Learning with stories in mobile app design
When I joined the mobile team at Prezi, we were facing a critical challenge: a previous attempt to launch our Android app had failed. To get us back on track, I knew we needed a new approach that would re-center our efforts on the user. I proposed using a story-based framework to redefine our product strategy.
To make this happen, I collected stories from user research that we could refine and build upon. I also made sure the stories collected would affect the whole product development and validated the MVP we had in mind for the app.
We already had weekly user sessions (interviews and tests), so the first task was to rework our guides. Interviews now focused on collecting rich user stories about their contexts and needs, while our tests were re-purposed to explicitly validate these stories. This ensured our product decisions were grounded in reality, not assumptions. This also helped define our acceptance criteria for MVP validation. The understanding also helped in focusing the design efforts.
This story-driven approach helped us define our product vision and served as a powerful tool for aligning our team and stakeholders, from developers to marketing. It provided a clear, shared understanding of what we were building and why. We even used these stories for product marketing, which directly contributed to the app’s successful launch. This experience reinforced my belief that a compelling vision, grounded in discovery, is the ultimate force multiplier for a team. I also did a conference talk on this topic.