Storytelling: gathering ideas

1. Challenge: Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

My challenge is writing a short text for our website about a new workshop to gather ideas  with a web based innovation tool. The difficulty is not to describe how the workshop and  tool work. The difficulty is to explain it in a way that is easy to read and understand for  everyone and not only people dealing with the topic “innovation”.

2. Selection: In your own words, briefly describe the tool you selected (e.g., what it is and

why you selected it for your challenge -- including any appropriate video lecture  references).

Storytelling explains something by using easy understandable words. The topic explained is  wrapped in a story, like an example, so that the targeted audience can understand and  imagine it well.

http://designresearchtechniques.com/casestudies/storytelling/

I chose storytelling, because the targeted audience should be able to understand it easy and  hopefully remember it long. The addressed people do often not know much about the topic  innovation and especially an idea software, therefore it is essential to avoid words which  need some deeper knowledge.

3. Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge (e.g., what

you did and how the tool was applied effectively or ineffectively).

When I wrote my text, I tried to use simple words and always imagined how I would explain  it to my grandma. Difficult was building a story, because if you have only limited space, you  can’t go to deep into it. Therefore, I tell the reader, what happens to him during he is going  through the process and let it look like he is on a “idea” journey.

4. Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to your

challenge (e.g., how an insight affected your thinking about the challenge and about  design thinking more broadly).

I learned, that not going into details about something and always have in mind “your  grandma” must understand it as well, you are able to use words which make the whole text  more exciting. Going into details and explain something insightfully is not always necessary,  it depends on the addressed readers.

5. Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time -- applying the same tool

you selected or a different one -- and the reason(s) why.

I think next time I would think first about a story of myself or some story I heard to make it  more personal. Thinking too much about the process of the topic makes it difficult to even  think about an appropriate story.    By the way, here is my result:

Innovative and creative with „system“ for beginners and advanced    Is the right idea for new products, services or maybe a process missing?  Would you like to improve your customer experience and strengthen customer loyalty? We  take you on an exciting idea journey with a web-based tool for many new ideas.     Invite your employees, partners, customers, specialists or other interested parties to this  creative journey. The invitee can put in their ideas directly via computer or mobile phone. The  view from different angles makes you want to find ideas and animates the creativity, which  inspires the participants to always new flashes of inspiration.     The result is a multitude of innovative ideas, which are evaluated, commented and discussed.  In a 2-day innovation boot camp, the most promising and exciting ideas are deepened and  recombined. At the end of the workshop, the top ideas are worked out and a clear action  plan is defined.

