Storytelling is more than telling a good story is make bounds through it
I had several subjects in mind of what to write about , but a visit to a friend of mine inspired me to write about something I´ve been studying, but I didn´t quite know how to approach it with my very own perspective: storytelling.
Look, I was visiting this friend in a very special moment, I´m in a career transition since the last years and this fact lead me to several personal and professional reflections, and a few days ago I was feeling in the worst of this journey days.
But let´s go back to Thiago´s visit, I stopped by to grab some coffee, as I always do with different people, I usually invite people to spend some time talking and appreciate a good coffee. It´s a very normal Brazilian custom.
We as user experiences designers talk a lot about experiences, projecting experiences, talk about micro-moments, and if stoped and think for a second, all this stuff is actually old, but described in new terms: think at the term “Carpe Diem” used at antique. But we are actually paying attention to this experience when it happens in our lives?
To me, this moments become histories that reminds specific days. That´s right: the talking with the colleague at the brunch time, the talking at the bus stop, the talking with relatives when you get home, and in this specific case, that I had with my friend Thiago.
But why do I choose Thiago´s visit? Because this fact elucidated a point at this journey to me. It made me reflected about the word bound. Why have I chosen to write about Design Thinking perspective?
Because it is what bound us even if you aren´t a designer, like I sad in another text, in my opinion, it´s a mindset question. But how we bounding? How you create a bound with a people that you don’t known? So, I answer: at the very moment you create empathy, you see something that you recognize at the person, you see yourself on them.
My way to build experiences is through storytelling. In my perspective, storytelling communicates something creating a bound through a thing: it can be an invitation to a coffee, a gift, a book, something that you will associate with a moment that changed you in some way.
Storytelling it´s personal, there´s no way that it couldn´t be. It touchs your emotions, your values and beliefs in this case, I reflected about the fact we keep chosing Design and stay in this path, me, maybe you, and Thiago. I realized that it is a conscious choice, and it requires a unconscious dedication, it is not something purely professional, that you turn in or off at the beginning or end of the day. Thiago and I, both has several difference, we known each other since we were 17 years-old, and we certainly see each other in the past fifteen years at least ten times since that, but one thing not changed: we keep calling each other designers, just designers, just it, after all, at the end of the day.
We pass through difficult relationships, financial crises, educational and experiences choises, many of it, influenced what we are, the fact we are designers,that it never changed, and maybe never will, even in another circumstances.
This is storytelling to me, it´s personal, intimate, and at the same time, regular, common, because you can achieve several levels of connections with all types of person, it is related to diversity, love, felling of belonging, and goes very beyond empathy, it is like I say, a conscious and unconscious process, that we like human beings need to do all the time.
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