Design Thinking Tool — Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

Storytelling is a very good tool, it can clearly clarify a thing, and it can also present an

abstract concept to people very vividly. What I'm doing is the Internet industry, and most of

the jobs have to deal with computers. In computer science, many concepts are very

abstract. Even for programmers who are very experienced, some concepts are hard for

them to understand. Coupled with the rapid development of the industry, new technology

and new concepts are constantly emerging. Therefore, sometimes when I discuss with

others or introduce new concepts to people, it is sometimes difficult to make clear the

problem. I usually use storytelling method to connect abstract things with everyday things

that are easy to understand, find their relevance and similarities and differences, and then

introduce them to others through story telling and analogy, and often get good results.

Application

One of my deep impressions about storytelling is the experience of explaining a concept of

a new technology to others a few years ago. In recent years, with the rapid development of

container technology represented by docker, many students didn't understand what the

container technology is, and what's the difference from the past virtual machine technology.

For these techniques, if I use a bunch of very professional terms to explain it, the more they

get the more confused they would feel. So I told them a story, let them take each docker

container as a ship container, each container provides with an interface connected to the

external wolrd and it can output the contents inside the container throught the interface,

and people don’t need to consider the operation inside the container. Besides, each

container also do not interfere with each other, and because each container is similar in

specifications, they can be very convenient in transportation of cargo in the port control. By

telling stories about the the cargo and container, they can easily understand the container

technology. Although a deep understanding of this concept also requires a lot of

professional interpretation, but through the story, at least I let them have a general grasp of

the concept.

Insight & Approach

By telling stories, I not only explained a complex concept in a simple and understandable

way, but also deepened my understanding of this concept. Because the precondition of

telling stories is that the people who tell story have a profound understanding of the nature

of the story. So how to tell a proper story and how to tell a good story needs to be

practiced constantly. By telling my friends the story of the container, I found a lot of places

that I didn't understand enough. So this is also a good way to discover the problem.

