STORY STRATEGY GUIDEBOOK
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INTEGRATING STORY & STRATEGY INTO THE DESIGN PROCESS
BHAVIKA SHAH M.F.A. Design Management
This guidebook teaches how to integrate story and strategy into the design process. An obstacle design teams face is how to navigate forward in the abstract nature of the design process. This guidebook incorporates methods used in storybuilding, storytelling, and strategy through a framework called Foundation. Foundation helps designers and design teams develop a strong focus to avoid getting lost in the design process.
OVERVIEW ELEMENTS EXECUTION IMPLEMENTATION IMPLICATIONS
FOUND
protagonist
main goal
conflict
elements
audience
emotio connec
theme
positioning
competition
fit
poignant & specific questions
point of v
DATION execution background
onal ction
view
outlining
incident
heightening
culmination end with a knockout
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OVERVIEW Businesses are now relying on designers and design teams to create both tangible and intangible solutions that produce meaningful experiences for consumers. While the design process is flexible to adapt to creating tangible and intangible solutions, design teams can get lost within the process and the data. Without a strong focus, inconsistencies can develop among final deliverables from team to team or project to project. By integrating story and strategy in the design process, designers and design teams can create directives on how to proceed forward.
Foundation uses elements from storybuilding and strategy to formulate a narrative that is easily comprehensible and directs design teams forward. It acts as both a hub and a guide for the design process. It is a framework that creates a narrative. In order to understand the Foundation and how to use it, the following sections describe creating a Foundation narrative: Elements, Execution, Implementation, and Implication.
DESIGN PROCESS
discover
define
develop
deliver
innovative opportunities
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FITTING IN DESIGN For Foundation to have the most impact, it needs to fit after the insights and before the generating stages in order to help design teams develop a strong focus for moving forward. It needs to develop from the research and insights in order to provide direction to the next stages. If the research and insights have not been completed, describing the various elements of story and strategy would be guesswork. Foundation should belong in the steps preceding implementation to provide direction for generating ideas and concepts.
Fitting between these two stages helps bring together the research and insights to help define various ideas and concepts before they are refined. Due to its unique position in the design process, Foundation can serve as soundboard for developing the ideas and concepts to make sure they reside within the goal of the project.
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FOUNDATION ELEMENTS Foundation separated into two parts, elements and execution, to define what Foundation is and how to use it. The first part of creating Foundation is the elements. The purpose of the elements is to concisely define the categories of the research. By doing so, the elements can help your design teams determine what they need to research and what pieces might be missing. The purpose of defining the elements is to align everyone with the problem you are solving and assess your findings according to the original problem. Overall, defining the elements communicates the your team’s
actions in order to point out any discrepancies and to align research and insights. The follow pages describe the elements of Foundation. They are separated into two categories: story and strategy. They can be researched in any order, but it is idealistic for the story elements to be defined first.
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STORY ELEMENTS The first set of elements is developed from story. These elements create the backbone of the Foundation and where your design team should start when categorizing your research. The story elements helps create a comprehensible focus since story is a one of the oldest and most natural forms for understanding complex information in a pleasurable way.
protagonist
main goal
conflict
audience
theme
protagonist
main goal
conflict
audience
theme
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PROTAGONIST In story, the protagonist is the most important character because they have the central problem and who drives the action. The protagonist is the idea the design team is trying to solve for. This can be the client or organization that brought the brief to a designer or design team; it can be a customer need; or it can be a process or technology the design team is currently investigating. The protagonist is a noun with a central goal that drives the action to solve the problem. Designers and design teams should delve into understanding their protagonist, both in how the client/organization (or customer need/process/
technology) works and what they (or it) are trying to achieve in order to drive the story. Your team should uncovering your protagonist’s wants, needs, and motives. Define the protagonist by describing who they are, what industry they compete within, and their brand. This helps your team figure out the type of research data needed for forming the protagonist. Defining your protagonist reveals their current position in the marketplace.
SO WHO OR WHAT IS YOUR PROTAGONIST?
protagonist
main goal
conflict
audience
theme
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MAIN GOAL The main goal is the deep desire of the protagonist. After defining the protagonist for your design problem, defining the main goal helps your figure out what goal your final concepts need to reach. Your team can define what the main goal by examining why the protagonist exists and their mission in moving forward. This can help your team understand how your design concepts will fit in the overall mission.
have a defined mission can have a difficult time focusing on specific customer segments. These questions can help your team understand the motivations of your protagonist.
