WEEK 4 - STORYTELLING IN DESIGN
- Joe Breen
- Mar 9, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: May 5, 2020
This week’s lecture was focused on storytelling in design. Storytelling is defined as the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics, or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment or education. (1)
Other definitions of storytelling are listed below.
"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." - Robert McKee
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." - Hannah Arendt
"The stories we tell literally make the world. If you want to change the world, you need to change your story. This truth applies both to individuals and institutions." - Michael Margolis
“No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever.” - J.K. Rowling (2)
Storytelling is important in design because as a designer we need to be able to communicate our ideas with others. This can be done verbally or through sketching. As product designers, we must communicate the design process of our projects to others using a visual presentation and talking through the process of the project to the rest of the course members. This helps us to show how we got to where we are now and what we did to get there. Presentations are very useful in relation to storytelling as they make it easier to engage with an audience. Our images/sketches can hold an audience’s attention, while clear bullet points or summary text helps make it easier for the audience to follow the design process in the presentation.
Stories can be communicated through design verbally or non-verbally. Verbal communication is using auditory language to communicate information with other people. Non-verbal communication is communication between people using gestures, facial expressions, or body movement. As designers, we use both methods together. We use speech to describe a product/system that we’ve designed, and we use gestures to demonstrate how the product/system works, which helps the audience to get a better understanding of the product/system and so they know how it works or how to use it.
It’s very easy to think of a story. A story can be created from any source of inspiration. This was demonstrated in an exercise we did in this week’s lecture. The aim of this exercise was to inspire creative storytelling. We were all divided into groups of 4, and each group was given a set of story cubes, where we rolled all the cubes and created a story using the images that were shown on the dice. Another exercise that we did was where we each wrote a line of a story on a page and passed it around and developed the story through each person. These exercises were good examples to show us that everyone is a storyteller. This is because we are all capable of creating a story using our imagination, creativity, and inspiration.
Overall, I found this lecture very helpful in relation to storytelling in design. I admit that I’m not the best at communicating my ideas to others. However, I now feel that after this lecture, that I’ve boosted my confidence in relation to communication my ideas because this lecture has helped me remember that we are all capable of communicating our own stories in front of a large audience.
References:
1. Wikipedia (n.d.) 'Storytelling' [website] (Accessed 4th April 2020); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling
2. Kerpen, D. (2014) '13 Quotes to Inspire Your Inner Storyteller' , Inc [blog] (Accessed 4th April 2020);
Picture Reference:
UIHere (n.d.) 'Storytelling Doodle vector illustration' [website] (Accessed 4th April 2020);
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