Ben Sauer is one of our speakers at UX London 2024. Ahead of his workshop— ‘The storytelling bridge: Turn confusion into clarity by telling tales’ — we had a chat with him.
Here’s what we asked, and what Ben told us:
If you had to choose one tip from your book that everyone presenting design work should know, what would it be?
Outline what you’re trying to say first, and do it horizontally. Most people just straight into the content without structuring a story, which is a bit like doing high-fidelity design without sketching first (where it’s cheap to fail).
Was there a defining moment when you discovered that presenting design work was different from giving a more general project update?
Yes. I was interviewing someone at Clearleft (apologies, forgot their name for credit!) and they used a method for slowing revealing the design, to manage the attention of the person you’re presenting to. When you present in a way that really shapes the experience of the audience, you’ll get far less pointless questions about your design.
What will be the main take away from your workshop: The storytelling bridge: Turn confusion into clarity by telling tales
That analogous stories are a useful way to explain problems; you just have to connect some dots to use them.
What are your go-to sources for design inspiration and innovation?
The real world. Looking outside of digital. Notice the everyday world.
And finally, what are you currently listening to, reading or watching?
The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim. It’s a fable about digital transformation. A little in-your-face with its message (and very engineering oriented!), but very readable. The principles in it are really useful.
