February 2025
Service Design
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I opened LinkedIn sometime in March, 2023 and saw a re-post of Jeff White talking about the importance of storytelling in the design world. After unsuccessful job hunting, I knew it was one of my strengths and something that I needed to work on. I decided to re-visit the way I present my design work entirely (case studies, prototypes, design systems, everything) and give Jeff’s ‘UX Storytelling Guide’ a read. I’m so glad I did. Sometimes balancing the different “worlds” involved with UX can be difficult; I’m decent at public speaking, balancing business needs with user needs and keep the bigger picture in my own head but I had completely neglected showing that I could do all of those things when presenting work via my portfolio case studies.
They were mainly targeted toward one persona: UX designers - neglecting hiring managers (am I qualified for the role?), account managers (would I represent the recruiting agency well?), UX managers (can I do the job well and work with others who also do it well?), executives (what value am I adding to a team?), etc.
Moving forward, I decided to implement a more ‘Product Design approach’ to my work rather than a nitty gritty UX approach. It’s important to still showcase UI design decisions, research insights, iterations, project takeaways among other items but to do it in a broader form for a broader audience.
Check out Jeff’s guide HERE
Life Jeff White, I too am constantly bombarded with meaningless ‘tips and tricks’ to better UX storytelling but none of them are foolproof; in fact, most are super case-specific.
According to Jeff,
“UX storytelling is the act of telling someone why a design is good or bad. It happens anytime you present, communicate, or show design to a stakeholder or colleague.”
Basically: whenever you’re describing why a design is good, you’re storytelling.
Jeff provides several reasons as to why someone might be reading his guide. I identified with three of them:
1. ‘you make it all the way through interview loops but aren’t landing the job’
2. ‘your team lacks design maturity’
3. ‘projects take too long to complete’
Storytelling helps to:
1. build credibility (as a strategic partner rather than a separate entity)
2. get projects finished faster
3. increase quality/performance
4. get clients, promotions
“Storytelling gives you increases confidence, morale, job satisfaction, financial security, and freedom.”
The 5 parts of good storytelling:
1. Know the audience
2. Establish trust
3. Use a story structure (the ‘tell ‘em method’)
4. Make recommendations
5. Use high quality visuals
There’s a lot more to the guide than what I’ve recounted. Guides like these only work if the recipient is ready to receive feedback/criticism (I am). Although the guide wasn’t long, I felt as though it gave me a lot of clarity into what UX storytelling should/can be moving forward.
I read this as I was re-designing my portfolio and preparing for job hunting; it happened at a very optimal time because I felt as though my work wasn’t being showcased in the most effective way. I decided to restructure my case studies to primarily showcase the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what.’ In the words of Steve Krug, ‘take something away.’.
Becoming a ~great~ storyteller is still a work in progress, but this guide definitely gave me a confidence boost I needed to move forward.
