Storytelling and user experience design: How stories shape design and how design shapes everythying

Abstract

Increasingly, classic storytelling techniques are being used in the technological space to communicate ideas or ideals that would be otherwise hard to communicate. Previously, storytelling is a specifically liberal arts, literature-based focus, and computing and the internet was left to computer scientists or other technical professions. There was little scholarship that provided a link between the two, highlighting how storytelling techniques are being used by technological leaders to mislead and manipulate the public at-large, creating culture on the fly through digital artifacts. This study leans on creative writing, philosophical theories, social science, as well as cultural observations/scholars to critique and make apparent this manipulation in a variety of forms and styles. The findings of this research encourages awareness and understanding of how the modern internet operates via storytelling in an effort to teach readers on how to understand how this manipulation operates, identify where it exists, and ultimately, reject in the favor of truth.