Every product, every service, and every application has a specific nature. And it is a world in itself. A miniature world with its own rules and realities and possibly characters. Digital characters.
If the user accesses the website of a shoe store, they have entered a world in which the shoes are the most valued objects and there is a set of rules in place. The sizes, the styles, the prices, the accessories, every little detail builds the world around them. The user travels there, especially for that particular world. Now, can we imagine what characters can welcome us there?
We can have a Guide, someone who can give us information about everything in the store. Or, we can have a Stylist, a sort of a fashion specialist that can advise us on the particular styles found in that store. Is any of them a hero? For the soul lost in the labyrinth of thousands of shoes, the Guide may just be the hero. Or for those with no fashion sense, the Stylist is the hero they’ve been seeking all along.
But… but, we can have an underground Fighter. The character that finds the best deals for us. The hero that fights so we can finish our shopping journey with not just the product we wanted, but at a better price and maybe in a better deal with some accessories thrown in.
Ultimately, we, the users, are the heroes, for we ventured from the regular world of our home into the magic forest of the shoe store to find the best shoe for our purpose. It is our journey. We are the heroes!
How about a food delivery application? The Chef can advise us on different cuisines. Or the Dietician who can offer some insights into what we should eat for our different needs.
How about a bank website? The Financial Advisor can give us a brief overview of different financial tools that may be of interest to us. Or again, the Guide, who can offer us tours of the application, or point us in the right direction.
How about a book store? The Librarian knows everything and can answer any book-related question. The Leisure Reader can share with us their own reading pleasures and maybe tempt us into discovering new authors, books or genres.
And so on. We can imagine characters for every kind of business and product. There is no exception.
Would your customers, your application’s users prefer to deal with just a menu and some written explanations, or would they prefer to interact with a character that will guide them right where they need to be? If we take into consideration the history of humankind then the answer is they would prefer an interaction. If we take into consideration the last century with its books and movies, and shows, then the answer is even clearer—we’d prefer to meet the characters.