Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Erkan Kerti

Storytelling is an essential skill for every designer to learn

Take a seat. *

Let me tell you a short story. Dreaming of an idea is all we got in this world.

When clients need a design and think that they know exactly what they want, they actually expect more. The design that would satisfy them should be more than they can depict, something beyond their imaginations. They want something bigger, wider, cooler than anything they have seen before. Reality is, with a high chance, there will be no such thing. The odds are too low to create something extraordinary when you design something that is briefed beforehand, and it is a job that is done in exchange for money. Designs are generally clock paid works, so clients don’t want design works that would take years to complete.

Let’s say the customer has recently founded a company so they desperately need a logo and a website or they need an illustration for an upcoming conference in two weeks. While they are already in hurry, how can they wait for you to draw some exciting creation that gives all their dreams?

Checking the Ground

Uhh, wait. No need to give this unearthly extraordinary design to them in order to make money. Many designers think about the design process as a single-output work. Designer provides the work, and the client decides whether it’s good or bad, negotiations happen. Between these negotiations, it is hard to tell whether the two parties can really understand each other’s statements. The designer may try to talk about some theories related to design such as Color Theory, Gradients, Mental Models, or Law of Prägnanz, but getting to the same page with the client is hard. It’s highly possible that they are from different backgrounds, their tastes are different, their way of doing things are different, and their environments are different. Basically, they live different lives, yet we can still think that these negotiations may create a common basis for them to understand each other.

Every designer is familiar with this pattern: When you are working with most of the clients, and tell something about your design, they either don’t understand the things you say and pretend as if they understand or they believe that they understand and come up with a really bad idea about your design. You feel that something is wrong, but you keep explaining your design and answering the not interesting questions. And then some incremental change requests come from the client and your main design idea slowly falls off.

What’s important is not who negotiates better, but to understand each other. Minds should speak the same language, even if they are from different backgrounds.

The designer shouldn’t be there to discuss the color doses in gradients or button locations with the clients, instead, they should express emotions and ideas of the design. Your vision, strategy and the solution are important.

All you need is storytelling

Let’s hear the words from Plato, the most pivotal figure of philosophy:

Those who tell the stories rule society.

Strong statement. If you want to make people believe in what you do even if they do not understand it to the fullest, you need to tell stories. Stories have been told since the beginning of the communication history and they are used to share experiences, traditions, and ideas. But today’s world is different, communication is cluttered with many communication objects around us. Everything that is told fades away quickly in such an era that doesn’t have strong emotional connections.

Even if the audience is silent and you tell the story by yourself, it’s actually interactive if you make it seen as a conversation. The storyteller can understand the audiences’ reactions and adjust the tempo. This means, pace should be kept at certain heights according to the reactions. Even voice tone is important.

Make people understand things you say ‘really’

When you tell a story about the idea that your design possesses, it helps both you and your client to understand the context and situation. The story includes personas inside, tells their behavior and actions in certain situations. By using it, the idea takes root in this environment. You can find a chance to create a relation between the problem and the design solution for it.

When a story is being told, you can explain your design and depict the imagination. Stories provide ideas and spark new ones. User experience and user interface design stories describe behaviors and emotions of users.

Uncovering their actions enable us to understand their motivations and the goals. This way stories can be persuasive about the ideas behind the design.

Designers are highly visual people. So generally they think that they can transfer any idea that they observe with design. But the actual world works with stories to connect with the people. It’s not about being an author or not, it is about giving the stories that people find valuable.

Triggering emotions and providing a storyline between problem and how to solve it through design are critical. Communicating with the stakeholders through stories makes your ideas visible and understandable.

Be aware of the fact that audience is different each time. Their beliefs and experiences are different, so adapt your design story to them. Add tweak-able points, so that story can be modular.

It will not happen over a night

Storytelling concept is pretty broad, each reading and observation gives you chance to learn it gradually. Capturing the attention from the audience can be hard if you are not naturally gifted, but not impossible. The solution is to practice over and over. And it requires visual and verbal presentation skills. These skills should be in flow with the required pace to catch the emotions. Being a master in storytelling is a hard work, but its benefits are extraordinary. This way, designers can tell their ideas in a more secure and understandable way so that these ideas shine.

As a designer, you are likely to already know the high properties of your work. What you need is to create a story that can reflect the concept in your mind and make sure the others understand it as well. Not an easy task, but needs to be improved over time.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

Storytelling – designer’s performance on stage was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Storytelling – designer’s performance on stage

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