Narration X

Pix from my presentation at UX-LX 2010

Review of my UX-LX talk

I was quite surprised to discover one of the people who saw my presentation at UX-LX had written a review of her experience at the conference which included a synopsis of my talk.

This was a first for me. I have been mentioned in print before, but never reviewed!

A big thank you to the author Theresa Neil, who wrote positively about my talk and even included an embed with my slides.

But it does make me think how things have changed. I guess my head was down, focusing on the presentation itself and I wasn’t expecting to crop up anywhere afterwards. Now, I can see the bigger picture aspects of public speaking that stretch beyound the prep and presentation itself.

“What’s the Story?” Slides from UX-LX

There has been over a thousand views of this presentation on Slideshare, so I thought I should share it here. Its funny, recently I have been finding more applications of Storytelling when working with our clients to build great experiences. More on that soon.

Ux-Lx Talk Description and Bio

Spent ages today constructing my talk description and bio for Ux-Lisbon. I had most of the content already but I set about rewriting everything from scratch. I was long overdue a rewrite, not to mention the fact that the longer you are in this business the more compelled you are to get things perfect – which is of course an impossible task!

Here they are anyway!

What’s the Story? Infusing experiences with the craft of storytelling.

Join Séamus T. Byrne on a journey through the world of storytelling as he explores our innate human predisposition to story, the evolution of narratives with emerging technologies (from cave paintings to twitter) and the efficacy of storytelling as a tool to create better user and customer experiences.

As humans we are hardwired to a good story and digital storytelling is no exception to this! Best practices found in other disciplines for constructing a good story form can be applied to an online strategy, a multimedia piece, a user interface design or a brand campaign. Creating the right narrative is a vital step in building lasting, trusting relationships between your company’s offerings and your constituents (customers, users and advocates). Applying best practices of storytelling throughout the customer-to-user lifecycle can increase desirability, discoverability, clarity and usability.

With the advent and proliferation of interactive technologies, story has new challenges to face. Storytelling will once again evolve as it strives to maintain its immersive qualities in a world obsessed by user choice, as it adjusts to accommodate the scale of available channels, where narratives can literally be found everywhere and to embrace non-linearity, where a user walks away from an experience with a mosaic of truth

Bio
Séamus T. Byrne is founder and creative director at Graphic Mint, a design studio based in Dublin, Ireland that specialises in user centered design and customer focused marketing. He has over ten years experience as a designer of brands, interfaces, products, services and multimedia experiences for web, mobile and applications for a multitude of clients with the U.S. and Europe.

Séamus is one of the original founders and organisers of IxDA Dublin and is a member of the Irish Internet Association’s User Experience Working Group.

He was co-creator of the The Organic City, a critically acclaimed community storytelling project, encouraging locals to find and tell stories about local places through a website. These stories formed the basis for mobile media that could be re-experienced while walking around the city.

When he gets a moment to spare, Séamus likes to write songs and record music, reading about myth, traveling to new capital cities and shooting video.

He shares his thoughts everyday on twitter, and less frequently on his blogs Graphic Mind and Narration X

My Top 3 Blogs

Not having much time on my hands makes it increasingly difficult to read Blog posts; never mind writing them

Recently, I started to subscribe to email feeds of my favourite blogs as it is easier for me to keep up to date and digest new content.
Here are three blogs that have stimulated my inbox (and me) of late.

Information Aesthetics

Putting People First

UX Matters

Best Careers 2008

It was reassuringly satisfying to see Usability/User Experience Specialist listed as one of 31 careers with a bright future in 2008 by US News and World Report. This is a great sign that UX is entering the mainstream and gaining much needed validation as an important role in the design and development of technology.

Mapping the Total Brand Experience

Since I moved back to Dublin, I have been working at an Irish software company as an User Experience Designer, but for the last couple of months I have been utilising my visual design skills to create a new look and feel for the company brand. In today’s faced paced information age, a company’s brand is no longer just a logo but a living, evolving, entity that manifests across multiple touchpoints. These touchpoints can be as diverse and disparate as websites, t-shirts, brochures, email signatures, business cards, powerpoints, and even signage.

Recently, I attempted to list the many touchpoints that make up the complex ecosystem of a company’s “Total Brand Experience” and graphically map the connections between them. It was no easy task. The difficulty stems from the complex interdependencies between the touchpoints. These multi-threaded relationships are best visually represented by using a mind-mapping software product like Freemind.

Upon completion of my first attempt at mapping the Total Brand Experience, I immediately desired to explore the relationship between User Experience and Total Brand Experience. This is a current direction that I am exploring and although I have no answers yet and ever-increasing questions, the area is intriguing. I hope to discuss more about the relationship between Total Brand Experience and UX on this blog in the near future.