Story Solutions for Complex Challenges

The challenge might be complex but by approaching it through the lens of story we will create a clear narrative from the outset that is designed with the audience and purpose front of mind.

Whether it is achieving meaningful change, testing customer response to products yet to be invented, resetting entrenched thinking in education, or making life-changing information accessible and meaningful to the relevant audience, sometimes you need a unique response to your challenge. This is where we go on an exciting adventure together to create the solution. We might use animation, a company-wide set of storytelling initiatives, a new website design or a bespoke lecture series. I partner with some fantastic experts in other disciplines that we can call on. Some recent objectives we have worked on:

Objective:	Achieving better quality data by designing accessible and engaging research stimuli
Solution:	Working alongside the UX team of a robotics research centre to understand how they engage with their audience, and to design ways to explore and shape audience experience. This culminated in the commissioning of a new film, animation, and audio project

Objective:

Enhancing corporate strategy and delivering transformational business change for Origin Housing

Solution:

Delivering change whilst adding value can be hard, achieving it without the buy in from the organisation is impossible. We helped define and deliver a clearer strategy through story workshops held across the company. The solution drove up engagement through personal commitments of behavioural change from the Exec Committee, and harnessed the wisdom and energy of the ‘Change Champions’ (engaged managers). Together we also designed a company-wide away day, a film to express the lived values, and a system to capture lived value stories going forward.

Objective:	Embedding the importance of storytelling for marketing professionals
Solution:	A lecture series created for Elle Education for their online Fashion Marketing course. This has now formed a core part of the annual curriculum for many years

Objective:	Equip academic specialists at UAL to communicate their subject areas in a more accessible and compelling way for non-specialist audiences (i.e. the public!)
Solution:	A three-day training course for University of the Arts London, Heads of Department, which culminated in them developing and pitching a TV show to Sky Arts and BBC Arts

Design Fiction solves the innovation hurdle of testing people’s attitude to future technology because the power of story helps them to imagine their own lives, homes, and work in a future context.

We create stories that feel familiar and relevant to the user, but are set in a future world where relevant tasks and their pain-points are now addressed using imagined robotic technology. The process: -

The Research Phase

Extensive research into the current lives of the ‘user’.

The Workshops

Together with Turn the Page, I run story workshops with the cross-functional Robotics UX team, to explore key themes found in their research, and create characters and storylines rooted in the data.

Visualisation

Turn the Page conceives and visualises potential robotic technologies, and a future world of locations and characters which will still resonate as familiar to the focus groups.

The Animation

I consult with the Turn the Page animation team through the production process to keep the requirements of the story in focus, while the many other considerations of the production are addressed. I write and direct the voice records on the occasion that we are using voice-over and actors.

The Evaluation

The animations are then used to extrapolate findings through focus groups, 1:1 interviews and online surveys.

For more information on how we could help you evaluate your user attitudes and turn your data into Design Fiction email Will Knight at Turn The Page Studio. (will@turnthepage.studio)