However, some organizations or ideas don’t have a mission. If they do not, how does that reflect on the organization or idea? For example, companies that don’t
WHAT IS THE MAIN GOAL OF YOUR PROTAGONIST?
protagonist
main goal
conflict
audience
theme
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CONFLICT Conflict is story’s lifeblood. It is the reason story exists. Conflict in design can be either the design brief given to your team by an organization, or it could be developed from researching the opportunities in an industry. Overall, it is the challenge that you are trying to solve. Without a challenge, there is no project. By understanding your challenge, your team can identify the obstacles that face solving the problem. Defining the challenge and the obstacles can align your team on exactly what you are designing and why. While this might clear in the beginning of the process, it
sometimes gets lost as teams move forward. By defining it early on, your team can always reference back to it and readjust yourselves to your challenge at hand. Understanding the obstacles at the beginning can also help develop your final concepts to circumvent those obstacles in advance.
SO WHAT IS THE PROBLEM YOU ARE TRYING TO SOLVE?
protagonist
main goal
conflict
audience
theme
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AUDIENCE In story, the audience is relatively known from the genre in which the author is writing. For example, if a writer is writing a romance novel, he knows the relative expectations of the audience and what they are looking for. He will not write a romance in the form of a psychological thriller. In design, the audience is your target market, or end-user.
a general label and explained in greater detail through the personas developed by the team.
Therefore, your team should define the audience by understanding the type of user your design brief or opportunity is targeting. Knowing your audience means learning their wants, needs, and expectations. The audience can be defined by
SO WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE AND WHY?
protagonist
main goal
conflict
audience
theme
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THEME Theme differs from the main goal because, while the main goal is what the protagonist desires, the theme is what the storyteller is trying to say. It is the teller’s is trying to express to the world. For Foundation, your design team develops the theme; you are the storyteller. Design is a human-centered innovation process. Putting users at the center is what differentiates design from any other discipline. Therefore, user research should develop the theme of your project. Your team needs to analyze your research into insights and use those
insights to develop your theme. Often, user research leads to new ways of understanding the problem that the protagonist presented. This is called a reframe. A reframe is a new perspective on the original conflict. The reframe can oftentimes improve the situation by changing your conflict’s entire meaning. By defining your theme by a reframe, your team can compare the original problem to this new viewpoint to develop your ideas and concepts.
SO WHAT IS YOUR THEME/REFRAME?
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STRATEGY ELEMENTS The second set of elements is developed from strategy. These elements fill in the holes that the story elements missed and provide the hard facts for the narrative to build upon. They are the logistic elements that bring data and secondary research into the design concepts.
positioning
competition
fit
positioning
competition
fit
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POSITIONING Positioning is the unique role that the protagonist holds within an industry, what differentiates them from their competitors and why consumers purchase their offerings. Understanding where the protagonist is helps define where they want to be. Positioning allows a design team to absorb, understand, differentiate and articulate the client’s needs. There are five key factors to look at for defining a position: brand, culture, customer, technology, and service: Brand: An essential element of strategy and concerns long-term issues of quality, image, and mission/vision of an organization. Understanding the brand helps
define how it is perceived externally. Culture: The kind of atmosphere and personality an organization has developed, is specific to an organization. The culture of an organization can differentiate itself from its competitors in terms how open it is to new innovations and emerging technology. Customer: The market (organizations or people) that purchases the offerings developed by an organization. Knowing the various target markets can unveil both loyal customers and opportunities for new customers.
positioning
competition
fit
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POSITIONING Technology: Emerging technology constantly shifts the dynamic market. Knowing how the market adopts and adapts to new technology helps develop an organization’s standing. Service: They are not limited by the form and function of products, but extend to environments and creating meaningful experiences for customers. Understanding the current services an organization provides helps define the position it has within a marketplace.
have a unique position in all five. Understanding the positioning of your protagonist provides a starting point for your team to learn where the opportunities and possible attacks can be. Your team can use positioning to validate your designs within the protagonist’s current position and provide a significant asset in differentiating your protagonist from their competitors.
While there are five key factors, your protagonist may hold a unique position within only one or two. Rarely does the protagonist
SO WHAT IS/ARE YOUR PROTAGONIST’S UNIQUE POSITION AND WHY?
positioning
competition
fit
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COMPETITION Competition is the established rivals that directly and indirectly affect your protagonist’s industry. It is important for your team to understand who the competitors are. Your team can define the competitors from both an industry perspective and from your protagonist’s perspective.
industry and compete for the same market/customer. So who are the direct competitors of your client? How successful are they in comparison? How different is their position compared to that of your client? These are a few examples of the type of questions that explore the competitive market.
