Forget Storytelling — Designers Need “Story Listening” Now

Welcome to you India 2025 Hi my name is Gaurangi and today I have Payal and Rachit UX Desires at IBM today I am so excited to have you guys here and today we will be talking more about story listening which is a not very conventional way of talking about design briefs. So, we are just going to deep down and understand how story listening is helping us and how we can actually adopt it ourselves ? So, let's do it. Ok. We are excited to be you too. Do you have any questions specific to story listening? Because I can see it, it comes out very surprising because you know story telling but we are saying story listening in what is it? No no no no we have a bunch of questions actually. Nice. And I'll be shooting them on you. So first to start with how are you liking the experience of UX India and how was your day? yesterday. It's been amazing so far. Ah it was just the day one yesterday. And I think it's fun because there's so much happening. It's Not Just UX But There Is All Things Design. And it's it's been amazing. Like I love the dog. I love the energy and there was a lot of networking and getting. Need a lot of new people. Yeah. The Kind of Energy You Get at the UX India Conference Is Completely Different From Other Conflicts That I Have Been Through. And this is the energy that we kind of all look for as designers. So it's it's it's have been amazing. Thank you so much. Are you excited for your session, your talk? Definitely. Very much. And this is the first time I'm talking about the story Listening Outside Our Team. So it feels like we're going to get a lot of questions. It looks like a very personal topic, right? It is so let's start with what is storytelling and how did that thought emerge to you and like you decided to talk about it and on the deeper level on your personal level how do you relate with that same topic? I can tell the truth. Yeah. So, I think I work in the cybersecurity domain and these domains are so complex in it's own way it's going to get more complex and the job that designers really have to do now is step by step inside the early process and really work through the discovery side of things to strategize and figure out all the technical jargon and what it really means for the user on the surface level. Ok. It's Been It's Been So Many Months That I Really Worked On Figma. Or like design screens because that's not really the part of the job that they ask me to do. Right. So story listening comes through the picture when, I was listening to this technical jar. It wasn't making sense to me. But all of a sudden I was making analogies from what they were saying. So something like ah database became castle. And like cyber security tools become mode. And I was, I was creating stories in my head, as I was listening to this technical documentation. And I think it also has to do with the domain. I was working on cybersecurity is very notable about this that they have a lot of system metaphor. Caslan Mode Itself Is Like Well Known One. Oh so, it just hits you all of a sudden because you're designers, you're coming from design school where you've thought about these technical jargons, but you have all the design tools, but you've thought about these domains. And When You're in These Meetings, You're All Confused and Suddenly Someone Calls Out Castle and Mode. And something which is finally relatable to you, and then you start making analogies. So story listening is that's why I say it's like the opposite of storytelling. You use storytelling to explain stuff to someone. And story listening is you use stories to explain yourself and could be your own universe. Yeah. But the thing there is that you know when you start practicing story listening. It actually helps you to tell stories. Like It Improves Your Story Telling Much Better. Makes you story telling much better. So, I think it's more about ah you know how everybody needs to get that domain knowledge expertise these days and how you can practice story listening to get through that and it's not like an a skill or a new method that you need to learn. It's actually something that we all do in our everyday life. But it's just that as designers we don't practice it much often. So, maybe we should practice story listening as a way to learn, leverage it to get our own benefits and understand. Knowledge is better. Right. Actually like listening to you I had a movie in my head. I could actually visualize it. Right. I could visualize it. And I personally like I never had a term for it. But I am realizing that I think we all do it. So which is very interesting. Movies in Your Hand. I will tell you the expression that we just had. We have similar expressions with other team members and everyone thinks in this way. But no one head really documented these findings. So, or so we're like, let's go ahead with the story listing. It it seams very design term that might. A New Generation Design Term. So, like, just to make it out, bring it all together, story listening is something you're trying to listen to, you're trying to understand. Yah! Hmm. So, from boring paragraph, long brief. To A Nice Way of Understanding Things Yourself? So, how do you communicate this? And how do you communicate in your design process. Like, from for example, you, again, you get a design brief. To the design process. In, which involves like the whole functioning, communication, with