Storytelling — the untold
Stories have travelled along with us – even before the time we had any language. It is as ancient as evolution of our species itself. Let’s just travel a few million years ago and I promise to make worthwhile time travel though.
Being a million years ago let me start with, long long ago, a cave man trying to kill his boring day; yup no iPads/SmartPhone/4G and no friendly bots to engage in a conversation, pity! All he had was the wall (not your facebook wall) and pieces of charcoal from last night’s feast of deer barbecue.
He starts scribbling….. the ….. what ??
Whatever he sees or whatever his feast was for the previous night as his stomach grumbles. No script/no language/no hard coded symbol – plain, simple vision he was having
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and a bunch of archaeologist unravel to build upon a million year old story in the very same cave today.
Fast-forward to 2000 AD, Archaeological Findings:
So there was deer million years ago and ancient man enjoyed barbecue… just kidding.
What do we try to decipher if there was something our ancestors actually wanted us to decipher after million years?
Heroes die, kingdoms cease to exist, histories rewritten yet some well narrated stories or myths have the power to travel all the ruined kingdoms, natural disasters, famine, plague and most importantly across time. Sometime those fables of the natives form the very basis for the science.
How?
A few good fables or myths that encode powerful messages within a lighter shell that allowed it to be transported or actually teleported from millions of years; one such instance of a folklore that preserved something very bitter “The Neem” – some folk stories prove how brilliant our ancestors were. Why was the neem considered sacred?? Ever thought of it, why was it certainly associated with few seasons of the year?
Not every common man had the capacity to understand the science behind simple looking leaf; to preserve the bitter tree which is an excellent medication for numerous ailments it was given a special #hashtag “associating it with the most powerful Goddess” of Tamil and as a form of worship people were made to use them or incorporate them into food in the name of festival or offering to God during change of season (onset of monsoon which brought diseases). The chicken pox was named the wrath of Goddess and to calm her down the person infected was made to lie down on a bed of neem and bath in neem soaked water. People did so without knowing that Neem was indeed antibacterial and antiviral indeed many other things antioxidant, antimutagenic and anticarcinogenic... All that a common man knew was it was gifted by Gods and it wards of evil; myths worked as a nice sugar coat on bitter capsule and it still works.
A well spun story helped the science to thrive across time being passed over generations. The power of well told story could even help human clan from extinction.
So how do you use one in today’s digital era and for what?
The buzz word UX (User Experience) does take its fair share of credits from Storytelling. Let me walk you through the phases of UX where storytelling potential brings a difference. A step in any product design would be putting together the user stories. Those user stories or use cases technically could be as dry as possible stating “As a <type of user>, I want to accomplish <some goal> for <some reason>.” Never treat your user as yet another entity in your database. In a world which demands empathy (Artificial Intelligence) even from machine, we are trying to design something for the most complex or complicated class of God’s creation – a human being with emotions. A use case that forgets to capture the emotion is as good as throwing your million dollar product in trash. As a thumb rule capture the users’ emotion that he/she is going through with the current product/service or the mode to accomplish the task in the absence of the product proposed.
As a next step create a story board with all the emotions attached to the current process with flaws/setbacks in the system as well as the positive emotions associated and make sure the positive emotions are not lost. This helps us understand better the untold needs of the user; rather than reading the use case, make the product team picturise the story; take them along the journey of each user.
A story book converted into a movie never lives up to the expectation of the readers, why? Coz your imagination is wild which can be evoked by a well told story that can never live up to the sets or the characters in the film; and I firmly believe when a person visualize and empathizes the persona for whom he is creating the product for would be able to bring a better product to the table that not just passes the quality check against the use cases but also fits the unwritten user needs.
The next phase where this can be put to use is when you have a problem statement and you need solutions from the entire team which can bring more ideas to the table. Try to weave a story with unfinished ending and ask the team to build upon it; it is more effective when the scenario is left to rest for a day or two. This silly trick is none other than the technique used by our serial editors to add a commercial break to let you ponder till the break or worse till the next day or week until the next episode is aired. Have you noticed the N number of permutations and combinations your brain can bring about; and looks like it has a name too – Zeigarnik Effect – the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete.
The next one is quite handy where you can use the storytelling when you are trying to project your design ideas to the higher management or project team who may or may not have any clue of what goes inside a designers head. Understanding the fact that time is very limited to convey the ideas to the higher management who might not be in for all the research data or the jargon. So wrap the proposed journey map in a simple story to convey the ability of this design by highlighting the finer details captured from a user perspective. Also with the team involved in developing the product present them as a package that brings the user’s world in front of the team. The subliminal details that can never be documented or documented details that fail to make its mark can be translated to stories with at most success rate when narrated well.
Well good luck with your next story!
