In 1949, Joseph Campbell published The Hero With A Thousand Faces, an influential piece of work that proposed the existence of a monomyth, a heroes’ journey that existed across a thousand different cultures and civilizations. It’s an incredibly influential piece of postmodern work, with its influence felt on fiction and non-fiction. The hero goes forth on a journey to another and returns home changed and transformed.

Now, as a designer, these ideas may not seem relevant to the process involved in creating user experiences. The difference between the fields of user experience design and comparative mythology seems to be wide; they are completely different fields, much less different ideas. However, the utilization of narrative in the development of case studies is an interesting idea, and comparing the two is an interesting practice. What comes forth is that narrative in case studies is often pieces of other narratives, which come forth as rhetorical and persuasive technique. This DoorDash Case study is an example of narrative in action, whether intentionally or not.

Narrative and storytelling form a good basis of shaping the case study around because otherwise, case studies have no flow. The most logical order in which case studies should proceed is chronologically, as a lot of ideas will be brought up and dropped in the process of designing a product or service. However, this is not often productive in terms of length or conciseness. In the words of the immortal Mr. Plinkett, “Brevity is the soul of wit. This just means ‘don’t waste my time’.” At the outset of this case study, Doordash was chosen because everybody used it. It was expedient to consider a case study that everyone knew and used, rather than a more evidently troubled application such as the application that the Ray uses.

However, it wasn’t until we had crossed the threshold and decide to design for it that the true extent of the problem came to be known. There are several design decisions within DoorDash that came to baffle us as we went along. These include the offers on top of the screen, which we just got rid of. They were inconvenient, and didn’t really help us.

Narrative shapes how a story is phrased. For example, when creating a case study regarding DoorDash, one of the narrative pieces that emerged from this stew of ideas was that DoorDash should be a “one-stop-shop” for all food and food-related needs. That someone should need to use Open Table for something like reserving the restaurant is an inconvenience. As a result, the case study of DoorDash was shaped by this idea.

Feedback is also important, and in the narrative role is essentially the heroic welcome one receives upon arriving back in town upon having defeated the dragon. As our project was looked on by everyone in the class, what they would say was something that I didn’t know, and they said a lot. But I was happy with the praise that we were getting, and to be praised feels good.