Part 5: Narratives, filters and connecting — what the hell is going on with people?

Here we are at the last of the series, you can go back and find the first four parts here; click your way to happiness, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Now we’ll wrap it all up.

Understanding how to move forward

You have an idea, a proposal, a design to put out there and you want people to understand, relate and ultimately accept. Of course you’ll want to get their honest, thoughtful feedback too so you can inform your work.

When you make a design, one of the key elements is understanding your users and having empathy for them. You of course create a deep understanding of them, through interviews, research and creating empathy maps of them.

I’m asking that when you pitch your story, you perform the same steps, to understand your audience. A key element of your design work in preparation for this is simply to create an understanding as best you can of your audience and their personal narratives. Of course you will likely not be able to grasp or get to their holistic personal narrative, the one that oversees and overrides all of their responses, but you can at least understand it in terms of the context of their participation in your work.