that merry-go-round at least three times. Now we understood. We’d dangled “garbage” links in front of someone, and distracted — or frustrated them. Now we knew how to fix it. Happy reader.”