See a photo of Sean, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.

Q&A with Sean Buvala, Questions 2 and 3:

Q: How important is it to you and your work to function within the framework of a particular definition of “story?” (i.e., What is a story?) What definition do you espouse?

A: I think that definition of storytelling is critical for it is within the lines of definition we get the most freedoms. I have worked for some time with the following definition. “Storytelling is the intentional sharing of a narrative in words and actions for the benefit of both the listener and the teller.”

Just quickly, “intentional” means that not everything we do is storytelling. Storytelling is a planned activity and process. “Narrative” means what is being talked about has a beginning, middle, and end. “Sharing” means that there is an audience in front of the teller which can be one person or thousands. “Benefit” means both the listener and the teller leave the sharing of story as a changed person. Even after telling some stories for decades, I still hear new ideas from even my oldest stories. Usually, what comes as new to me is when the listener tells me what they hear. I am not a fan of giving the morals to stories. I would rather the audience work that out with me instead of being told what to think.

That is a rather quick take on my definition of storytelling. We usually go rather in depth in our workshops on this definition so the audience can add to or take away as they need.

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 like Twitter (and I have the fun ID of @storyteller) for the immediacy of having some very smart people sending bits and pieces of wisdom and fun my way. I enjoy podcasting as a way to let people think about ideas. Although audio stories in podcasts in themselves are not storytelling, recorded pieces do open the door to live interaction. I have had some fun with YouTube, most recently making a video-podcast of our “gestures” training. Storyteller.net embraced technology and storytelling very early on. I love seeing what’s next in the tech world since I am one of the “early adopters” we keep hearing about.

I am so excited to bring you a Q&A from Sean Buvala, a frequent commenter to A Storied Career. A storytelling “purist,” Sean keeps me on my toes, makes me think, and keeps me from descending too far into appreciating the sillier interpretations of storytelling and uses of applied storytelling. He is extremely active in many corners of the storytelling world and is a prolific Twitterer. His Storyteller.net is about the same age as Quintessential Careers, the parent site of A Storied Career, and his description later in this Q&A of the pioneering aspect of his site sounds much like the journey of QuintCareers. This Q&A will appear over the next five days.

Bio: (From one of Sean’s Web sites): Sean describes the collection of stories in his head as “life and legend” representing the mix of stories from his experiences, myth and legend from many cultures, sacred stories and observations of shared life events. As a storyteller, Sean primarily works with teens and adults in business and corporate settings. However, schools and libraries use him all the time for younger children. He describes his style as somewhere between “in your life and in your face” depending on the needs of the group he’s telling to/with at any given gathering.

Sean has been presenting and storytelling “on the road” since 1985. He’s traveled to perform and present workshops in dozens of states and to hundreds of organizations in those states. His audiences have ranged from just a few people gathered in a living room to several thousand teens and adults. He is the founder of Storyteller.net, the largest online resource for storytelling and storytellers.

Sean’s experience also involves training and design for the telecommunication and hospitality industry. He’s done customer service instruction/team development for companies ranging from government to faith based organizations to major corporations. He’s taught and told for companies such as Wells Fargo, AT&T, Unilever, the Arizona Courts and more.

Most important of all, Sean is the father of four daughters and husband of one wife. He lives in the Phoenix, Arizona, area. His wife says that when he is home from the road, he is a great cook.

His current projects include Storyteller.net and “Outside In Storytelling.”.

Q&A with Sean Buvala, Question 1:

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now?’ What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: Storytelling has been bedrock to all cultures through history. In that, I mean the process of telling a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end to convey a particular thought, a societal idea or to entertain. With the advent of so many electronic communications, people are just growing more aware of their need for deeper communication and connectedness. Our neighbors are no longer the people who live next door. Now, neighbors are the communities and people we self select. Since so many people are now engaged in long distance communities, families and friends spread out, people are feeling a lack of something in their day-to-day existence. That longing is being met in sharing of story in its many forms.

There are many folktales that talk about wholeness or one person separated into two beings. It is only by coming to terms with one’s story and wrestling with oneself that these two parts can be made whole. Our stories are native and entwined in each of us.

