Storytelling in Design

Chapter 1. Why Storytelling Matters

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Why Storytelling Matters

How This All Started

Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the story of how I came to write this book follows that same structure. Back in 2013 I was invited to speak at a conference in London and proposed a talk about design and storytelling. My dad and I have had many chats about our respective lines of work, and during those talks I was often struck by the many similarities between writing books, as my dad does, and working on digital products and physical experiences, as I do. When it was time to put together my storytelling talk, I gave my dad a call to ask what he considered to be the key ingredients when he writes his books. It’s said that “Good things come in threes,” and my dad says that three elements should be present in a good story.

First of all, he said, a good story should capture your imagination. Just as the books dad would read to us when we were kids sent us to places we didn’t know existed, a good story should be engaging and should get your imagination going by creating pictures in your mind. Brad Fulchuk, the co-creator of American Horror Story, says that “If you can imagine yourself in a situation, it’s infinitely scarier.”1 Though you let your audience see some things, you leave the rest to the imagination. Whether it’s a horror story or a fairy tale, one of the powers of a good story is its magic of making us see.

Second, according to my dad, is the dynamic of the ...