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

Q&A with Kim Pearson, Question 3:

Q: The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media (such as through LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Second Life, blogs, etc.)? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these venues are storytelling media?

A: I’m active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and I’ve been writing a blog called From the Compost since 2006. I blog about writing, history, and storytelling, with some haiku thrown in.

On Twitter, I have two accounts. One is for me, @storykim, as my “real” self, where I tweet mostly about writing (specifically ghostwriting) and history. My other Twitter account is for my dog, Goody Beagle. I wrote a book about Goody, called Dog Park Diary, which is “told” by Goody — in other words, I ghostwrote the book for her, about her adventures at the local dog park. We worked with a professional photographer to illustrate it with real photos of Goody and the dogs she met at the dog park. I started her Twitter account @dogparkdiary to promote the book. It works pretty well – I do sell some books. I tweet in Goody’s voice, and what a fun voice it is — a dry comedic voice, much different than my own. She focuses on what’s important to her — smells, food, her run-ins with “The Cat” who steals her sofa and “The Baby” (my 1-year-old grandson) who pulls her ears. She makes comments about her human and that human’s failings. Did I mention smells? I love tweeting as Goody, and now Goody often “guest blogs” on my blog too, where she can expand eloquently on the same subjects. I have a future project in mind – another Goody book (again with photos) based on Goody’s tweets. By the way, Goody is at least three times as popular on Twitter as I am. I’m not sure what this means. But I’m not jealous.

I’ve referenced Storytelling for User Experience by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks several times — and now the book is finally here.

The publishers were kind enough to send me an ebook copy of it. I’m looking forwarding to reading but am not sure how valuable a review by me would be since I know little about User Experience design.

For now, I’m presenting the table of contents. Each chapter also has a summary and suggestions for further reading:

Chapter 1
Why Stories?

What is a story?
There are many types of stories in UX design
More work? not really!

Chapter 2
How UX Stories Work

Stories are more than just narrative
Stories have many roles in user experience design
Maybe you’re not convinced

Chapter 3
Stories Start with Listening (and Observing)

UX design requires good listening skills
Listening and observing leads to better understanding
Being listened to is addictive
Learn to be a good listener
Teach your team to listen

Chapter 4
The Ethics of Stories

Good research ethics — good storytelling
Professional societies give us relevant ethics for stories
Acknowledge your own influence
Tell the story accurately
Keep the story authentic
End the story well

Chapter 5
Stories as Part of a UX Process

UX is a cross-disciplinary practice
Using stories in user experience design is not a new idea
Stories can be part of many UX activities

Chapter 6
Collecting Stories (as Part of Research)

The best stories come from being there
Other sources of stories are all around you
Listen for stories
Get groups to tell stories to each other
Explore memorable incidents
You can observe stories, too
Tips for collecting stories
Write stories into your notes

Chapter 7
Selecting Stories (as Part of Analysis)

your first audience: yourself
What are you looking for?
Finding the stories
Finding stories in data
Building stories into personas

Chapter 8
Using Stories for Design Ideas

Stories evolve through the design process
Brainstorming for new stories: generative stories
Brainstorming helper: the storytelling game
Developing user research stories: generative stories (again)
Incorporating your user research into the brainstorming game
Moving from brainstorming to concept: expressive stories
Stories that document design: prescriptive stories
Stories can be part of the brand story

Chapter 9
Evaluating with Stories

Using stories to create usability tasks
Turn user stories into “instant” usability tasks
Turning tasks into stories
Collecting stories just in time for usability testing
Using stories for reviews
Collecting stories during a usability test

Chapter 10
Sharing Stories

(Managing Up and Across)
Don’t worry — everyone is a storyteller
Help the audience build the story you tell
If you don’t know your audience well, try listening
A few audiences you may meet

Chapter 11
Crafting a Story

What do we mean by “craft”?
Stories get better with practice
Sometimes stories fail
Think carefully about your goals

Chapter 12
Considering the Audience

The relationship between the audience and the story
Details from user research help ground stories
What if they think they know, but they don’t?
Mirror stories are stories about ourselves
The relationship between you and the audience
How much are you like the audience?
Is your relationship to the story the same as the audience’s?
Do you bring different pieces of the puzzle?
Help them get from here to there
Use stories to advocate
Bring them home safely

Chapter 13
Combining the Ingredients of a Story

Perspective
Characters
Context
Imagery
Language of the story
Putting the ingredients together

Chapter 14
Developing Structure and Plot

Story structures are patterns
Story structure helps the audience, the author, and the story
Useful story structures for UX stories
Using plot
Choosing a story structure and plot
Stories are more than the sum of their parts

Chapter 15
Ways to Tell Stories

Telling oral stories
Written stories
Visual stories
Multimedia, video, or animated stories
Putting stories in your reports
Make presentations a story of their own
Choosing the medium for your story

Chapter 16
Try something new

See a photo of Kim, her bio, Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Kim Pearson, Question 2:

