In Service of the Who
Another not-so-great week at work. But my wife and I were able to find a new daycare for our son that will be much closer to where we will be moving in a couple of weeks. So I am considering that a huge win given we may not have been able to place him somwhere new until the late summer. Seriously, if someone can find and retain the staff, the daycare business has to be very lucrative right now.
Recently in Save The Cat!, Blake Snyder went into character and the 10 "types" of movies. These aren't genres, per se, but more story arcs. For example, Out of the Bottle describes movies like Flubber or Jurassic Park where a wish or pursuit has gone awry. And for character, did you ever stop and realize that Jurassic Park is about Dr. Alan Grant wrestling with the idea of parenthood?
This got me thinking about how to frame up stories that describe a user journey. Most of the 10 categories Snyder describes aren't applicable, but a handful reflect most of the stories UX people will probably encounter and try to convey to stakeholders, such as Dude with a Problem: An average person (man, woman, or child) is faced with a challenge they must conquer. In the real world, this problem could be finding a place to park and paying the meter or learning how to ask for that raise and promotion at work.
The problems have to be primal – basic needs, wants, and desires – as Snyder says. Primal urges get our attention. The people should be framed as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, ex-boyfriends, etc. because we all have these people in our lives. When someone describes a "father," I can see myself, my father, or my brother who will soon be a father. When you say "investment banker," unless I work in that industry, I have to make up my own archetype of what that person may do, think, and say.
Which leads me into a tangential topic: Personality Archetypes. The latest episode of the Business of Story podcasts, discusses how brands can use familiar character archetypes to tell their story.
The kicker for me came at the end (how appropriate) when the guest, Richard Gillingwater, walks through a few business websites and points out how the imagery and design reflect some of the archetypes he'd just discussed. While I listened, I pulled up the sites myself, and it served as my 'ah ha!' moment. I hope to find a way to this idea into future persona and design work.
Links
- RADNB Archetypes: The tool described in the Business of Story episode isn't live yet, but you can poke around and sign up for notifications when it's complete.
- The 12 Jungian Archetypes: I hadn't heard of these before, but when I saw them reflected visually as part of the personality archetypes discussion, they made a lot of sense. Our brain is wired to sort our environment, and we pick up on cues to help us out. This is why stereotypes are so prominent, and often so damaging.
- Enneagrams: All this talk of archetypes brought me back to late last year when my old product team did a remote group activity taking various enneagram and personality quizzes.
- Print is Dead! Long Live Print! podcast: I don't recall where I learned about this podcast, but the first episode I listened to (the fourth in the catalogue) is an interview with Robert Newman, and he goes into a very interesting discussion about UX versus print design.