Rosenverse
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

Gold
Thursday, June 8, 2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Share the love for this talk
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
Speakers: Dan Willis
Link:

Summary

- Jana Sedivy (Principal, Authentic Insight): A Story about Stories (VIDEO) - Carla Pileggi (UX Architect, Design System Lead, Pitney Bowes): A Sympathy Card for a Front-End Developer (VIDEO) - Ramya Mahalingam (UX Architect, Cardinal Solutions): The Road to Being a Bridge Is Not at all Paved (VIDEO) - Audrey Crane (Partner, DesignMap): Thoughts on Vulnerability (VIDEO) - Lada Gorlenko (Director of Research, Smartsheet): Make My Day (VIDEO) - and a horror story from Adam Polansky (XD Strategist, Bottle Rocket Studios) (VIDEO)

Key Insights

  • Five-minute talks are harder to give and follow than 45-minute talks because they lack gradual build-up.

  • Audience engagement is crucial in rapid storytelling sessions to keep pace with the quick transitions.

  • Collaborative storytelling using alternating positive and negative frames ('fortunately'/'unfortunately') drives creativity and connection.

  • Volunteering participants to form a storytelling line enhances group dynamic and accountability.

  • Clear structure and rhythm (using keywords) help the audience stay synchronized during complex narrative exercises.

  • Building stories in short bursts with twists keeps the audience mentally active and entertained.

  • The session's success depends on both speaker preparation and audience readiness to think quickly.

  • Conducting warm-up vocal exercises (saying 'fortunately' and 'unfortunately') improves timing and comfort.

  • Ambiguity in narrative handoffs encourages creative linking between unrelated story segments.

  • Interactive storytelling exercises can serve as effective team-building tools in enterprise UX settings.

Notable Quotes

"It’s harder than a 45 minute talk."

"Normally you go into a talk and they build just like a story. A little bit of information, more information, more information. Here’s my point, and that’s it."

"I’m worried you aren’t up to it, frankly."

"We got to get everybody to tell stories in the whole room."

"Fortunately, that was terrible."

"Unfortunately, that was very good."

"You guys have the harder job."

"We’re going to say fortunately, and she’s going to say a sentence. Then we say unfortunately, and he’s going to say a sentence connected to that sentence."

"Watch my lips and my body language if you’re starting to lose the timing on the word."

"When the dot com bubble burst, I had a great design job. Unfortunately, it was at another dot com."

Ask the Rosenbot
Charlotte Vorbeck
Pipeline to Civic Design
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Eric Shumake
Diagnosis UX: Building Influence in Healthcare Design
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Sarah Barrett
The "How" of Enterprise Information Architecture
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Natalia Radywyl
Co-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Peter Morville
The Architecture of Understanding
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Andreas Huebner
What Is It Like To Be Part of The UX Team at Compass?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Tracy McGoldrick
IBM User Experience Program—The What, Why and How
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Dave Malouf
Theme 3: Introduction and Provocation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Greg Petroff
Exit Interview #1: Greg Petroff: From Silicon Valley Executive to Sonoma County Possibilitarian
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Jose Coronado
People First - Design at JP Morgan
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Ariel Kennan
Building a Design Culture
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Mansi Gupta
Drawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Shawna Hein
Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Tutti Taygerly
Make Space to Lead
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Corey Long
Hiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Megan Campos
What Did I Miss? The Hidden Costs of Deprioritizing Diversity in User Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Alexandra Schmidt

"Users have no choice but to use the software we build, so adoption metrics are often not useful."

Alexandra Schmidt

Enterprise UX Playbook

December 1, 2022

Jen Crim

"The hiring process typically includes two manager screens and a final interview with project presentations."

Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani Pahwa

Culture, DIBS & Recruiting

June 11, 2021

Christian Crumlish

"If you’re a product manager, you don’t do very much design work anymore; you care about it but step away from the Figma."

Christian Crumlish

AMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People

March 24, 2022

Libby Maurer

"We have to slow down hiring to be more thoughtful and deliberate about who we bring on the team."

Libby Maurer

Treating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem

December 5, 2019

Ali Jeffery

"Technology is a tool, not a solution in itself; it needs human input."

Ali Jeffery Sheri Chudow

How DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely

October 22, 2020

Daniel Gloyd

"Hugh Dubberly argues we should stop describing design as problem solving and instead see it as engaged conversation."

Daniel Gloyd

Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research

February 12, 2026

Kristin Skinner

"Every student has unique strengths that should be recognized and nurtured."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Johanna Kollmann

"Design strategy focuses on providing a framework for developing design solutions that support a given product strategy, whereas product strategy addresses the business model, the roadmap, and prioritizing requirements - Frank Guo."

Johanna Kollmann

Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count

December 6, 2022

David Sternberg

"The interface you’ve designed is like a landscape shaping the flow of user behavior as water flows through a stream."

David Sternberg

Uncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior

July 17, 2025