CHAPTER 3
Concept Stories
Finding the Concept Story at FitCounter
“Stories are about people, not things.”
—Chris Crawford,
Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling
When the first iPhone came out in 2007, the iPod was a popular device. If you were like me, you carried an iPod in one pocket and a mobile phone in another. Sometimes, you joked about how you wished you could duct tape them together so they could be one device. But really, you wanted Apple to invent an iPod that was also a mobile phone.
When Steve Jobs gave his keynote presentation in January of 2007, that is exactly what the media and pundits expected him to announce. And he did announce an iPod that made phone calls. Sort of. What he demonstrated to the world in that presentation surprised people because it was much, much more.
During his keynote presentation, Jobs presented a problem: smartphones are no good. Then he revealed a new smartphone that not many people expected—it consisted of not one, but three products:
• A widescreen touchscreen iPod
• A revolutionary new mobile phone
• An Internet communicator
As he cycled through three slides in his presentation that illustrated these three points, he repeated them a few times. “An iPod…a phone… and an Internet communicator…” he repeated this phrase until he finally asked the audience, “Are you getting it?” At this point, the audience erupted in applause as he announced that Apple was not launching three, but one singular device that did all three things. They were going to call it the iPhone.
No one had asked for a three-in-one communication device. Actually, most iPod owners in 2007 would have been content with an iPod that let them make phone calls. This moment in Apple’s keynote presentation was not just momentous because it changed the world of mobile computing, but also because it was the inciting incident that kick-started a storyline that flowed through everything from the actual product itself to the rest of the presentation that hooked and engaged not just the audience, but much of the world. What bolstered the presentation, more specifically, was a concept story.
What Is a Concept Story?
A concept story is the conceptual story model of your product: it illustrates the big picture overview of what a product is. At the highest level, it also outlines how your customers think about that product. It is the foundational story and structure that you will use to identify and communicate your core concept and value proposition both internally and externally, as well as weave into everything you eventually build.
Concept stories, when used to define products, help you answer the following questions:
• Who is this product for?
• What is their problem?
• What is their big goal? Secondary goals?
• What is this product?
• What is the competition?
• Why might someone not want to use this product?
• How is this product better than the competition?
• What does this product need to do?
• What is the straightforward solution to the problem?
• What is the awesome solution to the problem?
NOTE WHAT CONCEPT STORIES DO
At the very least, good concept stories get people excited about your product. As a requirement, the stories live within your product and how you shape it. At their best, they get people talking about your product. Concept stories help you achieve three goals:
• Communicate a shared vision
• Align toward that shared vision
• Innovate and prioritize against that shared vision
How Concept Stories Work
Because concept stories illustrate how your target customers do or could think about your product or service, they are either based on real data or are aspirational. Think of them as the mental calculation that someone makes when they first hear about your product. The story might only last a few seconds as your customer puts together the important pieces of what your product is and what they can do with the product. Even though it lasts a few seconds, this story sets the stage for your customer being intrigued or excited by what your product is.
Concept stories operate like this (see Figure 3.1):
• Exposition: The current state of things
• Inciting Incident/Problem: The problem your product will solve
• Rising Action: The product name and a brief description or market category
• Crisis: The competition
FIGURE 3.1
How a concept story is structured and operates—this is how people think about and see value in your product.
• Climax/Resolution: The solution and value proposition or competitive advantage
• Falling Action: The takeaway
• End: The goal met
Exposition
Exposition reflects the current state of things for your user who personifies your target audience (see Figure 3.2). Who is that user? What does he want? What does she need to do?
In the case of the first iPhone, the story exposition began with a character who loved her iPod and her mobile phone, but wanted a device that would let her listen to music and make phone calls on the go. If you asked why she wanted those things, you’d see that both of these things fall under the umbrella of communication: a basic necessity. Your character doesn’t want a two-in-one device, per se, but just needs to communicate with the world.
FIGURE 3.2
Identify your main character or user.
NOTE WHAT’S IN A NAME?
While writing this book, I struggled with what to call the main character. This “person” can go by many names: person (obviously), character, hero, user, customer, target audience, persona, etc. In the end, I settled for using the words character or user, as those two names seemed most apropos. A character is typically characterized in a story, and a user typically represents the business customer. If I used other words occasionally, they are intended to mean the same thing.
Inciting Incident/Problem
The inciting incident is the problem or need that your users have. They have a big goal, but…wait…there’s a problem. Why can’t they meet their goal?