For me, I do not think that I see the question as you see it. I am not so sure “storytelling” is growing explosively. I know that the use of the word “storytelling” is growing at a rapid clip, and it is being applied to all forms of communication. Therefore, now, everyone who shares any idea at all is a “storyteller.” I think this does a disservice to other art forms. For me, storytelling is the “mother” of all other communications. A person who excels at writing a story is an author, not a storyteller. A person who creates great videos is not a “digital storyteller” but rather a gifted filmmaker. There has been a dilution of the word storytelling. If everything we do is storytelling, then nothing is storytelling. I am neither a gifted author nor a filmmaker and do not wish to be. I am a storyteller and my work needs the presence of an audience right in front of me. Without an audience and immediate interaction, then whatever the artist is doing is not storytelling. It may be any of many other gifted and needed art forms.

I am critiqued for expressing my understanding of what is and is not story. Essentially, I am accused of keeping people “out of the tent.” That is not my intention at all. “Story” has many ways to be expressed and there are tents all over the field. In my tent, story is presented in an oral expression (or ASL manual communication) called storytelling that requires a live audience of at least one person. Over there, there’s another tent filled with talented filmmakers expressing story. In a third tent, maybe there are talented dancers, scrapbookers, or authors. I do not want to dilute any of the art forms by having to cram us all into the same metaphorical tent. I want the freedom to go enjoy the filmmakers in their tent and maybe even join them in a few attempts of my own. I also know that all the artists in those other tents will benefit by coming and learning foundational things in the storytelling tent.

I think I know that we in the storytelling communities have lost grip on the word “storytelling” and I am banging a drum that no one will really hear. Nevertheless, my place in life is to call the crowd to many different ways of thinking and says, “Look over here.” I would be untrue to my art and myself if I did anything less.

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.”

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

Q&A with Whitney Quesenbery, Question 4:

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?

A: User experience is my second career. My first was in theatre, where I worked for many years as a lighting designer. When I started working on an early hypertext project, the connection between theatre and UX seemed very obvious. I used to talk about the computer screen as a very small stage proscenium.

We always had activities in UX that were “story-like:” creating scenarios to describe how a site is used, describing what we learned in user research, and creating the stories for usability testing tasks. But, none of this was formally connected to “storytelling” in my mind. That came when I first heard Stephen Denning speak, and read The Springboard.

What I love about using stories in user experience design is that it allows me to add some of the complexity and serendipity of life to the logic and analysis that dominates work in technology.

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

Q&A with Whitney Quesenbery, Question 3:

Q: The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?

A: In my world of user experience — which usually means technology-mediated experiences — I think it’s about finding ways to connect. We are craftspeople, in the sense that we make things for other people to use. But we often have a very tenuous relationship with those people.

Think about how strange it is to have a group of people working on software or a web application who have no real, practical understanding of the daily lives of the people who will use what they create. This is very different from the lives of traditional crafts people. When you built a house, or made a tool, you could see and touch the world and lives it would be part of.

Technology is such a paradox: it allows us to connect in so many new ways, but it also allows us to be apart.

Stories are a way of rebuilding that connection. There are many ways to tell user experience stories: personas, scenarios, comics, storyboards. They are all ways of letting us see more than just the technology we work with, and give us a window into the context of the user experience.

This is increasingly important now because of how pervasive technologies are in our lives. We need to understand all the possibilities and variations. Stories help us do that.

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

Q&A with Whitney Quesenbery, Question 2:

Q: The first chapter in your upcoming book, Storytelling for User Experience Design, addresses why “stories are important as part of user experience work.” Without re-creating the chapter, can you offer a bit of insight as to why storytelling is especially important in user experience design — and do it in a way that gives an overview of UX for readers unfamiliar with the field?

A: Every UX project involves managing a lot of information. Even a small site involves balancing the business goals, user needs, and technical possibilities. When you are working on a large project it’s hard to stay focused on the goal of creating an excellent user experience, because you are managing so many details and (sometimes) conflicting needs. The other difficulty is keeping the “user” in sight. Perhaps that sounds strange for work on the user experience, but typically the users are not part of the design and development team, so it’s easy to ignore them.

With their ability to communicate so effectively, and on such a deep level, stories are one way to manage both challenges. They are a natural way to describe events, brainstorm ideas, engage the imagination, and build community around the new design.