Our journey starts with a BLANK page and plenty of IDEAS in mind, but first, let's define the brief.

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The Mission

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Create an interactive story, build an online web page that tells a story and allows our users to interact with a design that they identify with.

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Writing the Brief

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Before we start our brainstorming process, let’s write a short page that summarize the main idea of our interactive story, the message we want to deliver and the subject we want to deal with. The challenge is to tell our story using interactive elements such as images, texts and sounds while creating an experience that will convey our story in a unique new way.

 

Once we know what message we want to share, we can start our creative journey.

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Brainstorming

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Let’s start by bouncing design ideas around that correlate with our message. Start by creating a folder with numerous references and sketches of visuals, fonts, colors and different samples of UX language. ​

 

Next, arrange the contents of the folder on a big blank page, this is your inspiration board. The inspiration board can be arranged with different sections for colors, visuals, fonts, messaging, UX language, behaviour, structure, etc.

 

You can build your inspiration board by brainstorming with others. It's very important to push boundaries, ignore judgment and criticism, and embrace the unusual, eccentric wild terms of your concepts.

 

I encourage you to be visual, try to sketch quickly while jumping from one idea to the next. ​ ​

 

Once good design ideas are formed and listed,​ it’s time to research and understand the different concepts that relate to your story. It is necessary to prioritize these concepts in order to obtain the best experience. Give each concept a score and measure its advantages and disadvantages, this way we cut down and get the best most practical and innovative concepts.

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Know your users

 

Who are your users? Let's show them some love and make user personas for every type of user that wants to interact with your story. View your ideas through the eyes of your users. Try to put yourself in your users' shoes and test your concepts from their point of view. ​

 

I use many different products and tools during the brainstorming process.

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Thesaurus - helps you dive into your concept. Make a list of words associated with your main idea, type them up and search for the different semantic fields. You’ll be amazed by how useful this is. ​

 

There are so many online brainstorming tools such as

Mindmup, Aha!, Popplet, Coggle.

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However, I think that the simplest and most efficient tool is to use a PowerPoint presentation, or a shared Google Slide Presentation. Fill the slides with screenshots, written ideas, photos of sketches, and even voice recorded ideas.

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When creating a user persona, you can simply use a template from justinmind or use online tools such as HubSpot and Smaply.

 

Below you can find more detailes about those tools.