What Novels Taught Me About User Experience
I studied English literature for four years. One of my favorite subjects was novel criticism, where we criticize the story, not just read it.
When you criticize a novel, you don’t just follow the plot. You analyze it. You look at the hero: who they are, what they want, what stands in their way. You trace how they change across the story, the decisions they make, the ones they avoid, and the moments that shape them. You map the conflict, identify the pain points, and notice the opportunities. You observe how the circumstances around them push the story toward its resolution or leave it unsolved.
But here’s what I do and I believe most people do that we don’t just read a novel we live it.
We build entire worlds inside our heads while reading. We give the hero a face, a voice, a way of walking. We picture the rooms, the streets, the weather. We feel the tension before the hero does. We hear dialogue in a specific tone. We react emotionally to events happening to the hero. A novel is a film that plays entirely in our minds.
I thought about this recently while mapping a user flow. And I realized this is exactly what I do as a UX writer.
Every time I think about a product, I build a story around the user. The user is the hero. The product is the world they move through. The flow is the plot. The friction points are the conflict. And the other characters? The support agent, the teammate, the manager all have roles.
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I ask the same questions I once asked about novels:
• What does the hero want?
• What’s getting in the way?
• What choices do they have and which will they actually make?
• How do the circumstances around them shape where the story goes?
• Does the conflict get resolved?
And just like a reader visualizes a scene, I visualize the user’s experience. I imagine them sitting with the interface. I hear their hesitation when a label is unclear. I feel a small relief when an empty state tells them exactly what to do next.
In the end, we aren’t just building interfaces; we are writing the scripts for our users’ success.
And that is it.
