In UX Research, we often treat “storytelling” as an important secondary skill, as a means of wrapping data in a package stakeholders will actually open. But my work across NASA’s Human Research Program and doctoral research into “artisanal cyborgs” has taught me otherwise. Storytelling is one of our most rigorous diagnostic tools; indeed one may even go as far as to say it is the engine of the research itself, not just the vehicle for its results.
In that spirit, I’m launching Em Dash Editorial, a boutique editorial practice for speculative and literary fiction. This venture is a deep-dive into the mechanics of Design Fiction and the History of Ideas, extending my career in UX Research into the territory where our futures are first imagined.
The Anthropologist’s Edge: Ethnography as World-Building
Anthropology is the study of humans, with a particular interest into how they construct meaning. Ethnography is the written account of fieldwork and is the social science equivalent of “world-building.”
A successful ethnography requires a novelist’s toolkit to make a culture’s rituals, values, and tools legible. You are mapping the history of ideas in real-time. When I edit a speculative manuscript, I perform a narrative audit that mirrors my fieldwork in the lab:
- Cultural Consistency: Does the technology of this fictional society reflect its stated values, or is it a “bolt-on” feature?
- Internal Logic: Are the “user journeys” of these characters grounded in a believable psychological landscape?
- Systems Thinking: How do the artifacts of this world, e.g., the tools, the slang, and the architecture, shape the people who use them?
Design Fiction and the Science of Trust
At NASA, I worked on teams prototyping AR for astronauts and designing conversational AI for deep-space missions. In those environments, success is measured in trust. To earn an astronaut’s confidence when Mission Control is forty light-seconds away, the system’s “story” must be flawless. Any friction in the narrative is a failure in the design.
This is the core of Design Fiction. We create “diegetic prototypes”—stories so grounded they allow us to test the ethics and friction of a future technology before we spend millions building it. By editing speculative fiction, I am working at the bleeding edge of this technique, and sharpening my ability to identify exactly where a vision loses its grounding and where it earns its “buy-in.”
The Em Dash: UX on the Page
The em dash is a masterclass in UX. It is a tool for controlled interruption—a way to add layers of meaning without breaking the reader’s flow. While AI models often mimic its “flavor” of sophistication, they lack the intent to use it surgically.
In my editorial work, as in my research, the goal is intentionality. Whether it’s a 100,000-word space opera or a 10-slide UX strategy deck, the mission is identical: to construct a narrative so compelling and so grounded that the stakeholder—or the reader—can’t resist.