Understanding the competitive field and the industries/organizations that play within it can help your team explore what exists and where the gaps and opportunities lie. Your team can use competition to differentiate your design concepts. For your project, your teams should explore each of the five competitive forces in order to understand your protagonist’s current market.
Suppliers: The organizations that provide the raw products that create the offerings. Suppliers can charge higher prices, limit quality or services, or shift costs to industry participants, which will affect the protagonist’s standing in an industry. So who are the companies that supply the objects? Do they have any influence? This may or may not be relevant for each project, but it is necessary to consider.
Direct Competitors: Those organizations within the same
positioning
competition
fit
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COMPETITION Power of Buyers: The customers that purchase the offerings. Customers can force down prices, demand better quality or more service, and generally play industry participants off against one another, all at the expense of industry profitability. So who is the current customer market? Do they have any influence on the demand for the client’s offerings? By defining the current market, the design team can either dive deeper to understand them and/or uncover the opportunity to market to a new set of users. Potential Entrants: New entrants to an industry bring new capacity and desire to gain market share that puts pressure on prices, costs, and the rate of investment necessary to compete. Some industries have high barriers of entry, meaning that a new company or organization must have a lot of capital to enter the
market. A good example is the car industry. It has a very high barrier of entry since there must be enough product to be able to sell a car. However, a new entrant is Tesla. By looking at these new entrants, design teams can determine how they are changing the market landscape with their new offerings. So who are new entrants to the industry? What are they offering and how different is it from what established companies are offering? Substitutes Products: Performs the same or a similar function as an industry’s product by a different means. An example of a substitute product is cloud storage to the printing industry. So what are substitute products and services that do not directly compete with your client’s industry, but offer an alternative to consumers?
positioning
competition
fit
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FIT Fit is understanding your protagonist’s offerings, and knowing how new opportunities would work within them. It looks at what the current services and partnerships your protagonist has and how they are used. Knowing the fit of your protagonist is essential for defining how and where your team’s concepts and ideas will work within their business. Your team can explore concepts that work within the boundaries of your protagonist’s current business or determine reasons why they should look beyond their current resources.
SO WHAT ARE THE CURRENT OFFERINGS YOUR PROTAGONIST PROVIDES TO ITS AUDIENCE? DO THEY WORK WITH EACH OTHER?
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FOUNDATION EXECUTION The second part of creating Foundation into a narrative that communicates the elements into a comprehensible, directive statement. The execution of a Foundation narrative conveys all your research and insights to aligns what your design team is trying to do and provides a focus that your client can assess. A metaphor that represents the importance of Foundation is viewing it as the back cover of a book. The back cover of a book entices a reader to want to learn more. It provides enough information to prepare the reader for what he is getting into.
In terms of design, Foundation is the goal of the project built from the research. It provides the avenue to align the design team and the organization they are working with. There are two parts to forming a Foundation narrative: building the emotional connection and outlining.
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EMOTIONAL CONNECTION Building an emotional connection is difficult since emotion varies from person to person. Therefore, by using techniques developed from story, Foundation uses three key methods to create an emotional impact: ask a poignant and specific question at the introduction, write from the protagonist’s point of view, and conclude with the most impactful point from the research. While these are suggestions, they have been known to successfully create an emotional connection through narrative.
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POIGNANT & SPECIFIC QUESTIONS The first method to create an emotional impact is to ask poignant and specific question(s) at the introduction of your Foundation narrative. This will help create interest and start building the relationship between the teller and the audience. Poignant questions should be open-ended yet use striking words. They also should to be short, no longer than ten words within the question. The questions should also be specific. General questions do not make an emotional impact because the audience has to manually stop and think about how it would relate to them. Being specific creates
personalization so your audience can “see� themselves in the situation or challenge you are presenting. Specificity forces your teams to focus exactly what challenge you are trying to solve.
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POINT OF VIEW Crafting a story in third person limited point of view makes the story explicit to the client. Third person limited is the method of storytelling in which the teller (your team) writes only the thoughts and viewpoints of the protagonist, while all other characters are presented externally. This specificity creates an emotional impact for the audience, as they will be able to step into the story quickly and easily.
