The session opened by asking us to think of a story that had stayed with us and why. The one that came to mind for me was not a book or a film but something much closer to the project. It was the moment in the mentor interview when Barry reframed our assumption about routine. We had gone in believing that structure in prison was broadly positive and he turned that completely on its head. The reason it stuck is because it changed how I understood the problem. A good story does that. It does not just inform you, it shifts your perspective in a way that you cannot undo. That is exactly what Barry's insight did and it is part of why the project ended up where it did.
This week made the case that storytelling is not a soft skill sitting on the edges of design practice. It is central to it. A good idea that cannot be communicated clearly is not a good idea in practice. The ability to tell the story of your work, to take someone from not understanding a problem to caring about it and believing in the solution, is one of the most valuable things a designer can do.
The components of a story were broken down across the familiar framework of where, when, why, who, what, how and why. What was interesting about applying these to design work is how naturally they map onto the structure of a service design project. The where and when establish the context. The who grounds the problem in a person. The what and how describe the intervention. The why is the north star, the reason any of it matters. Without the why the rest of the story has no pull.
Visual storytelling was introduced as a way of doing three things simultaneously. Clarifying complexity, building empathy and communicating change. All three of those are challenges our project had been wrestling with from the beginning. The debt accumulation problem is complex and largely invisible. Dean's experience is easy to dismiss without empathy. And the case for change requires demonstrating not just what is broken but what things could look like if it were fixed.
The north star concept was introduced as a way of keeping the story focused. What is the single most important thing you are trying to communicate? For Flare the north star is straightforward. Nobody should leave prison in debt they had no way to prevent. Everything else in the story serves that point.
Visuals help make arguments stick in a way that words alone often cannot. The journey map, the empathy map, the stakeholder map and the service blueprint all function as visual stories in their own right. They make the invisible visible and give the audience something to engage with rather than just listen to.
The Airbnb storyboarding example was used to illustrate how a relatively simple visual sequence can communicate an entire service concept in a way that feels human and immediate. Airbnb used storyboards in their early days not just as a design tool but as a way of aligning the whole company around a shared understanding of what the experience should feel like for both hosts and guests. That is a powerful use of a simple technique.
The first storyboarding exercise asked us to map our morning routine. Mine told the story of waking up in a panic, scrambling to get ready, running for the bus, settling into the journey and then arriving somewhere with a coffee in hand. What made this exercise interesting was the emotional arc it traced. High tension, mounting pressure, a moment of release, calm. That arc is the thing that makes a story feel satisfying rather than just informative. The tension and the resolution are both necessary. Without the panic at the start the coffee at the end means nothing.
That arc is also a useful model for how to tell the story of Flare. Dean's story has the same shape. The tension builds invisibly throughout his sentence, compounds on release day and without our intervention hits a cliff edge that derails everything. With it the arc resolves differently. The tension is caught early, held in place throughout the sentence and released cleanly at the point of discharge. Same person, same journey, completely different ending.
The second exercise asked us to storyboard our service. Mapping Flare as a sequence of moments rather than a system of components made it feel more human and more communicable than any blueprint or diagram had managed to do on its own. It reinforced something that had come up throughout the module. The best service design work holds both dimensions at once. The systemic rigour and the human story. Neither one is enough without the other.
