Story Time

Our Contemporary Design class continued its theme of activating the mind in different ways than before this week as if got us thinking about story telling and how it can be incorporated into the design process of products.

I have used story telling in the past myself on a few projects in the form of story boards as I feel it excellently delivers the idea across to the person viewing. Although part of me still believes that it is hard to link your product with a story as most of the time the consumer is only buying the product off the shelf and does not associate any "story" with it. We were given an example of how a past product design student now has her own business which sells carry equipment for surfers, we were shown how this person created a story around these products as surfing was her passion and this really stood out for me, maybe story telling can be a person creating a product around their lifestyle and passion and portraying/marketing that product with that lifestyle. It gives the buyer a sense that when they buy the product they are buying into this kind of lifestyle and that for me is telling a story, the buyer is thinking a lot into this product and not just because of how it looks on the shelf, there is a sense you are buying more than just carry equipment.

After all this we then had a workshop with David O'Donoghue who shared his knowledge on story telling and film making. From the get go he captured my interest as he was able to pronounce any word backwards without any hesitation, it was impressive! He then went on to talk about his books and the process he went through to create these books. He likened his process to that of a "hot-wheels" track with a loop in the middle, this was where the main conflict in the story occured. I thought that this was a great way to map out a story and was immediately able to picture this "track" in my head, if I am ever planning a story in future I will definitely use this tool on a big sheet of paper and plot notes along the track, it is just a simplistic way of looking at something which would otherwise seem confusing and over-whelming.

He then went on to take three items out of his bag, a knife for opening clams, a vegetable peeler and an electronic guitar tuner, after describing what these three items were used for, we were all left wondering what they had to do with anything but he stated that these three items have had an impact on his life only in the past year of his life, previous to that he had no use for them and the point he was making was that a person may think they do not need a product now nor ever will but that can all change due to other changes such as moving to a different region or picking up a new hobbie.

I found this workshop to be very helpful and eye opening, it has helped me view designing in a different light and broadened how I think about things.