Blog Post — Storytelling
After listening to the “Storytelling with Lee-Sean Huang’’ podcast, I was able to see from a new and very interesting perspective the concept and idea of storytelling. After Lee-Sean Huang said: “The pitch is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to storytelling”, I realized this is a particularly interesting time (considering we are about to finalize our semester-long project) to listen to this podcast. Many times we fall into the idea that storytelling is the process of showing and conveying our end result, the solution we have created and how the final product looks and works. We often believe a good story is the one that makes you ‘sell’ your idea and get interest from customers, etc. Although this is true in some ways (and selling an idea and product is certainly very important), it was very enriching to realize that storytelling actually starts from the roots, it starts from the research phase, when we are talking to people. At this point we are actually collecting stories, we are understanding what users do, how they get a sense of the world and how they interpret particular scenarios we proposed. Collecting all these stories helps us design more effectively and understand the problem from the perspective and ‘eyes’ of the actual audience.
Furthermore, another very interesting point from the podcast is the fact that stories help us better understand systems. If we are able to understand the story of users and the connection with the problem, we will be able to better understand, create and tell a story from the perspective of users, taking into account all the different elements, touch points and how all elements come together. Stories are not only a way to convey an end result, but most importantly they are an artifact and tool that can help us debate and articulate perspectives and ideas that together create systems and lead to a deeper and more meaningful story. As we worked with our customers, delivering our prototype, we always strive to understand the user story behind, how was their overarching experience, including all the different elements that are both directly and indirectly related to our product and service. Nevertheless, I’ve never really realized the connection and power between storytelling and systems; and after listening to it I believe it makes a lot of sense and working with this concept in mind will make it much more effective for future iterations.
As we work towards our final part of the project and as we create our final presentation, I think it will be very important to keep this idea in mind; and remember that our story should not only be based on our ‘solution’ but also on the process and the system surrounding it. Stories are how we make sense of the world, and it all starts by making sense of our users, their experiences, their pain points, motivations and the system which creates the entire story and has the power to yield solutions!
