Storytelling

Challenge and Selection

The Design Thinking has the objective to give tools to help people solving

problems, improve their products and simplify process.

The storytelling is one of those tools and, maybe, the most acquainted. In few

words, storytelling is not just telling some story. It is a strategic way to teel story that  catchs people attention by truly connecting them. The narrative must be meaningful and  leave a clear message that helps steakeholders, customers or listeners in theirs interests.

I work with family law and I see people dealing with hurts, sorrow, betrayals and

grief all the time. I know the difficulty to deal with this feeling, and at the same time get  to be rational to decides about objective affair like finance division, pension, child  custody, heritage and others.

I tried different ways to make my clients deal with that feelings and still focus in

solving the problem. In this process, I realized that when I share real stories that  contagious people, that gives them hope. I used the story to help them change their  mindset and solve the legal questions in the best way they can, because they know this  would be an important part of restart their lifes.

Application

As a family lawyer I must has empathic listening with my clients. They are

struggling with hard circumstances. I would like to find a magic solution, so they can  leave their feelings behind and focus fixing things objectively, make deals etc. But I  failed. Obvious. We are humans and that is the magic. It is impossible to simply forget  your feelings especially when you are facing with your pain all the time.

One day was my turn. I divorced. I felt how hard is to deal with the frustration of

marriage dream or, more specific, a family dream. After that, I started to share my own  experience with my clients. And I got it. When I showed myself as a equal and told them  my story with true, I realized the power of connection that it had. Once my clients knew  my story, they really trusted me.

Insight and Approach

After I divorced and had that tough experience by myself I realized the power

about share my experience with my clients and saw extraordinary results. At the first  moment, I understood that by showing my own vulnerability we connect in a deeper way  and I could be an inspiration to help them see that “this too shall pass”. Besides that, I  learned in practice the impact that an individual story has. Everybody wants to be seeing  as a unique human being and get recognition.

The experience of share my story as a human being and not as a lawyer brought

me a knowledge that people can give their best when they see true in your advices and  feel host.

Visualization

Challenge and Selection

The visualization is a tool that Design Thinking brings as a mechanism to explore

new alternatives/paths to appearance ideas and solutions. Through the utilization of straw  man, symbols, geometric shapes, colors etc., workers star thinking in a nonverbal way,  exploring different parts of their brain, activating their creativity.

It is an excellent resource to use in group work because it can put everybody at

the same page, then it is so much easier to achieve consensus. Besides that, the visual  thinking helps to improve the team communication as it organizes ideas, connects verbal  information and nonverbal information and potentiates creativity.

I have used this technique with different stakeholders so that gives me a general

vision about pain points, key elements and we can learn from each other. My draws aren´t  beautiful, but it is not about it. The objective is that the draw shows the context and the  problem that’s must be solves to improves user experience.

Application

My father is a farmer, and he was dealing with a problem: transport the goods to

cities. While he was talking about all the mishaps, intuitively I started to draw like a first  brainstorming. After this unpretentious use of visualization, both of us realized that was  an appropriate tool to approach all the stakeholders since it would allow us to discuss  clearly showing the context by eliminating misunderstood.

At the first meet with truck driver partners, they got the idea, and they drew on

board some issues that until then we didn´t understand. It was an open eye-opener  experience. Together, after some discussions using some techniques like vote, interviews  and benchmark, we developed a strategic that is now working pretty well.

Insight and Approach

The experience of use the visualization technique brought me a precious learning:

when we literally see the problem our comprehension about the hidden details and  imaginable paths appears. Furthermore, I felt a special connection with the team, it seems  that finally we were communicating and listening filled with the same knowledge, and  we were really trying to fix the problems together, analyzing all the issues and using  several tools to improve our product.

Definitely, the visual design is an incredible tool to share insights and build

bridges for the necessary interactions in a group work.

