Digital stories help sell products or services; it’s just a fact of life. While it doesn’t seem like a skill needed by an IT professional, it can serve as leverage that positions somebody as both an information technology specialist and a writer. Someone could also use digital storytelling skills to market themselves. Or they could just improve their communication skills as an expert. For this reason, in an information technology school program, a student may want to take an additional course in digital storytelling.
In This Article:
Enhance Experience for Users
User experience on websites, apps, and software leaves a lasting impression on prospective and current customers. They look to see that they can easily maneuver through the interface seamlessly. The user wants to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly, get through everything quickly, and accomplish their goals without hassle.
An IT professional may monitor and improve software performance, handle the security aspect, help build trust, ensure the site is accessible and compatible across multiple platforms, provide backend support, and more. By incorporating the knowledge a person receives in a storytelling class, the IT professional can create an engaging, memorable experience for digital products. Any content added will help to improve the user journey.
Learn to Empathize with the User
Part of creating, monitoring, or doing anything with digital platforms consists of putting themselves in the shoes of the user. The IT specialist can look at the situation from their perspective and ensure the platforms meet their needs and provide an overall enjoyable experience — or at least one that’s non-stressful and helps the person accomplish tasks without putting out too much effort.
When a person is storytelling in a classroom setting, they learn about character development, which is when they create a character, giving them a personality indirectly, and determining their reactions to various situations. Through this experience, the person learns how to better empathize and get into the heads of people to understand their goals and challenges.
They can use the character development skills they learn to create user personas, which are a similar concept. These are essentially characters. But, they’re the ideal users of a service or product. They determine their general age, gender, location, income, interests, lifestyle, and other valuable information that can help them better understand the average person who will be using the platform. Ultimately, the platform will be better suited for the person when the IT professional understands them.
Think about it this way. Let’s say part of the IT person’s responsibility for app development is designing, implementing, and maintaining cybersecurity for the platform. Since part of the education they received during IT was related to a cybersecurity program, they have the skills necessary to address a common concern on a platform — security and privacy issues. Through empathy, they can understand that both of those would be a problem that needs to be addressed before launching the platform.
Learn to Make Content Simple
Though this goes along with the user experience, the content they create needs to be simple and easily understood by a general audience, most of the time. Any complex ideas need to be broken down into information that isn’t going to alienate the audience and make them skim through. For instance, any step-by-step instructions should be detailed enough to accurately explain what to do but simple enough that the user can follow them with little problem.
Keep in mind that if you create content that isn’t easy to read, even a highly educated person may be turned off. This is especially the case if the app is for entertainment purposes and should be light on depth.
Build Trust with Users
When someone learns how to tell stories, they understand how to write directly to the audience, particularly the target users who are the ones most likely to use the platform. In the storytelling course from the information technology school, a person learns how to write with meaning and purpose. They learn how to win over the reader. And these same skills can be applied to building trust with the user.
Part of someone becoming interested in the app and using it once or over and over has to do with developing trust. An IT professional wants the program to appear to be something the audience can have faith in, particularly that the site is safe and they’re going to have their needs or wants addressed. That can all be accomplished when a person takes a storytelling course and knows how to build trust.
Create for a Diverse Audience
The audience isn’t always as straightforward as young males between the ages of 20 and 45. In that case, a person is writing in plain speak and focusing on supplying the benefit of convenience, as this audience is generally busy building a life.
Sometimes, the IT professional is targeting a specific race, a different age bracket, who may be focused on enjoyment, as they’re retired, or a certain gender. When someone in IT learns how to storytell, they understand how to create for the target audience. In most cases, it means knowing how to use language that doesn’t discriminate or turn any particular group of people off because word of mouth about a brand spreads quickly, especially when it’s negative.
Creative writing can help elevate a person’s IT contracting business or position themselves above others in the workplace because they’ll have unique skills. They may be able to create a better user experience, do more in terms of the workload, or just make more engaging content for viewers.
