Storytelling Built For Innovation

Act Up, Designers!

March 28, 2023March 28, 2023by stayintouchwiththelamb

Personas help us understand and empathize with the end user. A persona is a fictional representation of a target user group that helps to bring a human face to the data and insights gathered during research. However, to design genuinely empathic experiences, we need more than just personas to build a deep understanding of the user's emotional landscape. That's where character development comes in, and acting skills can expand our connection with the people we are designing for.

The Life of a Narrative Strategist

February 8, 2023February 8, 2023by stayintouchwiththelambLeave a comment

Seven years ago, I typed two words into the google search box, ‘Narrative’ and ‘Strategist’. A small but mighty list of communication agencies and professionals who used narrative to create impact appeared.

Generative Story Thinking: Mystery, Metaphor and Foreshadowing

February 9, 2021February 11, 2021by stayintouchwiththelamb

Or How Stephen King Would Build A Story For Your Project Living generates stories. Stories of our experiences, world and relationships. Businesses and organsiations are also story-generating machines. These stories are an underutilised resource that can take projects to a new level with a process called 'generative story thinking'. Generative story thinking is what allows…

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Innovate Like Shakespeare, Be Audience-centric

March 11, 2020August 19, 2020by stayintouchwiththelamb

William Shakespeare was a playwright, poet and theatre owner who lived over 400 years ago. His work is still performed today, translated into countless languages, taught in schools and studied by scholars. How does someone achieve this type of longevity? Two words, Shakespeare was – ‘audience centric’.

Why Are We So Bad At Imagining The Future?

January 28, 2020April 8, 2021by stayintouchwiththelamb

But this is not why is conceptualising what our lives will be like in the future is difficult. The wiring of our brains leads us to be bad at it. We evolved to think day by day. To survive situations as they occurred in weeks and months. And for hundreds of thousands of years, this has served us well.

Empathy Design : Characters For Personas

October 21, 2019February 4, 2020by stayintouchwiththelamb

We listed the pain points and the pleasure points and mapped out what the persona was thinking and feeling. Then we started building out deeper insights. What did this persona need, that they may not even understand themselves?

I was feeling a bit lost. As an actress, a person who is trained in creating representations of real people, I knew I didn’t have the right information in front of me. If I had to play this persona as a character I would have no idea how to do it. I would not understand how to build dialogue that reflected how this person would see themselves and the world. I would be completely at a loss. And to compound the confusion the rest of my team seemed confident to build deeper and deeper insights.

Co-Design Your Story

September 11, 2019September 11, 2019by stayintouchwiththelambLeave a comment

What does Co-Design, Complex Systems Theory and Storytelling have in common? Can co-design methods be used to gather stories as a qualitative data set in processes of innovation, change or disruption? To use stories as a qualitative data set, it is necessary to see storytelling as a system of feedback loops that deliver new learnings…

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Improving Empathy In Your Design Process, Create Characters For Your Personas!

July 31, 2019August 1, 2019by stayintouchwiththelamb

Improving Empathy In Your Design Process, Create Characters For Your Personas! Human-centered designers use empathy-based processes to understand the people they are creating solutions for. Being able to see through another person’s eyes can feel like magic or good luck. And yet the tools to make this a repeatable and reliable process are within our…

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Small Story = Big Empathy

June 5, 2019June 6, 2019by stayintouchwiththelamb

With storytelling, smaller is bigger. I recently met a screenwriter and he told me about a project he's working on, a cross-cultural romance. In his story, a feminist from the West falls in love with a chauvinist from the East. He was having trouble creating the backstories of these characters, why they are together despite their differences. We kept coming up against sticking points and the story wasn’t working.

Story: A Tool For Design Led Innovation

April 8, 2019November 18, 2020by stayintouchwiththelambLeave a comment

Once upon a time there was a president who was known primarily by his initials, JFK. He and the nation he represented was upset that Russia was beating them in a competition called the space race. Every day the USA and Russia ran against each other to be the ‘first’ when it came to exploring…

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