the team, telling people. And Not Just Date. Also, how are you documenting it. Hmm. Yeah. So that's a really good question. So how to put it actually into practice is what you're asking and a Jess. So am you know what we like imagine we entering like a new kick off call of a new project that you're meeting with the new stakeholders. And you know they are throwing all these jargons at you. Because you don't know the domain et al. And ah you are trying to understand and make some sense out of it. But how about the time like the f the initial meetings that you have with them usually just goes by you knowing at them and you're not pretending to be like you understand everything but actually what you do is you go and search later and try to understand ah later so how can you do get these domain expertise actually ask questions like ah and create analogies like for us we think of tech ah ah technical concepts as medal stories. So, we try to connect it to some kind of obsession like we love Harry Potter. So, we try to connect it to H Hapotter and you know, just give map everything like map what your users are in your domain. Like try to create those connections and have some kind of metaphors that actually work for you. And create those analogies. So bye bye connecting those gaps. I think slowly you will build that web of understanding. Or understanding personal level. Also about slowly modeling the whole universe to understand your domain. So when you talk about getting like a design brief. Am. You There's a lot of conversation that goes on when you're decoding that design brief with your stakeholders. And you are trying to ask questions. You're trying to figure out what exactly they're saying. But you don't know what the right questions to ask. Hm so, the way we usually do it is we get a design brief and then we do like a the briefing among ourselves. And we have a mural setup like a white board setup where we have our own understanding of the whole product already listed. So if this new design brief comes up it's more like adding to that whole jobs to be done framework which is very analogical to our understanding and just by that we derive a lot of questions that we can ask. What if like one of the examples that we're giving in our talk is around the great fireball of China. Fire Chinas Has Blocked Google Right? So, that's the way we see it, it's really like everyone knows there's a great fire over China, and how a VPN could be like a tunnel which could basically allow WeChat to log you in. So we talk about this terminology which also keeps the mediations fun. Because everybody imagining the great word China is all the politics stuff which is more fun to talk about than rather like technical Georgians. So, we kind of coded it at that level. And that brings us a lot of different questions and that we can communicate with stakeholders and everybody knows about these bigger analogies that we can. I mean that's the best part because in like when you have like some kind of ah, you know, fun stuff added to it, it gets easier to get hold of those awarenesses and that domain knowledge and you can communicate better with your team. You can explain each other better by using just these stories. That you al understand well. Right. It Is Like in a Very Normal Way How We Teach Small Children Toddlers Exactly Right. Exactly and you know when you like visualize things it helps you to remember things better. So it's not like just memorizing something or reading it out like you know by hearting something and just trying to remember it. But just drawing these connections to remember yourself. Like just visualize and remember it. Yeah. And I think it's similar to how you teach kids, as you said. I think people are going to watch this recording will be like, this it is like mental model. Right? This main model is for users. This is like, ah what system metaphor for developers of developers are watching this. And this is exactly it, is just that, they, they all have their own methodology and their own parameters, for us as designers, story listening could really be a mental model for us. And we are the end users. So, so it could be our universe. We Don't Have to Think About If Floppy Disks Are a Universal Mental Model for You Right We Have to Think About Our Universe and What Makes Sense to Us Exactly I Am Into Hogwarts So That's Why Harry Woward Is My Story Listening If Someone Into Star Wars Pick That Universe If You're in Marvel Pick That Universe | Or it can also be something, I mean not just Harry Potter and Marvel and things, but it can also be something like any world that you like exploring. It can also be like if you like something related to say, hot hospitals, and your own kitchen, like, even if you have to explain your domain to your mom, how would you do it? So you can use analysis from the kitchen? And like Home or Anything That You Want to Relative to. One of my product managers used to work in the healthcare industry and then he came to cybersecurity. So, in his known stories, war was around health because he has mastered it so much. So, he was trying to understand cyber security concepts with you know stuff related to healthcare systems and. Yeah. So everybody is doing it or baby everyone does it do it consciously or we are just terming it or so very fun they sorry even when you explaining it someone you know you know you usually give analysis like if they