Your collection of stories also affects what you tell yourself on a daily basis. Think about that really hard for a second … If something makes you happy or upset, dig deeper and you have stories inside you directly informing that emotion.
Historic figures become immortal in the minds of others. Their names and deeds carry on. Stories make them immortal.
A good story is filled with heroic deeds and determination in the face of impossible odds. It can also be filled with tiny triumphs. Thank you for these lyrics Shihad:
It’s been a day of tiny triumphs
It’s been a week spent in despair
You can’t send it down a phone line
I do my best, but I’m not there
Powerful stuff! It takes very few words to create a picture in your mind.
How stories apply to design
As a designer, I thrive on hearing stories and trying to get to the deeper meaning of the issues to overcome. I use empathy to hear the story behind the words to then try to design something that will help bring solutions and resolution.
Your brain is uniquely capable of saving and transmitting stories. It’s a shame that we have fewer opportunities to do this in person, but we do have many more opportunities to do it digitally.
Every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. But more than that, it has meaning and context for anyone who hears it. A lesson encapsulated. A why explained. A lesson learned.
Often in design exercises like Design Thinking you attempt to write a story starting from incomplete information. Your next step is to make a heroic journey into a walk in the park. You can kill the monsters of inefficiency so the user doesn’t have to.
You remember people due to the power of their story. Did you forget the name of the person you just met a few seconds ago? It might be because you don’t have a story in your mind about them yet. A person’s story anchors them in your memory.
I work on remembering names all the time. Not always successfully. It’s a sign of caring and really endears you to other people.
We see ourselves in the stories we hear
You hear yourself in any good story as much as you hear who the story is about. In every interaction, you frame it against our own experience. A good yarn increases your context so you get better understanding of the world as you go.
Hollywood is a great example of the power of stories. It makes billions of dollars from spinning heroic tales (and sometimes dramas and romantic comedies). We love a good one, and they deliver! A good film gets etched into history and cultural lore. Its script’s juiciest bits become enshrined in our language, history, and culture.
Pretty please, with sugar on top. Clean the f**king car.
The Wolf, Pulp Fiction
Stories create new language. They can capture the words particular to a time and place. A good friend once told me children create new language and I was blown away. I used to think it was scholars in ivory towers. How wrong was I?
LOL.
Yas queen.
Dap me up.
Stories give you a path to follow back to the truth. The heart of the matter. They are fun! They help you learn about yourself. Stories help you learn about people and broaden your point of view.
Stories help you learn lessons about life. About what it is to be human. Their charm is they remind us of our shared experience. They bring us together even these days when our lives seem busier than ever and we are more disconnected.
A good story, untold, is tragic. As Todd Henry says in Die Empty:
Refuse to settle. Make your days count.
“Embrace the importance of now, and refuse to allow the lull of comfort, fear, familiarity, and ego to prevent you from taking action on your ambitions…The cost of inaction is vast. Don’t go to your grave with your best work inside of you. Choose to die empty.”
To fix a problem or help someone, learn the story behind it. Once you do, you can start to get to its core, find the beginning of the loop, and then reconnect it. Get rid of the blocker in order to move forward.
A company with a great story is really attractive
I’ve seen mention this week on LinkedIn about a company successfully sharing its well-crafted story to attract good new hires. Getting this right can inspire the right candidates to apply, and sets the tone for when someone is hired under the right context.
They tend to stay if the story matches reality.
Of course we designers thrive on stories. As we go about our work, this is what we are searching for, what we mine and store, and we work hard to track and categorise these so we can make connections and ultimately help people get things done.
When doing hiring rounds, usually the companies with the most creative and engaging (and true!) stories are the ones who are the most popular. A recent LinkedIn discussion I had inspired me to write about stories.
Think of your favourite companies. What do they have in common?
Ask really good questions to get to the heart of a story
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The right question shows you are listening and fully comprehend the story, and you can move forward confidently with this agreement. It can mean the difference between helping someone and making them feel ignored.
The right question can change the world! How might we make things better? This is the start of improving experiences. Use the answers to your questions to start writing a great story.
