Francisco Inchauste’s eagerly anticipated Part 2 of his Better User Experience with Storytelling article kicks off with interviews with four practitioners in the field — Dorelle Rabinowitz, Curt Cloninger, Christian Saylor, and Cindy Chastain (You might want to read Inchauste’s comments illuminating my entry about Part 1 of his article.)

He asks each his or her approach to storytelling in user experience design, how they feel storytelling ties into business’s profit motive, and what resources each recommends for those who want to learn more about storytelling in user experience design. Among those resources — plus some tools that Inchauste recommends:

• Personas Template
• Experience Themes Matrix
• Whitney Quesenbery’s Storytelling for User Experience Design (book to be released this year, co-authored by Kevin Brooks).
• Experience Themes by Cindy Chastain
• The Art of Storytelling by Christian Saylor
• A Case for Web Storytelling by Curt Cloninger

• Storytelling: A Compelling Design Tool
• Experience Themes: An Element of Story Applied to Design

Some snippets of the expert interviews that resonated with me:

• Rabinowitz: “I realized that storytelling facilitates communication, that people respond emotionally to stories, bond over stories and share stories again and again, and that the more I integrated storytelling into my work the better the work was.”
• Cloninger: “… narrative design … means allowing the user to have some kind of personal say in completing her experience.”
• Chastain: “Brand message is no longer the thing that sells. Experience sells. If the intangible pleasure, emotion or meaning we seek can be made tangible through the use of story and narrative techniques, we will build more compelling product experiences.”
• Saylor: “I strongly believe that everything has a story associated with it. Every business, social group, concept, methodology and relationship is desperately seeking out better ways to engage with its audience. Some just happen to do it on a large scale (Apple), while others quietly create a pattern of life that goes unnoticed until it disappears (the remote control). From packaging that sits on the store shelf to the applications that follow us throughout our days, story influences just about every aspect of our lives. Story is all around us. It gives us a sense of understanding and knowledge of the people and things that are important to us.”

Later in the article, Inchauste offers examples of storytelling applications in several design realms: Packaging: Apple; Technology: Microsoft Courier; Marketing: Six Scents Perfume; Architecture: HBO Store; and Websites: Showtime Sports

[Illustration credit: I’m pretty sure Inchauste designed the “Good design tells a story” graphic.]