customer engagements by story telling
If you are in product design or in service design and if you are desperately fighting for customer’s attention, or if you are painfully struggleing for customer relationship, or if you are intensely striving for clear and marketable product visions – then the best is to try to get your customers bound to your product very, very, very emotionally. – Try to get them on board your product development right from the beginning!
You can embed customers in all phases of your product or service development: Product Requirements Gatherin, Product Design, Product Release Planning, and Product Retrospectives. – A retrospective, or sprint retrospective as Scrum – an agile software development framework – calls it, is a practice used by teams to reflect, and to continuously improve their way of working.
It is of particular importance to identify behaviours and hidden expectations of all your stakeholders involved at any time in all phases of your product development. Playing “The Drama Game” in retrospectives creates shared understandings of events and incidents happened in the Product Development Life Cycle.
Innovation Games and LEGO Serious Play are well-known methods to run these workshops with customers playfully and most effectively.
You can embed customers in all phases of your product or service development: Product Requirements Gatherin, Product Design, Product Release Planning, and Product Retrospectives. – A retrospective, or sprint retrospective as Scrum – an agile software development framework – calls it, is a practice used by teams to reflect, and to continuously improve their way of working.
It is of particular importance to identify behaviours and hidden expectations of all your stakeholders involved at any time in all phases of your product development. Playing “The Drama Game” in retrospectives creates shared understandings of events and incidents happened in the Product Development Life Cycle.
Innovation Games and LEGO Serious Play are well-known methods to run these workshops with customers playfully and most effectively.
- Design – Innovation Games: “Buy Me a Feature”, “Hot Tube”, “Worst Nightmare” – LEGO Serious Plays
- Requirements Gathering Workshops – Innovation Games: “Prune the Product Tree” – LEGO Serious Plays
- Release Planning – the customer is continuously involved in all time schedules, resource allocations, and other prioritisations.
- Retrospectives – the customer is continuously part of all feedback rounds during release rollouts
Both tools are powerful methods to identify motivations, possible conflicts, and feature priorisations between the stakeholders involved – especially in workshops with customers participating
Story telling, however, is a powerful tool to engage people. Stories create a common identity, a shared culture, and commitment for the community members.
Create, tell and share a story with your product and your customers as "Heroes".
“The Drama Game” is a story telling game. The game fosters communication and engagement between all stakeholders – customers, dev team, architects, and QA, etc.
The goal of the game is to create a shared understanding of crucial situations ("incidents") happened in the product development life cycle. By this the game helps to unveil hidden impediments.
“The Drama Game” can be played either in retrospectives incessantly, during the running product development life cycle, or afterwards as a "post-mortem" analysis.
Of course, playing it during product development has more value since the hidden impediments are unveiled.
You find playing instructions and material here.
Create, tell and share a story with your product and your customers as "Heroes".
“The Drama Game” is a story telling game. The game fosters communication and engagement between all stakeholders – customers, dev team, architects, and QA, etc.
The goal of the game is to create a shared understanding of crucial situations ("incidents") happened in the product development life cycle. By this the game helps to unveil hidden impediments.
“The Drama Game” can be played either in retrospectives incessantly, during the running product development life cycle, or afterwards as a "post-mortem" analysis.
Of course, playing it during product development has more value since the hidden impediments are unveiled.
You find playing instructions and material here.
See The "Dramatic BOw" in your Product-Customer relationship
If you want to share a common product development story with your customer, be aware that all stories are like myths, are like legends, are like fairy tales and are like theatre plays.
The American mythologist Joseph Campell discovered with his research in comparative mythology and comparative religion that stories have a distinct commonality – the so called "Dramatic Bow" – they all follow a certain structure. And they all share a common set of distinct characters with unique metaphorical meanings.
IT- and user-experience (UX) affine guys would call this "user experience map" and “personas”.
The American mythologist Joseph Campell discovered with his research in comparative mythology and comparative religion that stories have a distinct commonality – the so called "Dramatic Bow" – they all follow a certain structure. And they all share a common set of distinct characters with unique metaphorical meanings.
IT- and user-experience (UX) affine guys would call this "user experience map" and “personas”.
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The Structure of a Hero Quest
Christopher Vogler realised the importance of Joseph Campell's work for the entertainment industry and introduced it to Walt Disney. Since this, the "Hero Quest" serves as common success-benchmarking framework for Hollywood films, books, novels, and songs.
In a "Hero Quest" there are 12 unique stations – or Quest marks:
In a "Hero Quest" there are 12 unique stations – or Quest marks:
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The Cast
A Hero Quest has an archetypical set of characters. Each character serves as symbol with a distinct metaphorical meaning.
The Hero. For his Journey the Hero leaves his acquainted World. He survives Adventures, fights with Dragons, finds new Friends, and rescues the Virgin.
The Mentor. The Mentor teaches, facilitates, and guides the Hero during his Quest.
The Dragon. The Hero has to stand several challenges and Fights – the next more dangerous than the previous. The Dragon is the metaphor for the Final Fight, a life-or-death Struggle – All or Nothing.
The Virgin. The Virgin, or The Princess, is the Happiness and Luck the Hero could achieve.
The Treasure. The Treasure is the metaphor for all Experiences, Learnings, Values and Norms the Hero meets at his Quest.
The Jester / Hero’s Buddy. The Hero’s oldest pal, they know each other since the flask. The Jester takes nothing serious, he replies everything with a joke, he is open minded, and he pushes The Hero to go for the New again and again.
Virgin’s Governance. The Governance is the “Internal Guard” of The Virgin. She keeps the Values and Norms of The New World up and holds The Virgin back to love The Hero too early.