Stories are just the beginning. . .
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”— Steve Jobs
Jobs is not alone in his point of view — storytelling is quite the skill in today’s world of business, but why? And how does this relate to the role of being a designer?
When I initially heard the provocation, “story is the most powerful tool in a designers toolkit,” I felt a little punch to the gut. I didn’t spend two and a half years and thousands of dollars on a Master’s Degree just to be a storyteller!
After getting over my egotistical reaction and reflecting on the power of story, I realized it culminates many of the definitions of design that are commonly used such as “design is the act of making meaning” and “design is turning the abstract into the concrete.” According to Bernie Roth, the Director of Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, “design thinking is to have a bias toward action and empathy toward who you are designing for . . . to not have a fear of failure.”
Humans are naturally drawn to stories because they concretize new realities while eliminating fear of failure. However, while sharing a new vision through story is incredibly powerful, I believe empowering people to accomplish that vision together is even more powerful. Sometimes this might even involve stakeholders coming together to create the story together. After all, what happens when a story is told and there are crickets? Or when a dominant person with a fancy title tells a powerful story, yet nobody wants to get behind it because that person is not worth following? I believe that good facilitation is the most powerful tool in the toolkit for a designer.
Moreover, when designing any kind of human-centered experience, it’s important to think about the feelings and thoughts that are intended to be evoked. Just as Jane Brech advocates for starting with the conclusion first in her inverted pyramid of writing, it is important for designers to think about accomplishing a range of feelings in addition to the experience. For example, how might we make an experience that is usually a drag, like going to the DMV, a tiny bit more satisfying?
The role of human-centered designers is ultimately to understand humans. . . that includes not only those that they are designing for but those co-workers that they are creating with. When we get to the core of feeling empowered, delighted, etc., we have succeeded.