don't understand what it is you like you know this is something like that so kind of yeah. Yes yes. This and that and then making it a whole new picture. We're just building upon something. So, building on my same question and the thing that you just explained, how are you implementing story listening in UX at IBM? So like I'll tell you, you want answer this. You can go for us. Yeah. Okay, so, I personally like handling complex domains and IBM mostly has enterprise products. And Enterprise Products Have Very Complexities. Yeah. IPM Haven't Been Completely Designed. They Work on a More Stitch Together Team. So, you are working with developers and architects and that is your day to day job to do it. So, and we all come from creative backgrounds. I I did my Bachelors in Srishti and we were thinking about everything but cyber security and enterprise products. We're Never Seen in This Area All Together. So I think I think everyone has their own way of visualizing their own complex domain. You work in sustainability and other other products and every domain is completely different and complex. Mind is cyber security. So I think everyone is implementing their own stories in their own domains and trying to visualize it. So if I if I have to do a cross disciplinary talk about what your domain is about it would she would be talking in a more designer language and not a technical one so I can understand what he is about story listening again to help us ya so as he said he works in cyber security domain and I work in completely different domains and we have like everything here gets extremely technical you have to have get that domain knows very quickly and since you keep moving from one product domain to another. How do you quickly get it? So that's where like story listening comes in for us. So, you know , it gets easier because you can x you can get hold of those things and I don't think in those technical jazz anymore. Like I try to relate it to something a very unknown concept that I already know of. And like try to base it on that and learn a new thing that I don't know. Right. There is one thing which we have to realise. Yes. A lot of people who have tried to come on board. into enterprise products the major problem the issue was to understand the domain I've seen people doing jobs because they don't understand the domain they're working in and get so overwhelmed up to one point and with a coming in and all different and it's it's just gonna get more complex. So I think one of the skills of one of the things that we have to do is just get a better gasp of domain knowledge because. That's Gonna Be The Main Area You Have To Really Design For. You really have to bridge the gap between what developers are thinking and what surfaces to the users. And you have to do object-oriented exercises to like pick each and every terminology that they're thinking about and then it makes it sensible. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So just to add to that. Like what he said that you know, you have to get better at your domain expertise. And we all are great designers already. We have all our frameworks and our methods and you know our user journeys and you know design thinking very well. But the actual job like becomes easier when you actually understand the domain better and you can get real insights. You can navigate those meetings, those technical meetings and have a say in those meetings as well. Or, actually. So, as you guys are from different domains all together. And you have come in together. You're co-hosting The Design Talk right now. So what all different kinds of special skills are you bringing in together? Like from different domus, you're posting it. I think. You want to go ahead? Go ahead. I think I think one of the things that was an aha moment for me was I was thinking about story listening in a very silo a story listening to itself in a very silo team. So I was just talking to a bunch of people giving examples, look, you can imagine it like these different umpires, and I was just using kindness terminology inside my team. But then when I talk to her. She was also using similar methodology in her team. And then we talk to a bunch of other people who are also using just like just that. So, I think one of the reasons why we decided to do it together is because we both have our own examples. And it just gave us because no one has ever talked about this and made it tangible. Right? That Story Listening Is a Thing. And that's why it was more difficult to think about this as more than an abstract concept. Ah, and when we bring on examples, it gives this more ah validation that, hey, this is a real thing and we're all not doing it. So, let's just talk about this. So if we're going to talk about this, you're going to think about it consciously. Wonderful wonderful covered it right. Or Actually Wonderful. So like there's so much about story listening and talking about storytelling alone and actually realizing the whole thing that we do even when listening to any story is the main like the answer. Story listening. So, it was like so wonderful talking with you. Just to sum up how we're actually going to add AI and what is the future of story listening and how like new people who are getting into the field can actually implement storytelling because new people are getting into AI too much. And they want to do things that are like we all are doing from back