The Story-Mountain Template
One time-tested and highly successful story structure is presented in a visual known as the story mountain. The story mountain is often associated with Freytag’s pyramid. Published in the middle of the 19th century by Gustav Freytag, a German novelist and playwright, this structure originally provided a five-part map for a tragedy: introduction, rise, climax, return or fall, and catastrophe. In his version of the pyramid, the plot ends with a catastrophe; this part has become denouement, resolution, or conclusion in modern interpretations.
The story mountain, or the hero’s journey, is widely used to help students from elementary school to college to structure their thoughts before writing a story. A story following this template includes five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
In UX, you can follow the story-mountain template to create stories for your internal team:
- Exposition. You start out at the bottom left of the mountain to establish your users and the setting. You introduce the user, give her a name, for example Mary in our bus-tracking–app story. You can add additional details about Mary if they are relevant to your story. For example, you might want to share whether Mary is looking for wheelchair-accessible transportation, how she first heard about the app, her level of technological literacy, her age, how often she has to commute for work or leisure. The more details you fill in, the less will be left for the audience to imagine. Remember that any detail should be deliberate and serve the purpose of the story!
- Rising action. You work your way up the mountain to communicate the problem your users face. In our example, Mary needs to get home and she must figure out how to get to the train station in time. Should she wait for the bus or get a ride share? You can raise the stakes and escalate the story to emphasize that the train station is quite far, beyond a walking distance, that there is usually heavy traffic, and that there is only one evening train that she cannot miss.
- Climax. You hit the top of the mountain — a turning point that shows how the problem has affected your users. Here, you can take our story in several different directions, depending on your goal. If we wanted your audience to get excited with your concept and align everybody towards a shared vision, you would emphasize the benefits of your new bus-tacking app. You’d describe how Mary decides to use the new app, which shows her that the bus is only 3 minutes away on a live tracking map. She is not worried about her transportation and feels confident that she will make it on time to the station. If you wanted to get your team to pay attention to the customer feedback and to the bugs in your product, you would share an unsatisfactory, disappointing experience. Mary decides to use the app, but it requires her to log in. She forgot her password and her password manager does not recognize the app. When she eventually restores access, she needs to type the bus-stop number and her destination bus-stop number. While she is busy interacting with the app, Mary misses the bus and must order a ride share, which already has surge pricing.
- Falling action. You head down the mountain, showing the steps that are taken to solve the problem. In our example, you can expand on how Mary is on time because the app provided her with all the information she needed in order to make an informed decision: the bus schedule, the estimated arrival time, live traffic information, and a comparison chart with the expected ride-share travel times.If, in your story, your user either decided not to engage any further with the product or was left in a difficult position without a resolution, you need to offer your audience a roadmap towards mitigating that situation.
- Resolution. You end the story by showing whether the product or the process worked. In our example, you could say whether Mary got to the station on time and recommended the app to a friend or whether she was left annoyed with yet another gimmicky app that did not serve its purpose.
The story-mountain template is a recipe for good stories. It helps the storyteller add necessary setting, introduce the user, describe the problem and how it is affecting the user, build tension throughout the story, and finally show what steps were taken or can be taken to resolve the situation. The resulting story has a main character with clear problems or goals and a clear resolution, which brings closure and actionable recommendations for the audience.
Conclusion
Good UX often implies skillful storytelling throughout the design process — from defining the problem to sharing stories with our stakeholders. However, all stories, especially the user stories we tell in our organizations, live in the minds of our audiences. This means it is our responsibility as UX professionals to clarify and craft stories that help our audiences make them their own. One way to do that is by following the story-mountain template.