Storytelling in design, even on a settings page?

You've clicked through a checkout more times than you can count, and it's never felt like a story. This week we take storytelling in design to the least glamorous screens there are.

The question

I keep hearing that good design should tell a story. But when I'm working on something like a settings page or a checkout flow, it doesn't feel like there's really a story to tell.

From our own list. Is "tell a story" meant for everything, or only marketing sites and onboarding?

What we talk about

A painter's bowl of fruit, and the gap between a layout and a composition. Then how the screen you just left shapes the one you're on.

A wordless song about a chase through a forest, where art stops and design starts, and what a title does before the first note.

How a joke is built and tested, a spider that changed a whole night of jokes, a car crash study about one word, and anchoring. Then callbacks, albums heard start to finish, and a one-sentence story.

Mentioned in this episode

From Hidden By Design

• User interface design (S2E20): composition and story in interfaces.
• S3E5: the cup's first appearance.

Also mentioned

• Anatomy of songs and Anatomy of more songs: John Atkinson's genre cartoons.
• Jokes with Mark Simmons, the Gary Delaney episode: how jokes get written and tested.
• Elizabeth Loftus: the car crash wording study.
• Storyteller Tactics: storytelling cards.
• Peer Gynt: Grieg, music you can hear mountains in.
• The Four Seasons: Vivaldi, a title that primes you.

• The Real Slim Shady: Eminem, a callback.
• The Wall: Pink Floyd, one story start to finish.
• Levellers: an album tied to a life.
• Pulp Fiction soundtrack: teenage summers on repeat.

Got a question of your own?

Got a design question or dilemma you're stuck on? Send it to Thorbjørn and Martin through the contact form at hiddenbydesign.net and it might become a future episode.