Beginning the Design Thinking Process of Digital Global Storytelling

The Perspective of an Interactive Designer in MEJO 584

By Nina Scott

As our departure date to Puerto Rico peeks over the horizon, my peers and I have been busy with brainstorming sessions, niche topic research, and trip preparations. On the design and development team, we have begun our ideation of the themes, style, and general feeling of the user experience on the site hosting our upcoming stories. Specifically, we have been working on the first three steps of the Design Thinking process: empathize, define, and ideate.

Empathy

Since enrolling in MEJO 584, I’ve been paying attention to how websites and apps evoke my emotions everywhere. The feelings experienced navigating online spaces derive from intentional and unintentional features. Every day, I note how I feel when buying clothes on the Forever 21 app or checking my grades on Connect Carolina. From buttons to picture cropping to scroll animations, every tiny aspect of a site contributes to a lasting impact of a website.

Understanding the potential audience of the story we’re telling is crucial to building an accessible, entertaining, and dynamic experience. In class, we’ve been brainstorming the traits and backgrounds of our target audience to further empathize with them. Knowing that our potential audience may include Spanish speakers, elderly people, college students, and journalists all influences our design and development process. Including a wide range of people will be difficult, but I have faith that our team will find a way to accommodate our diverse audience.

Define

Honing down on the title of our project has been a journey as well. After empathizing with our audience and deciding our reporters’ focus topics, we have the information to define project goals. Our overall focus is to give voices to the people of Puerto Rico who have complex and unique stories, and I look forward to incorporating this goal into the website.

Ideate

I have always adored storytelling because of the opportunities it opens up for communication mediums. Video, audio, writing and photography provide endless avenues for innovation. Pulling inspiration from other accomplished storytelling sites has also helped us ideate the features we hope to include digitally.

What’s Next?

After empathizing with our audience, defining our goals and ideating the website features, we can move on to prototype and test our concepts. As our trip inches closer, my excitement to connect with and honor the subjects of our stories grows. I’m looking forward to experiencing the vivid culture of Puerto Rico and drawing inspiration from the people we meet, the food we taste, and the art we see all around us.

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