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What is storytelling in design?
We keep using that word. I don’t think it means what we think it means.
What is storytelling? More and more, in design, we’re told that we need to be great storytellers. But what does storytelling actually mean, and more importantly what does it mean in the context of design?
Webster has a few definitions for story: “an account of incidents or events”, “a statement regarding the facts pertinent to a situation in question”, or “a fictional narrative shorter than a novel.”
For many, when the term “storytelling” is thrown around, it’s that last definition that frames its meaning, “a fictional narrative shorter than a novel.” But that definition carries with it a significant amount of baggage and deeper cultural meaning, which I believe drives anxiety and confusion about what storytelling in design is actually supposed to be.
A good narrative, fictional or not, has a set structure and key elements that carry a person through it. This includes an exposition (beginning), conflict, rising action, climax and denouement (ending), as well as characters, settings, plot points, etc. With the pressure for all of us to be storytellers, we find ourselves contorting our processes and artifacts to fit each of those elements. Personas become characters, flows take on narrative structures and so on. In many cases, the comparisons are loose at best and the contortions quickly feel like an overreach. Further, if the majority of the story structure we are creating is filled by the steps in our design process then whatever story we are telling is a story we are telling ourselves, not a story we are telling our customers (unless you publish your personas and user journeys as part of your product releases).
However, this doesn’t mean that we aren’t storytellers. But, foundationally, I think we are zeroing in on the wrong aspect of what makes a good story. A narrative structure is just a mechanism, the how, it is not the end result. What we are really talking about when we say we need to be great storytellers is that we need to be able to elicit emotion. The end result of a great story is that a person feels an emotion, but emotion can also be felt without telling a story.