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END WITH A KNOCKOUT Conclude with the most impactful point from the research and insights: your theme or reframe. This reframe is often considered the culmination of a new perspective for how to approach your design challenge. Often, it has the most emotional buildup because it is the eureka moment. Capitalizing on the emotional impact to your reframe can create a shared experience and a visceral connection with your audience. Since you are proud of it, others will feel it too. Your reframe also entices your audience to want to learn more about how you got to this new perspective from the challenge you
were given. Presenting the reframe as the conclusion of the Foundation narrative is the climax.
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OUTLINING Outlining is organizing the structure of elements to be understandable; it is how to put the pieces of the narrative together. There are four stages in outlining: background, incident, heightening, and culmination. The stages provide the path for communicating your research and insights.
Background
Incident
Heightening
Culmination
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BACKGROUND Background sets the stage of your project. It includes the elements of protagonist, positioning, and competition. Combining these elements gives context to the current state of both your protagonist and their industry’s current market.
protagonist
Background
positioning
Incident
competition
Heightening
Culmination
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INCIDENT Incident is the turning point for your protagonist to change what they are currently doing to reach their main goal. The elements within this stage are the main goal and the conflict. By including both these opposing
main goal
Background
Incident
elements in the same section, your teams can build the tension of your narrative. The main goal explains what your protagonist wants to achieve, while the conflict explains the obstacles that stands in the way of the main goal.
conflict
Heightening
Culmination
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HEIGHTENING Heightening is the rising action; it is building the research and insights to the greatest point of interest for the audience. This section introduces the target audience and how the protagonist’s main goal will affect
them. Your team should identify who the design brief’s target audience is, why they are important, and how the conflict affects them. This heightens the tension created in the incident stage.
audience
Background
Incident
Heightening
Culmination
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CULMINATION Culmination is the climax and it consists of the element of theme. The theme is the center of design and creates a new view of how to approach the problem. This shift of perspective is often the most
exciting and interesting moment. By ending your Foundation narrative with the theme/reframe, your team set up the project for the generation of ideas and concept stages in the design process.
theme
Background
Incident
Heightening
Culmination
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IMPLEMENTING FOUNDATION The Foundation is a tool to communicate your team’s research and insights in a comprehensible, directive narrative. Therefore, your Foundation narrative will be completely unique from another team or from project to project. Getting your entire team to create a story together can be complex and difficult. Everyone on your team comes from different backgrounds, has researched different information, and has different opinions on what is valuable information. Therefore, getting all your team members to align their focus is imperative to be able to move forward together. This is often
easier said than done. In order to get all team members on the same page, this section describes two workshops that teaches you how to develop and refine your Foundation narrative together.
protagonist
main goal
positioning
conflict
competition
audience
fit
theme
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WORKSHOP 1: THE ELEMENTS For the first workshop, your team needs to identify the elements of the framework: protagonist, main goal, conflict, audience, theme, positioning, competition, and fit. The first workshop is conducted after research has been conducted and insights created. Sharing research among team members can be tedious because key findings relevant for one member may not have an impact on the rest of the group. Therefore, the purpose of the first workshop is to bring everyone together in a fun and directed way to share and analyze research information together. Small groups allow each person to have a chance to speak and share their research and insights. Therefore, your team should divide into groups of 3-4 people to define
the elements. Each group should fill out all the elements of Foundation together by discussing their research and pulling out the key information that fits into each element. They can write sentences, bullet points, or even use post-its to describe each element. By each group filling out the elements, your overall team can identify if there are any gaps in the your research. If additional information is needed to finalize a certain element, your team will know exactly what additional information to investigate. At the end of the first workshop, each group will have filled out all the elements. The second workshop will bring together each group’s version of the elements to your design team as a whole.
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WORKSHOP 1: THE EXECUTION For the second workshop, your team will execute of the story. For this workshop, the small groups will reconvene back into the larger team. On each wall of the room you are in, one team member should put up one large piece of paper. Each large sheet will have a different Foundation execution stage heading written across the top: Background, Incident, Heightening, and Culmination. Your team will then re-divide into new groups, splitting up the people from Workshop 1 into four new groups. By re-dividing the groups from Workshop 1, the new group will have members bringing their different Workshop 1 elements. Each group will take a different wall; so there will be a Background group, an Incident group, a Heightening group, and a Culmination group. The Background group will create one to two sentences that describe the elements of protagonist, positioning, and competition. The group will
spend about three minutes at the wall discussing the elements to create their one to two sentences. Simultaneously, the Incident group is creating one to two sentences that describe the main goal and conflict. The same is happening for the Heightening group and their elements and the Culmination group and their elements. After the three minutes are up, the teams should rotate clockwise to the next wall. Therefore, the Background group will rotate to the Incident wall; the Incident group will rotate to the Heightening wall, and etc. Each group at their new wall will assess and refine the sentences written by the previous group. All together, the groups will rotate three times to hit all four walls, refining the sentences of the previous group each time. When the workshop is over, each wall should have a concise one-to-two sentence description of each stage that has been seen, analyzed, and contributed by all team members.