If there isn’t a problem, then there is no solution…and without either, there is no story. The problem doesn’t have to be very serious or a matter of life and death. It can be as simple as boredom. This problem might be one the users know they have or one that you need to show them they have. Both are valid. Additionally, this is a problem that they can likely solve through other means. Rarely will you be inventing a product that is exploring completely uncharted territory. Even the iPhone was solving a problem that other competitors were trying to figure out: it’s difficult to communicate while on the go.
In the case of the iPhone, the problem that the user knew she had was that it sucked to carry two devices. The problem that the iPhone ultimately solved, however, was more broadly focused on improving mobile communication. In this case, Apple solved a problem that people didn’t know they had. As such, the 2007 keynote, as well as the device itself, not only had to tell the world what their problem was, but also show what the problem was and highlight how the solution could look and function.
Rising Action
The rising action occurs when your product, service, or feature comes to the rescue. The product should have a name, a brief description, or a market category (see Figure 3.3). For example, the iPhone is a smartphone, specifically, and a mobile communication device, more broadly. Because concept stories are short and conceptual in nature, the rising action shouldn’t be too complicated or wordy.
FIGURE 3.3
Give your product an identity as well.
NOTE CONCEPT STORY: A VISUAL ELEVATOR PITCH
Think of a concept story as a way to visualize and bolster a short, impactful, bulletproof elevator pitch. Both concept stories and pitches describe your product, brand, or business, as well as purpose, market, value propositions, competition and competitive advantage (more on elevator pitches in Chapter 7, “Using Your Story”).
Crisis
Think of the crisis as the competition. This competition can be another product, service, or feature. It can be abstract, as in an alternative way that people currently solve their problems or meet their needs. Or it can also be something emotional, such as resistance to change or people not wanting to adopt something new.
In the case of the first iPhone, the crisis involved a little bit of all of the above. Users might already own an iPod, mobile phone, or both and not want to buy a new device. If they were interested in buying a new device, however, they might not want to pay a lot for it. If they’d ever used a touchscreen device before, knowing that the iPhone featured a touchscreen was also a huge crisis: touchscreens were as awful as the smartphones they accompanied those days. Wouldn’t a touchscreen make the iPhone difficult to use? And no keyboard? Typing would be impossible. At least that’s what the few people who owned Blackberrys and Palm Treos thought at the time.
Climax/Resolution
The climax is where the problem outlined in the inciting incident and the additional hurdles that surface during your crisis are resolved and overcome. The way that your product enables users to resolve these problems becomes its value proposition. Implicit in the value proposition is that it’s not only different, but also better than the alternative ways your customer has to solve this problem. A concept without a conflict and a resulting climax is a flat story—literally just a line.
In the case of the iPhone, if the character wanted a two-in-one device to communicate, what they get with the iPhone was the best way to communicate. With the iPhone, not only could they listen to music and make calls, but they could also access the Internet, maps, and email.
Granted, other smartphones would let them do some of these tasks, but as Steve Jobs emphasized over and over during his keynote presentation, the iPhone worked like magic. It was easy to use. Those simple capabilities and value propositions fit neatly on a business school competitive advantage graph, like the one Jobs mentioned in his keynote. And they gave a strong climax to his story at the conceptual level. Who doesn’t want a bit of magic in their lives?
Falling Action
The falling action is the part of the story where your hero has some kind of takeaway—when he envisions a path to try out, use, or purchase the product. Think of this as the then what? or …and? Your product solves a problem and overcomes the competition in a compelling way. So what? If a product falls in a forest and no one hears it, what’s the point? Use the falling action of your concept story as a chance to empathize with your character and imagine how you want that person to think or feel. Is what you want to happen plausible? If so, how? If not, why?
For the iPhone, the falling action for the character at the center of this story was that either she was convinced that she wanted this device (early adopters, fanboys, and fangirls), was intrigued and needed more convincing to try it out (she might wait and buy the iPhone 2), or she stayed skeptical but curious (your grandparents waited a long time and eventually bought an iPhone). Falling action for concept stories should still remain in the realm of thought, rather than action. Your customer hears about what she can do with your product and thinks something. In the next chapter, you’ll see how you can move that person from thinking to doing.
Without this falling action, the story is either not complete enough or the target market isn’t right for the product. As with all plot points, if you use real data to build your story, it will be that much more powerful. If you posit this falling action as a hypothesis, you should test it with real people. For example, if you think that people would want this device, but aren’t sure, test your story out by talking to or surveying your customers or testing a prototype in the wild (more on story validation in Chapter 7).
NOTE DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT PERSONAS?
If you find that the concept stories for different personas are drastically different from one another, you can draft them each separately. Likely, you’ll be able to draft them together and note the differences. Those differences will come in handy as you move into drafting origin and usage stories (discussed in Chapters 4, “Origin Stories,” and 5, “Usage Stories”).
