Telling stories

爽

First off - haha at me going all "I'll be backtracking on my posts for the module to really consolidate my thoughts". A few days later, I did go through with trying to log my first week at my internship and all the learning I've had. In the same post I wrote about how I was appalled at my lack of organisation in my writing, and I tried to put headers and group points under the same headers, then I sort of just gave up.

Over lunch today, my colleague told me a story which really pleased the pedagogical linguistic nerd in me. When she was in school, she had a Chinese (language) teacher who gave a backstory whenever teaching a new Chinese character. One of it stuck with her through all these years - the tale of 爽.

Here's how the story goes (more or less, with edits from me) -
Getting home after a long day at school, Tommy went straight to his bed and flopped down, back first. He spread himself wide across the bed, sprawling his limbs out just like a star. His moment of utter relaxation was suspended when a wild thought popped up in his head - are there assignments due tomorrow?  No, he thought, crossing the item off his mental list. Another thought rang up soon enough - is there school tomorrow? Nope. Is Mom home and ready to nag? No. Does anyone at all expect him to be anywhere at this time? Not today. With a deep intake of breath and a small smile creeping up his face, he sank further into the mattress into the position of maximum comfort.

For the uninformed, 爽 is very similar to the shiok that we are familiar with. If I may do the definition myself, it means to be greatly satisfied, and even that is an understatement. The moral of the post? Storytelling is memorable, storytelling is enjoyable, storytelling is key to learning.

Memorability, enjoyability and learnability. Also the basic principles in UX. I've been at my internship for about 4 weeks now, and whenever my ma asks me what I'm doing I don't know what to say. Eventually I spit out a string of words - something like "er to make websites easier to use so that more people will use and business will be better". At this point, this is what I do believe UX is in a one-liner layman synthesis, but storytelling is what makes this happen. Tell a story that is easy to understand and delights the user. Tell a story that helps them learn and complete their tasks faster. Tell a story that they would want to tell their friends.

At the end of this lengthy piece - I hope if there's anything anyone (like me in a few weeks time when I come back and try to focus my eyes on lines after lines of my own writing) can take away - it's this: storytelling helps to make learning easier, more memorable, and a lot more fun. Now run along children and go be great storytellers!