Action Scenes and Storytelling for PMs and Engineers
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During quarantine, I stumbled on a great YouTube channel: that of Patrick (H) Willems, a film maker and enthusiast. I got hooked with the first video that popped up (suggested by the magic recommendation algorithm), How to Make a Perfect Action Scene. If you haven’t seen this video yet, I highly recommend it - go watch it right now!
Finished? Cool.
Why bring this up in the context of tech products? Well, I’ve seen a lot of articles in the last year on the role of storytelling in product management and software engineering. It really makes me proud. (Seriously, LinkedIn kept nagging me to change my header from “Technology Storyteller” to my current job title). But a lot of the way I see storytelling applied still leaves me a bit confused.
When I saw this video on the perfect action scene, everything clicked. Using the language from the video, many of us put the emphasis on “so” as the connecting word in our stories, instead of “but” and “therefore”. In tech, “so” is both predictable (not as engaging to the people we’re talking with), and ambiguous (leaves out a lot of the establishing details, the “why”).
I’d like to demonstrate the difference using the main product example from Melissa Perri’s book Escaping the Build Trap (which I highly recommend).
Background: The example company is an online learning platform, connecting instructors (in the role of content creators) to users (in the role of subscribers). The problem is that user churn is very high, which directly impacts revenue.
So… #
Let’s look at the story (and the path to the solution) using “so” as our connecting word.
- We need to reduce churn, so…
- We need instructors to create more courses, so…
- We need to make it easier for instructors to create more courses, so…
- We need to add in-platform video creation/editing tools for instructors
Wait. What? How did we get there?
The obvious information missing is the rational for each step, one to the other. Using “so” makes it easy for us to gloss over that context. But this format is reinforced by the standard user story format that we’re all used to: As a (type of user), I want to (take an action), so I can…. It encourages us to leave out the most critical information in favor of an actionable, bite-size sentence. A tweet, rather than a story.
But, Therefore… #
Let’s re-frame like we’re constructing an action scene:
- Users sign up, but the lack of course variety/content limits the value they get, therefore we need to find out why content is limited courses
- Instructors can create courses, but the vast majority have never finished creating more than one course, therefore we need to find out why
- Instructors say that editing videos takes too long, therefore we add a concierge editing service
- Instructors don’t have good software or knowledge about video creation/editing, therefore we add in-platform video editing and coaching tools
There’s obviously some information still missing, but overall we get a more complete picture of where we’re going and why. From this, we can get the big-picture of how adding video tools for instructors will reduce churn (and increase revenue).
Remember, one of our biggest responsibilities is building empathy for our customer’s problems within our product teams. Film makers are the best at this - they create empathy, connection with, and concern for characters that are fictional! We should learn from them where we can.
Other thoughts #
Some miscellaneous, related thoughts that didn’t quite fit above:
- Another cool video from Patrick (H) Willems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8czFGUedDJU
- How to Ruin an Action Scene
- A lot of focus on clarity and context
- Every Frame a Painting - video about the visual storytelling in Jackie Chan movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ
- Establishing context, position
- Showing the same hit twice - sometimes it’s good to re-iterate details
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