End
Simply put, at the end, your customers can see themselves meeting their goal. At this point, your high-level business goal or mission must also resonate with the story. For example, if your business’s mission is to help people find love, and your user’s goal is to find love, great. The story works for both your user and the business. Even if your business’s goal is to sell ad space, and your user’s goal is to learn something, your story works for both. All of the plot points that lead to this moment make sure that it all comes together.
With the iPhone, the character knows that she can get her music and phone all in one place and communicate with the world around her (see Figure 3.4). And at the very highest level, Apple helps people communicate better. This mission is lofty, which is good. In the following chapters, we’ll discuss how to get people to start using your product.
FIGURE 3.4
The concept story model for the first iPhone.
Avoiding the Anticlimactic
Six months before the iPhone 1 announcement, Apple filed a patent for a different kind of device—one that looked and would function drastically differently than what they would eventually launch.1 The patent drawings for what could have been the first iPhone were a logical solution to a known problem. The device was essentially an iPod that made phone calls (see Figure 3.5).
FIGURE 3.5
A diagram from Apple’s patent application for what could have been the first iPhone.
If you lay it out like a story, you can see that the prototype illustrated in the patent specifications is anticlimactic (see Figure 3.6). Literally, it lacks a climax:
• Exposition: I love my iPod; I love my mobile phone.
• Inciting Incident/Problem: I don’t love carrying two devices, and I wish I could have my iPod and phone all in one.
• Rising Action: iPhone to the rescue!
• End: I now have a way to have my iPod and phone in one device.
This story lacks gravitas or dignity. It has a structure, but when you visually assess the story as a diagram, you can see that the structure isn’t very tall. Both the diagram and the concept for what could have been the first iPhone lack two key plot points that give stories their height: crisis and climax. The story is so flat that Steve Jobs mocked the prototype by jokingly announcing a product that looked very similar to the prototype before unveiling the actual iPhone during the 2007 keynote.
Our brains don’t like flat. Our brains need structure in order to get excited about things before, during, and after experiencing something, whether the experience involves thinking about or actually using the thing.
FIGURE 3.6
The anticlimactic concept story for what could have been the first iPhone.
Contrasting what could have been with what actually became the first iPhone helps you see how concept stories aren’t just ideas, but rather stories embodied in the things you build.
A simple solution, an iPhone that made phone calls, was flat.
A climactic solution, an iPhone that did everything, worked like “magic.”
One was a 2-in-1 device, the other 3-in-1. One helped you play music and make phone calls, the other was a communication powerhouse.
Supporting the Story
“It’s easy to come up with something pointless. But in any good storytelling, every scene has a function and a purpose and a point. If it doesn’t, you cut it out.”
—Vince Gilligan,
Creator: Breaking Bad
The conceptual story of the first iPhone bolstered the entire keynote presentation that Steve Jobs delivered. But the story wasn’t just a marketing pitch or shiny packaging—it drove everything from what the product requirements were to how the iPhone worked.
And more importantly: concept stories don’t just help you figure out how to talk about a product, but how to build the product.
There was a good reason why the iPhone launched with fancy animation but no cut-and-paste functionality. Its concept story necessitated an advanced presentation in order to embody the device’s value proposition, like communication-enabling apps and a touchscreen. And in order for the touchscreen to be user-friendly (which Palm Treo touchscreens were not), Apple’s strategy was to employ animation and cutting-edge technology that enabled people to tap, rather than to interact with their device using a stylus.
Animation supported the story. Cut-and-paste did not.
All of the marketing in the world cannot grow a business or a product line that doesn’t deliver on the story that using the device promises.
NOTE THE EARLY TOUCHSCREENS FLOPPED
If you ever used a Palm Pilot or Treo phone, you’ll recall how difficult it was to use a touchscreen without a stylus. It was hard to tap the right touch target on a screen, and there was a delay in the system giving you feedback that you just pressed something. It was easy to get lost from screen to screen and equally difficult to navigate around the system. Palm Pilots and touchscreen smartphones were a novel idea, but they didn’t have a huge market, nor were they in high demand. They simply weren’t easy to use, and that wasn’t a very good story.
Mapping a Concept Story
There are a few different times you might want to map out a concept story for your product. For example, let’s say you are working on a brand new product or feature. You could map out a concept story in order to brainstorm or define your product from scratch. Or you could map the story out in order to assess whether or not an existing idea was any good or could possibly engage your target audience.
