Five Steps To Sell Your Product With Powerful Storytelling — Smashing Magazine

I can’t imagine the digital world without the magic of storytelling. While I consider storytelling as an art, it is also a discipline that has its roots in Ancient Greece and Aristotle’s writing: Poetics:

“A whole [story] is what has a beginning and middle and end.”

In this essay, the Greek philosopher identified for the first time the three main components of a story: beginning, middle, and end, and how they each related to one another.

“A beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally something else after it. An end is that which is naturally after something itself, either as its necessary or usual consequent and with nothing else after it. And a middle, that which is by nature after one thing and also has another after it.”

Aristotle’s three-act structure has remained unchanged since 300 BC. Although many writers, screenwriters, and film directors have conducted a variety of complex experiments, the most successful stories never stray from this basic root.

Today, designers use the same structure to map user experiences and design user-centered products. A remarkable and memorable example of the power of storytelling is the change in Apple’s direction of communication on Steve Jobs’ return. He had spent some time running...