Reflection- Storytelling

Challenge and Selection

Storytelling is definitely one of the design techniques that I may have been using for quite a long time  now. Human beings are complex creatures and a design technique such as storytelling comes handy in  many situations.

I was interning with a dating app which was essentially a startup at the time, and my job involved a  consumer research. I had to use quite a few data collection methods in order to receive an actual  overview of the subject specially in a conservative nation like India, and in doing so Storytelling was a  technique that I used a lot, specially in those personal and focused group interviews. My task was to  essentially find the factors that restricted certain youths of the country to use a dating app and why was  it considered a taboo. Storytelling thus helped me to extract these factors from the respondents in a  much more effective manner.

Application

I went on to conduct 12 focus group interviews and 20 personal interviews in regard to my research  project. Most of the respondents at first were not at all comfortable with the questions that lied ahead  of them and it was then, when I used the storytelling technique by conveying them my thoughts and my  feelings towards a dating app and then listening out entirely what they had to say about the same. This  method proved out to be quite instrumental and led me to collect quite important pieces of data while  moving forward with each of the interviews.

I used to convey the offerings, the benefits and the unique features that the startup for which I was  working for all as a mixed-up ingredient in an interesting story that I was essentially conveying to them. I  even firmly believe in the fact that had I used a much direct approach the answers and data, as well as  the story I that actually received would eventually be not nearly as effective as it were.  Also, storytelling  helped me in many ways to garner the thought and feelings that the respondents had in a much efficient  manner as well to fill in the blanks and connect the dots that were important for the research project.

Insight and Approach

The result thereby obtained really proved out to be quite instrumental and the dating app went on to  apply those on their application as well. The dating app was reinvented as a college networking app in  the country. Further the privacy benefit for each of the app user was essentially enhanced in quite a  high order and the whole pricing strategy was changed into freemium, which was free and relied only on  advertisements before the research work.

My approach towards the storytelling technique was quite simple. I had a fixed story that I used to start  the interview with in order to get the interviewees comfortable which was then followed up by listening  to the respondent’s story and insights about the dating app culture. Every question that I put forward  during the interview was essentially a part of the storytelling process.

Hence, as explained in the course as well, storytelling being a design topic can also prove out to be  extremely helpful in marketing practices such as the comprehensive consumer behavior research as well  which I thereby conducted during my internship and the result and data obtained from which proved  out to be quite instrumental for the start-up firm.