Let’s say you’re not working on an entirely new product, but are instead working on a marketing strategy, user flow, app, or website for an existing product (more in Chapters 4 and 5). In that case, before you got deep in the weeds, you would first map out a concept story so that you and your team fully understood what your product was, as well as its core value proposition. Doing so would help you ensure that those elements were incorporated and communicated in each and every story you mapped out thereafter.
In order to map out your concept story, you must answer these questions by plotting them onto your narrative arc.
• Exposition: The current state of things:
• Who is your target customer?
• What’s good in her world as it relates to your product or service?
• What is her big goal as it relates to your product or service?
• Inciting Incident/Problem:
• What is her problem or pain point?
• Rising Action: The name of the product
• What is the name of your product?
• What type of product is it?
• Crisis: The competition
• What does the competition look like?
• What mental hurdles might keep her from adopting your solution?
• Climax/Resolution: The value
• What will help her resolve her problem and overcome a crisis moment or resistance?
• What’s your product’s primary value proposition or differentiator?
• Falling Action: The takeaway
• What do you want people to think, feel, or envision after learning about your product?
• End:
• What happens when the user meets her goal?
• This is where the business meets a high-level goal or fulfills its mission, too. What’s the business goal? How will you know you’re on the right path?
As you can see with the Slack concept story, much like with the first iPhone, there is always a simple solution to every story, which can look like a straight line. People want to communicate and collaborate? So give them a better communication and collaboration tool. However, while you might want to design solutions that are simply better than whatever else is out there, “better” isn’t always enough. Having a product be “simple” isn’t always the most compelling or motivating story.
With Slack, you see something that maps out well within a structurally sound story. The company could have built an online messaging platform instead that was “easier to use” than email, for example. Often, clients and stakeholders on projects ask—what’s our requirement? Make it “easy to use!” Or what’s the problem? “Oh, our product is difficult to use.” But “easy to use” is a pretty boring story when difficulty isn’t really the problem.
Here’s how you would map out the concept story for the online collaboration tool, Slack (see Figure 3.7). The answers to the questions are in italics.
• Exposition: The current state of things
• Who is your target customer? Busy professionals
• What’s good in their world as it relates to your product or service? Communication and collaboration at work is easier and happening more than ever before. They’ve got more tools to get their job done—i.e., email, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, instant messaging, video chat, online project management software with built-in messaging—a plethora of ways to get in touch, stay in touch, communicate, share, and collaborate with their team.
• What is their general goal as it relates to your product or service? To communicate and collaborate with a group of people.
• Inciting Incident/Problem:
• What is their problem or pain point? Communication and collaboration is a pain. While it’s easier and more accessible than ever, it’s still difficult to keep track of everything or keep it all in one place. This means that what should be easier ends up being harder, wasting their time and money.
• Rising Action: The name of the product
• What is the name of your product? Slack.
• What type of a product is it? An online collaboration tool.
• Crisis: The competition
• What does the competition look like? Free online services like Gmail or IM. Existing services that people might already pay for like Basecamp. There’s a very long list here.
• What mental hurdles might keep them from adopting your solution? What, sign up for another online service? Ack. No.
• Climax/Resolution: The value
• What will help them solve their problem and overcome a crisis moment or resistance? What’s your product’s primary value proposition or differentiator? Unlike the competition, Slack is a one-stop solution. Have your communication in one place. And the best part: they can access it all anywhere, anytime, from their desktop, web browser, phone, or tablet.
• Falling Action: The takeaway
• What do you want people to think, feel, or envision after learning about your product? They imagine themselves using Slack with their teammates…and maybe never using email again. That would be cool.
• End:
• This is where the users meet their goal. To communicate and collaborate with a group of people.
• Oh, and it’s where the business meets its high-level goal, too. What’s the business goal? Broadly, to help people better communicate and collaborate with a group.
FIGURE 3.7
The concept story for Slack. This is both the story that people hear when they hear about Slack through newspaper articles or word of mouth, as well as the story they remember once they start using the product and experience its value.
In fact, plenty of products aren’t easy to use, but they have such a solid concept story behind them that customers love them. When you build a concept story using this framework, it requires you to meticulously assess and identify the root of a user or potential customer’s problem so that you can effectively design a solution that not only gets people excited, but also maps out how their brains see the world.
Finding the Concept Story at FitCounter
NOTE FICTION THY NAME IS FITCOUNTER
“The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”2
Although FitCounter is based on my own experiences with real companies and clients, it is solely a product of my imagination. It is not a real company, nor a real product. However, as a case study throughout the book, I will write it as if FitCounter were a real company, using details and facts that might make it seem real.
