EXAMPLE REFLECTION: STORY TELLING

CHALLENGE: Design thinking is a methodology for solving problems that focuses on asking questions  and listening, with empathy, to the needs of individuals and groups. Storytelling is an “essential  human activity” for sharing experiences, explaining values, and deciding on solutions through vivid  verbal and visual accounts. Storytelling is one of the ancient art forms of communication.  Organizational Storytelling is one of the latest management trends, and there has been an increased  rise in storytelling research as well as consultation. Stories generate questions and questions expand  the breadth and depth of stories, leading to lots of innovative thoughts and ideas. Storytelling  becomes an important tool for feedback, which is the basis of the iterative process of prototyping  that lead to solutions. Social isolation, low self-confidence, and academic paralysis are some of the  common problems faced by the young generation, this is where the tool of design thinking story  telling comes in picture. It helps to connect to the young generation by sharing stories of hope and  empowerment.

PROCESS: The design thinking process ensures the user evolvement in every stage to build a user- centred solution. Therefore, the storytelling is used throughout the design process, yet there is a  different usage goal in each phase. Generally, the storytelling can be used as three pair phases;  problem framing, solution framing, and solution implementation. It begins by identifying the  problem, what is the idea or the meaning we are trying to convey? It is the hardest part of the  process. We must find a way to refine the complex idea into a simple and yet understanding.  Objectifying like this makes it easier to create stories with intention, and easier to apply specific  devices in careful ways. It also keeps your ideas organised and stops you wondering off on a trail:  essential on long and complex stories. And above all, it allows you to choose the most arresting,  entertaining, confusing, enthralling journey to lead the audience somewhere that matters.

APPLICATIONS: The application of storytelling lends itself to the study of the latest research in this  area. There has been a vast number of studies documenting organizational stories as well as  vouching about the effectiveness of storytelling. Studies in organizational stories date back to the  early 1980s. While the storytelling can be used in different stages of the design process as above, it  is a suitable tool to collected personalised experiences from the consumers. It may be hard to build a  generalised data based on it because of the different nature of each consumer’s story, but I believe  this is one of the strengths of the tool. It helps us to understand the empathic experience that the  users face when using a product or a service. This unique strength point can be valuable for the  design thinking process especially when it targets specific problems such as medical interventions or  personalised use cases. In sum, the storytelling is a powerful communication tool that enables us as  a human being to understand more about our emotional experiences. This makes it an effective  method to use during the design process.

INSIGHTS:  What's out there that could surprise us? We want to find that disconfirming fact.  Confirming facts are facts which basically give you some confidence. That the idea's worth  continuing with. Disconfirming facts are facts which says the idea is not that good. It can be used  during the design thinking process phases with a different goal in each stage. Storytelling can help us  to gather personalised emotional data about our consumer’s experience which can be hard to  collect using other research methods such as the survey and consumer journey mapping.

APPROACH: Stories take on a variety of forms: digital storytelling, visual storytelling, storyboards,  scenario generation, storytelling through videos, skits or plays, animation, talk and image, text or  image. These forms open up possibilities for many analytical approaches including, thematic,  content, discourse (use of language), and structural. The trends and patterns derived from these

analyses, in turn, form the bases of additional qualitative and quantitative data collection that value  human needs as the authentic foundation of research-based challenges, opportunities and solutions.  The design team would prepare a number of potential solutions that need to be tested and  evaluated to understand which is the best solution, from the user perspective. In this stage, the  storytelling can be used again in this stage but with a different purpose. In this case, the team tries  to understand which solution is the most appropriate for the consumer. The storytelling can be used  in this part of the design process to build a two communication with the consumer to validate the  efficiency of the solution. In the prototyping stage, storytelling plays an even more critical role as the  consumers can use the solution and provide feedback to the design team. The team will be able to  observe how the consumers use the prototype solution and build a realistic understanding of the  suggested solutions.

