Never Forget to Tell Your Software’s Story
My job is to write stories—specifically, stories about software. When I recently discovered the Smashing Magazine piece, “The Art of Storytelling Around an App,” I was initially drawn simply for the title’s use of storytelling since it’s an art form that I love and practice every day.
As I read further, I realized that we writers—that is, narrative writers—are hardly the only ones writing stories these days. Software developers and designers are just as focused on the craft as anyone.
John Casey describes how mobile apps specifically don’t just tell a story; they need to tell a story in order to have any hope of being noticed in today’s swamped mobile app market. With more than seven hundred thousand apps in Apple’s App Store alone, Casey writes:
Getting noticed is a major concern for app developers, and getting noticed sometimes requires not only a breakthrough app, but a compelling story.
For any app developer, conveying an app’s story at launch is critical. And just as important as promoting the story of your app is developing a story around the app that promotes the app’s story, that helps the app to stand out on digital store shelves, and that differentiates the app from its competitors.
Casey’s Inception-like “dream within a dream” example tells us that not only developers’ apps must tell a story, but developers must also tell a story that promotes that story! Failing to do so could very well result in months, if not years, of hard work going completely unnoticed and landing an app in the slush pile, no matter how unique and original it may be.
What can developers hope for after crafting this story within a story? The ultimate goal is beautiful software. While beauty may be relative and in the eye of the beholder, SmartBear’s Ole Lensmar describes it simply and accurately as, "It’s how the software opens your eyes and allows you to solve your tasks in new and intuitive ways, without getting in the way."
Lensmar goes on to point out the same requirements as Casey when he states that “a beautiful app is a true product vision…this vision needs to engulf the whole product from day one.”
I may never have created a single piece of software, but I’ve written hundreds of stories. And just like my code-writing counterparts, we all need to remember to tell our stories—and not just write them.