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COMMUNICATING THE FOUNDATION NARRATIVE Pulling the elements and stages of Foundation together is key. Therefore, once Workshop 2 ends and your entire team refines the sentences for each stage, one or two team members should be elected to pull together the sentences in a coherent and understandable narrative. These team members can order it so the tone of voice and grammar is consistent and correct. Once it is complete, they present it back to the team who can examine, critique, and assess the Foundation narrative. One to two rounds of critique are usually all that is needed to develop a final Foundation narrative. There are several ways to tell a story, each as impactful as the next. Whether your team tell it through a written narrative, a film or even a storyboard, the point is to communicate the direction moving forward in an emotionally impactful
way. There are several ways to tell a story, each as impactful as the next. Whether design teams tell it through a written narrative, a film or even a storyboard, the point is to communicate the direction moving forward in an emotionally impactful way. Your Foundation narrative can be presented to various outsiders including the client. This tests it comprehensibility and directionality. Your team can also use your narrative as a guide when you move into the generation of ideas and concepts phases. Your team can take the ideas and concepts generated and validate them to your Foundation narrative. Those that fall in line with the narrative can be further pursued since the narrative was developed by your research and validated by your team.
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DESIGN IMPLICATIONS The major obstacles design teams face when working in a collaborative project is losing focus, working with the ambiguousness of the design process, and forgetting to tie their final concepts back to their research. Foundation overcomes these issues by integrating story and strategy in the design process. Stay Focused: Foundation instructs the entire design teams to contribute in identifying the design challenge. Therefore, the team identifies and, more importantly, agrees on the problem they are solving. Through the Foundation narrative, design teams can refer to it any time they lose track.
Communicate Your Focus: The Foundation narrative is also a communication tool to clients. The client can easily understand what a design team is solving for and why. This allows them to stay focused for the project. The Foundation narrative is a tool that gets everyone on the same page from the beginning. Know Your Way: Design teams are no longer lost in the design process since Foundation provides the research topics and general direction to move forward. This is the key feature for Foundation. By pulling elements from story and strategy, Foundation demonstrates what
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DESIGN IMPLICATIONS research is needed to create a comprehensible narrative. The Foundation narrative also provides direction forward, as design teams now know what they are generally designing for and why. Overall, Foundation overcomes getting lost in the generation of ideas and generation of concepts stages, the two stages where designers get stuck the most, by providing the goal for the ideas and concepts to reach. Tie Everything Together: Finally, design teams can tie their final concepts back to their research in a meaningful and creative way. Since Foundation builds on research
and insights and directs the final ideas and concepts, tying the stages together is built into the framework. Design teams can form their Foundation narrative and present it their clients both at review sessions and again at the presentation of the final designs. Overall, Foundation introduces the final designs as an extension of the story; therefore, the final designs become the logical conclusion of the research.
LIST OF IMAGES PG. 6: [Untitled Book with Words Jumpings Photograph]. Retrieved from: http://whytoread.com/ PG. 18: [Sky and Sand Photograph]. (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.pexels.com/photo/road-skysand-street-1510/ PG. 32: [Crying Statue Photograph]. Retrieved from: https://riselikeair.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/ megan-rose-taylor-today-i-walked-down-a-different-street/ PG. 34: Brian Hillegas. (2007). Close Up of the Thinker [Photograph]. Retrieved from: https://www.flickr. com/photos/seatbelt67/502255276 PG. 36: [Perspective Photograph]. Retrieved from: http://www.incrediblemarketing.com/instagram-for-yourmedical-pracitce PG. 38: [Untitled Muhammad Ali Photograph]. Retrieved from: http://rebelsintradition.com/lifestyle/ greatest-muhammad-ali PG. 40: Pierce Brown. (2015). [Untitled Outlining Photograph]. Retrieved from: http://www.pierce-brown. com/ PG. 50: SCAD Collaborative Learning Center. (2015). SPS Class Workshop 1 [Photograph]. PG. 52: SCAD Collaborative Learning Center. (2015). Chick-fil-A Workshop 1 [Photograph]. PG. 57: [Untitled Stone Foundation Photograph]. Retrieved from: http://www.thiscobhouse.com/building-astone-foundation/