storydriving

Storydriving is a design and communication approach that places narrative at the center of how products, services, and experiences are planned and evaluated. A guiding narrative—its characters, goals, conflicts, and resolution—anchors the features, content, and interactions developed for a target audience.

Process: Start with a target audience and a narrative spine. Build a simple story arc—setup, challenge, progression, resolution—that mirrors desired user outcomes. Map the user journey to story milestones and design touchpoints to advance the plot. Use branching or adaptive storytelling to reflect user choices while keeping clarity. Evaluate with metrics that track engagement with the story and alignment of actions to narrative outcomes.

Applications: In product design, onboarding, and training, storydriving guides users through goals. In marketing, a brand narrative shapes content and calls to action. In data storytelling and decision support, data are presented within a narrative frame to illuminate insights. It is also used in simulations and scenario-based learning.

Benefits and considerations: The approach can boost engagement, comprehension, and motivation, and provide coherent context for complex tasks. Risks include oversimplification or constraining user autonomy. Effective practice balances story with accuracy, accessibility, and user control, and uses narrative-focused evaluation alongside usability metrics.

Relation to related concepts: Storydriving intersects with narrative design, scenario-based learning, game design, and user experience research, and is compatible with evidence-based design methods.