The second text this week is by Jeffrey Kim (has studied technology innovations in engineering and digital games), Arnold Lund (has been at Microsoft for seven years, innovating and conducting research in areas such as natural user interfaces and creating personal experiences) and Caroline Dombrowski (predicts that digital-game designers will be the gurus of interactive online experience in the next few years) looks at stories and their power and potential.

Good stories are compelling, convincing and popular with everyone. The text describes how the power of text can be used for product promotion by accompanying a product with a story. If the story is made believable, people will connect with it and thus be more likely to buy the product. Stories can give products a reason to even exist.

As an example, the case of "The Body Shop" is mentioned, which tried a new way about thirty years ago: Their products were given a story of their own, telling that the product was good for your body and for the world. They tell the story of how the ingredients get to the source, and what all goes into the manufacturing process. Customers were thus able to connect with the products particularly well, which is how the Body Shop achieved international status to this day.

It is described that often companies do not give their products space for stories because of bureaucracy. This is fatal in today's world.

I think about which products I buy, have a good story in them. And immediately parallels with Escape Rooms (a game in which you physically have to escape from a room by solving puzzles) come to mind. Even though this is not directly a product, the story is crucial to the success of an Escape Room! I do this almost professionally and keep a detailed list of all the rooms I have played around the world (about 150) and why some were good and some were not. There are a few really bad Rooms, a lot of good ones and a hanfull masterpieces. Now it strikes me that the best rooms are all accompanied by a believable story and you can get immersed in the room. If a room doesn't have a good accompanying story, you immediately question why you are here and you lose the effect, of beeing immersed in another world. The sense of play is lost.

According to the text, a story is a low-cost and high-impact means of making things palatable to people from all walks of life. Wow... I'm a little surprised that I'm only noticing this now.

I will include a good story in one of my next products or projects and observe how my fellow human beings react to it and if I can personally improve my design efforts.