then. So AI together and the future of story listening goal I think I think one of the practical approaches I found was when I was talking to people they were like okay but where to start how can I think about a story and just combine it with the domain I am working on and I I keep telling you just need one spark my spark was Caslon mode and someone was using it and then I started thinking about you know all made well era movies Jodha Akbar and those thinking from that perspective so I think if you can't get that spark from those meetings and your meetings are really boring then I would use software like cloud and perplexity because they have already been so much system metaphors being made at all most of the domains. One practical hack is to just go and ask prospect your clout to just explain this as like a three year old kid and like make an analogy around it. Most of those analogies won't make sense to you, but then you will get a spark from one of those pointers, and it might just allow you to think in their direction. That is so true. That is actually so true. The best part to add on to that is the best part about the story thing is that whenever some analogy or some metaphor doesn't work for you because it's your own world and it's your own universe you can always switch it. You can like reframe it. You can talk about anything that you like and explore the world. wonderful. That was really a fun chat. Now we just have a few questions. A small rapid fire around to light and it up? Are you guys ready? Or. Sure. I'll be she she she she she she she she she shooting you with questions. You need to answer it in one word. Ok. Ok? Let's start. Describe yourself in one word. Ok. I want to say more than one but I'm just got to say one. I think could smart and getting insideful outcomes. Smart? Also you can use one word smart. Ok. All right. I I would I would place it more like a one more ? Yeah. Owl from Eye Wood. If I say owl then explain that I work at night and I am ya. And bunch of others of ya ya ya make sense. Owls are very like observe. Or. Look. I get it. So, one book or one movie that you find very inspiring? And I close to your necklace. Love watching The Intern again and again. Oh! And it's just so much fun to see ah the movie again and again. I will I love reading. Ah and whenever I have to gift a book to someone then I gift Anthropocene Review. And it's just an amazing book. If you guys have. If You Do Guys Don't Read Then They Also Have a Podcast Around It. Oh! And just keeps giving you a new perspective whenever you read it. I definitely scared it. I read it because he is suggesting me that. I am also taking in your suggestion. So what's the best part about your work day? I think the best part is I really love talking to a lot of people and I think I have like a good eye for noticing things that often get kind of unnoticed in between calls, just conversations and I remember things, well I feel. So I think dating helps me like talking and communicating. Helps me get more insights. So I like to do that. Say like thought you gonna say something like tea break because yes yes I don't ready tea I am sorry even I don't drink tea I think for me we normally have stand up every day and great my team is global like some people sit in Boston and then Ireland and Australia and then we all have like one time at which we all are awake so like just come for the stand up for like 15 minutes and just talk about it the stand up is supposed to be just only for like 10 minutes you you you you we just give you brief and that's it. But we usually stretches to one hour because we just have an amazing team and amazing bonding that's fan. We just keep talking about what happened in our life and so that's something I always look out for. That's so interesting. So what do you love about UX India? Like in one word describe UX India? In One Word I Think I Think It's The Partnership Between All Things Design. I know it's not one word but ah the partnership between all things design and you know the best part was that I met a lot of people yesterday in the day one. Ah who are not from the design background. I was interesting to see how they're adapting ah right you know new ways to do work. Is a design thinking yah. I would say family because sometimes like the one- one of the things that I realized about us in India is they think about everyone, they need every year most every year right it happens every year and every year it feels like they are checking upon you that how it went last year if you find something just tell us if you found something interesting and this is something that we found so we are going to speak about it and it felt more like a check point every year that they check upon you that how is it going? Something? It's more like bonding. Yeah, it's more like bonding and like even in the first day, Bapu was talking about the next five years. So, he was keeping a check on like this is what we're envisioning as designers as family. And I think this is something which would have been missing if UX India wasn't there. So, I would say family is involved. I have delighted to hear this. So, if not design, what other field would you be in? I think I would be a pilot. Wow. I think I would be in theatre. Interesting. Thank you so much for taking in the time. It was really a fun chat and so insightful like eye opening. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.