Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story!

"Storytelling is where facts and feelings meet" a quote from this week’s Contemporary Design Culture class. A sentence that made more sense as the class progressed onwards. We discussed what storytelling means to us and to Irish people in general. We agreed that storytelling is central to civilization as it is a natural, energetic way for information to be relayed from person to person. Storytelling in general has a long-term emotional impact which can be seen in legends and fairy tales as nobody would tell a story to somebody a story that they do not like in some way the legend would not be told today. Other examples of story’s having long-term emotional impact include films and books. The Irish are legendary for their storytelling as they are appealing to people verbally and visually.

The one thing that the majority of us where thinking was where do we, as product designers, use storytelling in our everyday design lives. The only place I could think of was the concept development stage to show the function of the product from how it works and explain the form of the product through the form. One company that uses storytelling within the "Out-of-box-experience" is Apple. The way that the company has layed out the product it is like opening a gift and in a way it is telling a story about the product and the service that you will get from Apple.

We then had a speaker, David O' Donohue, who came in to talk to us about the merits of storytelling and how it can be brought through to Product Design. One of the first things he told us was that he could spell and write backwards fluently. As a result of this he wrote three books about a child whose superpower was spelling backwards. He told us this to stress the importance of research in storytelling and also to believe in your own ideas.

He went on to explain that are three key components to good storytelling that are worth noting content, execution and interaction. Content should consist of nothing boring and make the presentation visually engaging. The execution should be engaging as you have to make the people care enough about what you are talking about or else the will get bored and won't listen. Do things like moving around it gets people to keep focus on you. Interaction with the

audience is key, make eye contact also people like to feel like you are talking to only them. Props are good too, it makes people engage a little bit more as their interest spikes. Another thing I would add to this is to make the listeners care about what you are talking about. Any good storyteller would tell you never underestimate the power of empathy and how you do that is give the product a backstory. Talk about something they care about, an adventure of some kind, something unfamiliar to them but believable and give detail or else you will lose them and wrap it up quickly but efficiently, leave them wanting more.

There is no difference between a good designer and a good storyteller just like there is no difference between a good storyteller and a good bullshiter. So if you want to make it in the world of designers start getting good at bullshitting.