Blog 4 Tell me a Story.

Storytelling is an art that can define the way we think or feel about certain things and objects. Storytelling is pretty relevant in design, although I wasn't much aware of this. Us designers have to use storytelling skills to communicate our products to our audiences. If we cannot express our ideas to our lecturers, fellow students or even clients, our ideas can get lost while trying to transfer our understanding to another human being. This is why being able to communicate our designs and design processes are so important.

For thousands of year us humans have been telling stories most true but some false. These false stories are sometimes made believable by the excellent storytellers who craft them. In 2009 a journalist named rob walker conducted a test to find out how compelling storytelling is. He bought 200 items for 129$ on eBay and got some of the most creative writers to write a small story about them. With the items having a new description, Rob re-listed everything. He made a staggering 8000$ off the same items (1) (David JP Phillips | 2020). When we see or hear a good story, we can become emotionally invested in the story, when this happens, we tend to become less critical. The price of this product or service can be sidetracked as we now feel emotionally attached to the story. Have you ever gone shopping for something but come home with all your budget spent and you didn't even pick up the thing you went out for? This has happened to me a few times, as a design student, I am attracted to well-designed products. I would get emotionally invested in the brand or the way the product was produced and just totally forget about how much I am spending on this product I probably don't even need in my life.

So now we can see why storytelling is essential in the design world. Personally, there are a lot of things I can do to make my storytelling better and more emotional investing. I do appose good traits for being able to communicate my ideas or solutions. My mom always says that I could sell oil to the Arab's, (even though their lands are probably the richest oil fields in the world) saying that it would probably be a disaster. But I have lots to work on, storytelling is an art, understanding the way we are trying to connect to our audience is a difficult task. In my last blog, I wrote about experience and translating experience to our user or listener, "We will never know what they feel, no matter how descriptive and understanding we are" (2) (Wix 2020). In a sense user, experience and storytelling have a lot in common. They are both trying to find that point where the client, teacher or classmate can clearly see our visions, our stories and our designs. I cannot see from their perspective, so finding clarity a lot of the time is the primary goal. All I can do is broaden my horizons to try and see the world differently.

References:

1). David JP Phillips 2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj-hdQMa3uA> [Accessed 14 April 2020].

2). Wix 2020. [online] Available at: <https://mikeyburke7890.wixsite.com/mysite/post/try-experience-my-side> [Accessed 14 April 2020].