Reflection: storytelling

Challenge:

I have recently started interning with an online educational agency and work in the  marketing sector. Part of my work includes spreading the word about the  availability of such a forum that provides quality online courses and inclining  people towards enrolling for the same. This is also the part of my challenge as I  only have a stipulated time given for each task and sometimes it gets arduous to  arouse inclination into people’s mind in such short time.

Selection:

Storytelling is one such design tool that I predominantly use as it is helpful to  understand people’s thought processes and apprehensions, thereby helps me to put  across the product in an effective manner based on these innate differences. In the  study material of week 2, Alex Hernandez (CLO at Mars) stated that storytelling is  about the connection that we give to people about a piece of information that we  are trying to share. This sentence is what helped me narrow down the appropriate  design tool for applying it in my field of work.

Application:

My tasks involved bringing three enrolments in a day and a half for a month. I  made sure I gain knowledge about the product first, before letting people know  about it. As rightly stated every product has its own story. The main reason for the  start of the product was the distress caused due to the concept of mugging lengthy  chunk of answers, studying irrelevant subjects and the concept of examination in  Indian education system, faced by the founders. They wanted to provide flexibility  and ensure every person is able to learn at his/her own pace with the help of study  material provided by the best in the field with a personal choice of taking up  examinations. As per the founders, this would help students to have a clear focus  on learning instead of worrying for examinations and studying subjects which are  outdated.

When I started speaking to the potential customers, I asked them a bunch of  questions regarding their views on the current education system and would they  prefer to learn in a more innovative way if given an option, to arouse moments of

reflection. I went forward narrating the story of the origination of the product and  the purpose it serves. To my surprise I heard their experiences in return which  helped me give a personal touch to the product. It also lifted the chances and  tendencies of purchase power as it connected with people on a deeper level.

Insights:

Applying the tool of storytelling made me realise the power of tapping into a  person’s deeper level and linking a product to the innate thoughts. Also, it was a  surprise that a little story can do so much good for a product. Design thinking  made me understand the importance of people in business and product decisions  and how we can make our environment more predictable with the help of design  tools that can help us put across the right product for the right customers.

Approach:

The next time I would want to explore the visualization tool to see the visual  impact the product has in people’s mind and witness how they associate  themselves with the product.