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

A: A few years ago I was teaching my class “Making History” at a local Senior Center, covering the decades of the thirties, forties and fifties, and encouraging the participants to share their stories of those years. One of the topics we talked about was the enormous changes in the status of Americans of color during those decades (Jackie Robinson comes to mind), although all the people in the class were white. But they had a lot to say — racism has always affected us all, no matter what our color. Here’s one of the stories told that day, by a white woman almost 80 years old:

She was 21 in 1947, an office worker in downtown San Francisco. Every day she took the bus to and from work. The bus was always crowded. One evening she boarded the bus and was lucky to find a space on a bench seat facing the aisle, next to an elderly black woman. At the next stop, a man got on the bus. He was a middle-aged white gentleman, probably in his early fifties, wearing the traditional businessman’s attire of tailored suit and hat, and carrying an umbrella. He made his way down the aisle, and stopped directly in front of the office girl and the elderly black woman. After a few seconds of staring at them, he suddenly raised his umbrella above his head and brought it down — thwack! — across the shoulder of the old lady.

The bus became absolutely quiet. No one said anything, not even the old woman who had been struck. She stared straight ahead. As if taking their cue from her, the rest of the passengers stared straight ahead too. No one said or did anything. But inside the office girl, a tortured debate was going on. What should she do? What could she do? What he did was wrong, of course, but sometimes that was the way things were. But maybe she should say or do something. Say what? Do what? What good would it do? What if the man struck her too? What if she made it worse?

She was still debating internally when the old woman got off the bus at the next stop. An audible sigh of relief from the rest of the passengers could be heard.

And that’s the end of the story from 1947. But in 2004, the now-78-year-old ex-office worker looked around the room. “I should have done or said something,” she said. “At least I should have asked her if she was okay, or put my arm around her. That’s what I would do now. But at the time I didn’t know I could.”

She added, “I’ve never told that story before. I guess I tried not to think about it, because it made me feel so bad.”

For fifty-seven years she had carried that untold story around with her, a story that made her feel guilty and ashamed. But her guilt and shame is not the point of the story. She is forgivable, after all — a young woman, unexpectedly confronted with an evil act, is momentarily paralyzed by indecision. We can understand her reaction. I hope that by telling her story, she has forgiven herself.

And of course, she actually did nothing wrong. She simply did nothing.

And that’s the point of the story — the teaching point, if you will. Doing nothing. I bet all of us have had moments when we’ve seen something we know to be wrong, but we did nothing. Because we were afraid, or because we didn’t know what to do, or — God forgive us — because we were too busy.

My cousin Jennifer introduced fellow Washingtonian Kim Pearson to me. I am fascinated my Kim’s primary profession as a ghostwriter because I used to do something similar; one of my favorite jobs was as a speechwriter. Both ghostwriters and speechwriters have to get inside the heads of the people they’re writing for and write in their voices. And, as Kim discusses in her Q&A, knowing and writing for your audience is the most important aspect of ghostwriting — or any kind of writing, including speechwriting. I’m really tickled to present this Q&A with Kim. This Q&A will run over the next five days.

Bio: Kim Pearson is an author, ghostwriter, editor, and the owner of Primary Sources, a writing service that helps others become authors of polished, professional, and compelling books, articles, and blogs. Her books include: Making History: how to remember, record, interpret and share the events of your life; Dog Park Diary: the social round of Goody Beagle; Eating Mythos Soup; and several e-books. She has ghostwritten or edited more than 40 non-fiction books and memoirs, which tell the stories of a wide variety of people and cover a broad range of topics, from saxophones to finance, city histories to hypnotherapy, psychic horses to constipation, and many points in between. Kim teaches workshops and teleclasses on writing and history, and an interactive online course on ghostwriting. She writes From the Compost, a blog about writing, history, and storytelling.

Q&A with Kim Pearson:

Q: As a ghostwriter, you get inside people’s heads and write their stories. Given that you also teach others how to ghostwrite, what skills do you feel are required to be able to tell other peoples’ stories? Are there people who are not cut out to be ghostwriters, or can anyone learn to do it?

A: First and obviously, to be a good ghostwriter you must know how to write well. Writing is a skill and an art, and it takes time and practice to be proficient. But you must also be aware that writing for yourself is different than ghostwriting. A ghost needs to write compelling prose that is close to another person’s voice, not their own. You need to put your ego in the background and write what is important to your client, in a way he or she might say it — only better. This skill involves more than writing ability. You must be able to ask penetrating questions that elicit sparkling stories and deep emotions. You must be able to listen compassionately to the answers, and then delve even deeper. You must be able to translate what you find in someone else’s head into written words that convey someone else’s truth. You must share the passion of your client, at least temporarily, and to do this you need to be insatiably curious and in love with learning. You must be fiercely dedicated to producing an excellent work of art, yet recognize that this work does not belong to you. A ghost is a different kind of writer. Not all good writers make good ghosts.