Name: Nurul Mohamed     Email: jray@hotmail.com

Design Thinking - Application of Storytelling

As quoted in the slides from Week 2 of the course, Slide 5, Storytelling is:

“Put the human beings and their experience front and center. Take the listener along on their

journey.”

That being said, I wish to apply it to a project we’re working on in Manufacturing Engineering to improve the use of Hanger 75 and make it a valuable space. It’s current use isn’t clearly defined, but is predominantly storage for equipment needed for various projects across site. There are multiple stakeholders involved who own certain areas of it, so the challenge is to bring these stakeholders together and help create a space that supports Manufacturing Engineering as a function.

The most recent brief on utilising the area is for it to incorporate the Industrial Strategy being implemented on site. Each department within Manufacturing Engineering as a whole have their own individual projects to focus on, but they all come back to key focuses for site such as digital and technology development.

In order to drive the team in the right direction, I wanted to use the Storytelling tool in order to effectively put our ideas across. We ‘storytell’ within a presentation taking the stakeholders round Hanger 75 location by location. As opposed to filling a presentation with numbers and facts, it’s taking the stakeholders through the use of the Hanger in a more descriptive view. In a way it also brings in visualisation as we’re helping the stakeholder picture Hanger 75 being used in a particular way. One example idea we’ve come up with is reconfigurable spaces that are adaptable to what is required, so we apply their use to projects currently being run on site. We provide a scenario to talk about. It helps picture teams working together and other important aspects to the stakeholders.

From using the storytelling method, it took us back to focusing on the end user to help generate out ideas. Our whole concept became more rounded as we think of the user interacting with Hanger 75 from start to finish. We started by thinking what would the user want to see when they first walked in, how would they interact on the way round, then finishing with what would round-up the users interaction with the area? The Storytelling tool helped generate our end presentation, so it helped focus our work to produce a well-polished presentation.

I think if I was to approach the same task again I’d utilise Design Thinking tools from the start to help establish ideas more fully. The Design Thinking Concept wasn’t introduced to the team until we were 4 months into the project, so I feel opportunities were missed to establish ideas further. So rather than use a tool differently, or use another tool, I would use the tools as a collective as they all complement each other.

