The secret to great storytelling

"Storytelling is the most important design skill that anyone can learn"​
— Michael Wandelmeier​

This has been a common thread over the last ~50 interviews.

Because nothing kills a good idea faster than when it’s miscommunicated or misinterpreted.

But here’s the thing… most of the time you’re not even present when your idea is officially sent to the grave.

Because it’s the second conversation where decisions are actually made… like the Q3 planning call where your product lead brings up your demo from last week.

That’s why the key to effective storytelling is making sure your ideas are easily retold 👇

📦 Why you should package your concept in a meme

When you see the word “meme” you might think of the distracted boyfriend, Futurama Fry, or the Drake grid above…

But if we abstract what’s really happening… a meme is simply a method of distilling an idea into a format that is:

1. Concise

2. Memorable

3. Shareable

Memes don’t have to be images either. For example, Dieter Rams’ design philosophy can be summed up in three words as a meme: “Less, but better.”

Now let’s go back to that Q3 planning meeting…

The leadership team is discussing potential projects for resource allocation and your idea is next on the list. Your passion is no longer a factor. All that matters is your product lead’s ability to communicate your intent.

How can you set them up for success? Some ideas 👇

1 — Give your concept a name

Working with Yuan Wang is a masterclass in naming prototypes. I’ll give you an example…

She recently led a project to redesign the Maven marketplace and used data to shine a light on some potential opportunities. One of the problems she wanted to solve was making it easier for students to get the gist of a course without having to navigate to the “CLP” (how we refer to course landing pages).

So at our weekly demos she showed off a nifty popup like this 👀

People liked the prototype… but she did something genius while presenting.

She gave the concept a name — the “CLPeek”

It was perfect because her prototype was a way for students to get a quick look (”peek”) into a course.

Now, in only three syllables, anyone on the team could reference her prototype (and the surrounding conversation, data points, etc.)

As a result, her concept of "CLPeek" quickly gained popularity and the feature was shipped shortly after.

2 — Focus on the inciting incident

Stories are memorable. Facts and features are not.

And the #1 trait of a great story is an inciting incident—it’s the moment when the hero (your user) encounters a conflict that turns their world upside down.

When pitching ideas for the Upwork redesign, Metalab leaned into how the pandemic forced companies to adapt to remote work overnight.

But inciting incidents exist in the micro too…

Maybe there’s an unexpected change in the data, or maybe you identify an emotional highpoint where users are feeling anxious or overwhelmed in a given flow.

Now you can use that as a way to tell a story that is memorable:

1. Establish the user’s world beforehand

2. Highlight the moment of conflict

3. Propose your solution

“If you arm people with the major piece of conflict and the way to overcome it, they are more able to re-articulate that idea onwards”
— Ian Wharton (CEO & storytelling coach)

3 — Visualize your concept

In an upcoming interview, Kathy Zheng shares about her experience designing and proposing concepts for Github user profiles.

Her secret? She creates comics to represent her ideas 🧠

​Here’s the ~90 sec airplane story of how she used the format to shape the narrative around the Github contribution graph.

“I told the story in three panels as a way to condense it into a format that has the chance to meme itself”
— Kathy Zheng​

I’m not huge on comics (or much of an artist for that matter). But I did expense this Doodle Library to easily visualize emotion when presenting ideas.

Maybe there’s a visual format that works for you too…

🤫 The secret to great storytelling

Remember how Michael Wandelmeier told us Metalab hired a storytelling coach?

Well that coach is Ian Wharton.

He’s an Apple Design Award winner, CEO of Aide Health, and he teaches storytelling techniques to teams like Dyson, BBC, Huge, etc.

So this episode breaks down the key storytelling concepts that he shares in his course Sell the Idea.

He also presents some compelling ideas about why designers are the best suited people to start companies. So if you’ve been considering starting your own thing, there’s a lot we can learn from Ian’s journey as a design founder. His story is as inspiring as it gets.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