How to present UX idea to client?
Presenting an idea to the client or customer is a proposal to solve a business problem. So the best way to present a solution is to tell a story.
Let me tell you a story first. Two friends meeting in a cafe to have a nice round of chit-chats and life. When doing their chit-chats one of them told the other that she has recently watched a movie which has changed her life and her perspective towards life. And the other friend becomes very moved and feel curious to know more about it. The first friend reveals the name of the movie on asking and started to tell the story of the movie as she becomes a fan of the movie. The other friend also wanted to know about it and their discussion focus moved towards the storyline of the movie. The story was all about a girl and her journey of life. The girl started her life in a very struggling situation with her single mom and in a not so affluent community. As she was living her life and sailing through her journey started facing all sort of difficulties in life. She has reached at a breaking point many times but somehow getting out of those difficulties but when the girl becomes 18 she faced a serious problem with her mother fell sick and she has no job and her college education are at stake due to the bad financial situation so overall her life brings her in a very critical juncture of like and seems very difficult to navigate through it. If she failed to manage the situation she might land up in a bad life. Now the first friend got excited to tell the climax of the story as the story has a great twist and the girl finally made it to the richest person in the country and in an interesting way which nobody can think of. But the second friend thought off not to listen to the ending as she now want to watch the movie to experience it first hand and do not want to lose the opportunity to enjoy the thrill of the movie.
Now to answer the question you might have created the same kind of thrilling experience in telling your idea so that your client will enjoy the story would like to experience how your idea will win over the business problem like the second friend in the story.
Structure of a story
Every story has a simple structure one of which I like most are from Dean Koontz’s Classic Story Structure and as follows
- Plunge your main character into terrible trouble as soon as possible
- Everything your character does to get out of the terrible trouble makes things only worse
- The situation appears hopeless
- Finally, your hero succeeds against all odds
In UX world we have fancy way of telling story we call it persuasive story telling. Why persuasion? Because as a problem solver we need to nudge our audience towards the solutions.
- Always use the vocabulary which are being used for the domain and by the users
- Highlight the pains of the users and empathise with it.
- Present some real data to backup the pain and problems
- Create outline to overcome the problem and criteria for success
- Provide visuals to portray AS-IS and TO-BE solutions
- Provide measurement data to support your solution or proposal to collect data for your solution(kind of approval sign-off)
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NN/g Group video on how to tell UX design ideas.
Watch Steve Jobs presenting
https://youtu.be/0lvMgMrNDlg
5 Interesting articles on storytelling
5 must read book on storytelling
- Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- Fascinate: Unlocking the Secret Triggers of Influence, Persuasion, and Captivation by Sally Hogshead
- The Storytelling Animal: how stories make us human by Jonathan Gottschall
