Design Is Storytelling
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TITLE INFORMATION
Author: Ellen Lupton
Publisher: Cooper Hewitt
Year Published: 2017
Dimensions: 6.5in x 8.4in
Pages: 160
All great design focuses on communicating a message, whether it’s figurative or literal. Design can communicate the importance of politics as seen during the 2016 presidential election, the destruction of the environment as seen in Al Gores, An Inconvenient Truth, and social issues as the Black Panther Movement. Storytelling does the same exact thing; it communicated important messages. So why not merge both realms and utilize elements from each to create something entirely new? In this case, taking storytelling elements and adding them to the principles of design to create more powerful messages that can resonate with more people, and invoke better and improved actions from viewers.
The first act of this book is the most useful act of this book because it describes everything the designer as reader came to learn. It breaks down several narrative devices, what their purpose is, how they are used in storytelling, and then reconnects them back to the design realm. Lupton starts off the section stating all design is a form of storytelling that has some type of ups and downs and receives different interpretations from all users. She relates this to the narrative arc that utilizes the ups and downs to build context and conflict that gains the attraction of readers. This is then followed by the Hero’s Journey, which Lupton relates the concept of the labyrinth that hero must navigate the paths of Ikea.
Moving into the second act, Lupton begins to discuss Emotion, specifically empathy. Here, she begins to discuss different methods of design thinking such as experiences, personas, and co-creations. Although these are only three methods for delving into human-centered design, they are the ones most related to storytelling. Lupton begins this act by defining the experience economy that focuses on consumers spending more money for the increase in experience added to products.
One classic example she discusses is coffee and Starbucks; coffee is a relatively inexpensive product if bought in its bean or ground form, but begins to increase as more experience is included. A cup of coffee from a diner or gas station costs more than its equality in coffee grounds because of the added experience of the convenience that it is already brewed. Add in some friendly baristas, sleek coffee counters, some leather chairs, and then a completely new experience is added and the price of a cup of coffee reaches Starbuck’s prices. It is because of the additional experience that everyday products can add perceived value by consumers. This is where Lupton really begins to contextualize how storytelling can add significant value to design. Storytelling does not necessarily equate to fictional narrative when it is applied to design. Overall, it is about adding context and an associated lifestyle to design. This is further expanded upon in the emotional journey section of this act where Lupton discusses that adding emotional conflict and to stories adds more interest to consumers due to the increase in intensity.
The last act Lupton discusses is Sensation, and how readers and users perceive and react to a story or design. She delves into sight and how it is one of the most important senses when it comes to perceiving design, since most design remains inherently visual. She then breaks down the gaze and how humans perceive things through sight, along with the anatomy of eye evolution and how we perceive light. Although I think this adds interesting context to the subject, I do not think that this needs to be included. Lupton could have used this space to explore more on the idea of eye-tracking and discussing the science of what humans tend to look at first when viewing something. Although this is something she touches on, she does not go into much depth about it, except that humans are automatically attracted to novelty and surprise, and danger and delight. These are relatively vague terms, but it does leave it to the subjection of what is considered a surprise.
The most important element of this act is the explanation of ‘affordance’, which is defined as an object that triggers an action. This is the most pivotal part of this act because this is the greatest response humans an have; reaction. It allows humans to make decisions based off of semiotics, iconology, and past experiences. By being able to craft a story that can then alter one’s affordances, a designer is able to create something that can have tremendous impact. Lupton elaborates on this in the next section by discussing behavioral economics, which is based around impulse decision making. It is the extra push a human needs in order to make a decision if all other variables remain the same. These decisions are typically made based on color, size, pattern, graphics, etc. It is essentially any identifier that signifies difference that has an effect on perceived value. This section is vital because it touches on how the human unconscious plays a big role in all decisions humans make, and more importantly, how design can influence those unconscious decisions. Albeit, this information is sparse and Lupton does not go into extreme depth of this subject to the point of complete human decision control, it is still important because it suggests that when design and storytelling combine, they can have significant impacts on the way the overall experience is perceived.
There are also a large amount of imagery in this book that supports the reading amazingly. Each visual element acts to serve the main text, but can also stand alone and serve some other contextual purpose. This element makes the book feel almost as if the reader is walking through a museum in that each piece serves to tell the overall story of the exhibit, but then each piece can be dissected and defined as its own that can then be repurposed somewhere else. Lupton aids in this by providing a concise description of the context of each piece of imagery that can be tied back to the main reading, or be used as a jumping off point for further research.
This book Is vital for designers, novice and experienced, because it has the potential to serve as a huge starting point for the design research phase of the design process. Although I enjoy and understand the structure of the book by formatting action, emotion, and sensation, I think the acts, realistically, can and should fluctuate out of that sequence. Designers focusing on human-centered design would be focusing on the emotion first and foremost. They would be garnering information about their audience. They would be identifying the emotional points that would then be used to create their story, which would then be used to form their affordances and how they want to be perceived. On the other hand, a designer who is looking to achieve a certain goal would probably start off with the perception, then trying to identify an audience that would best support that goal, and then It allows the designer to craft a relevant story. Although this reverse engineering seems odd, it is a realistic scenario for larger companies with vast audiences. Ultimately, this book is great any way it is read and used, as long as it is not the only source being used.