When I first started working with FitCounter,3 a health and fitness start-up, it had a really great idea and a noble, if not vague, mission: to help people get up-to-the-minute information and news about fitness, sports, and training. Initially, it started out as a Web and mobile-based fitness and workout tracker to help customers track their runs and workouts, but unfortunately it didn’t have much success in an already saturated market. FitCounter did, however, produce these great, little, timely exercise, fitness, and health-related videos that people loved. Anytime there was a new trend in fitness, they were on it.
The year before I started working with the company, it decided to realign its tracking tool and revenue model around a new approach: FitCounter would become a content provider, and hopefully, people would sign up and pay for access to its content. Some people signed up, but very few people paid. Things were not looking good.
The problem was that while the free videos got lots of traffic and views, very few website visitors signed up to become members, and even fewer of the members paid for premium access. Although many video content providers, such as YouTube or CNN, use advertising to build revenue from free content, advertising was not an option in this case. The board and investors did not want the business to get into advertising. Software as a service—that’s what we were asked to build, not an ad-driven content platform.
If you’re at all confused about this business model, imagine how confused website and app store visitors were. They didn’t understand what the product was, why they should sign up, and what paying for a service would get them. The business was pursuing a freemium software as a service revenue model, where you try a product out for free at first, love it so much that you use it a lot, and then either pay to be able to use it more frequently or to unlock premium features or services.
But while the business saw a product that people could use, visitors just saw content. And visitors expected this content to be free, like the content they could find on YouTube. Why pay for access when there was probably a decent alternative out there that was free? We had to figure out how to engage users so that they would not only use the product, but also see the value in it and eventually upgrade. If we couldn’t figure this out, the business would fail.
What we needed, we eventually learned, was a story—to drive the business, the team, and our potential customers. Actually, we needed a concept story.
The story of FitCounter is a perfect example of making the story fit the users. While FitCounter had a hard time acquiring new users, it did have a core group of devoted, paying customers—we called them “superfans.” They loved the product. But, in all honesty, we didn’t understand why they loved the product. These superfans logged in to the Web and mobile apps several times per week and spent lots of time using them. We hoped we could—at the risk of sounding completely megalomaniacal and creepy—engineer more superfans like them.
But in order to do so, we needed to fully understand who they were, what their pain points were, what they did with the product, how it solved their problems, and why they loved it. We knew that talking to customers was the first step toward solving this puzzle.
However, what we found when talking to these customers surprised us.
After listening to our customers, testing hypotheses, and drafting and redrafting stories, we eventually realized that FitCounter’s concept story looked something like this (see Figure 3.8).
• Exposition: The main characters are active, tech-savvy self-starters. Their general goals are to get or stay fit, and they are visual learners who like to use training plans to do so. They love video for fitness training because they can see how to do something and follow along as they try out different exercises.
• Inciting Incident/Problem: It’s hard to find good video training plans because many of them are cookie-cutter applications and not applicable to what customers need to learn or their level. Sometimes, customers come up with their own training plans or work with a trainer to write one, but those plans aren’t visual. They often find how-to or training videos on YouTube and make training playlists that way, but the quality is low and the effort is high.
• Rising Action: FitCounter is an online training platform that people can use to find good-looking, high-quality fitness videos and playlists, package this content into their own training plans, and share them with others.
• Crisis: Is it worth it to go through the effort to use this product to make the training plans? Should they go back to producing their plans manually by scouring YouTube for free videos?
• Climax/Resolution: The training plans they create look great—in fact, way better than what they could produce or find on YouTube. And they can personalize them and tailor them for their needs/level. The training plans are made of bite-sized videos that customers can easily fit into a regimen, and they are also easy to share and can be accessed anytime on the go.
• Falling Action: Customers see the value in using FitCounter and how it fits into their lives.
• End: They can see themselves using the product to get or stay fit and want to try it out.
FIGURE 3.8
The concept story that we gleaned from talking to customers that illustrated how FitCounter fit into people’s lives.
What we had here was a solid story for a concept for a product—one that we tested by talking to customers, running ads, and measuring with customer feedback, clicks, and eventually acquisition funnels that manifested different facets of this story. At the conceptual level, a product that embodied this particular story was something that people wanted and would pay for.
But this was not the concept behind our current product. That product, again, was video news about health and fitness. It was basically a way to watch exercise videos so that you could get fit. You could watch the videos, save the videos, and you had to pay to access more videos. And sharing was difficult. Finding content? Also difficult because the product was now structured more like a blog with posts, archives, and categories. It wasn’t organized around helping people create or share training plans.
Could we, perhaps, build an actual product around this concept? And was this something that people would actually use and pay for? For that, we needed an origin story.