framing and storytelling spread your passion from your team to your audience We are moving into the end of the workshop. One part of design is communicating your work and your passion. We are going to ask you to create a [90-second] pitch about your work. Your challenge is not just to sell your solution but make us care about the people you are designing for and, first, convince us you are working on problem worth solving.

doug As an example, let me tell you a story: Meet Doug. Doug Dietz works at GE as a designer creating medical imaging equipment.

This is the CT scanner he designed This is the CT scanner he designed. The machine works well, creates good scans, and looks great. Doug was proud of his work. But a few years, one day Doug visited a hospital – which he doesn’t normally do. He went and saw his machine in the hospital and talked to the nurse operating it – she was pretty happy with it, and Doug was glad to hear that. And it was only by chance that on that day he saw a little seven year girl holding the hands of her two parents, walking down the hall. That little girl was sick and needed a CT scan, and he could see how scared she was – and he could see on her parents’ faces how desperately they wanted to help her get through the experience. They walked down the hall and turned the corner into the room with his CT machine. And as soon as she saw his machine – she burst out crying. Doug wasn’t so proud any more. Actually, he felt like he had failed that little girl. And when he looked into more he found out sedating kids before medical scans was very common, just to get them through the experience (as high as 80% for MRI scans) He knew this wasn’t right, and he had to work to change that.

So what he did was tried to understand those little kids So what he did was tried to understand those little kids. Doug had just been to a d.school workshop and learned about empathy. When he got back home, he gathered a team – like teachers and people from children’s museums – and engaged with kids. Of course these kids – even if they are sick -- just want to be like typical kids, being playful and having fun. One girl talked about her big sister going off to camp and wished she could do that. He realized instead of designing machines, he needed to design adventures for kids. This was a big reframe of the challenge.

adventure series: cozy camp And what he developed is the “adventure series” scanning rooms. This one is a camping adventure. Before the child comes to the hospital she gets a backpack with a comic book telling her about the camping adventure. And when she gets there, she isn’t greeted by the clinical nurse – but instead by the “camp counselor”. To get a good scan, she gets in her sleeping bag and holds still to look at the stars. There is no additional technology here – the decorations are vinyl stickers, like on the side of a bus. But the experience for those little kids is drastically improved. In the pilots the have been able to get that 80% sedation rate reduced to near zero. (Better for kids, better for parents and nurses, higher throughput, safer, and lower costs.)

We think Doug’s story (and the way he tells it) is memorable for several key reasons – which align with the classical story arch seen here. Doug introduces us to his user, the young, seriously sick girl, in an emotional way – highlighting her needs as a very sick child in a children’s hospital lacking adventure. Doug describes her reaction to the MRI machine in a way that is full of color and detail (tension rising over time) – we feel as if we are there which prompts us to feel an acute need to provide a solution. Most of the story is dedicated to motivating us about why we should care about his user and then a minority of the time introducing us to his solution (only one way of many) in which this challenge could be solved. Use this same framework to tell the story of your user and solution.

project share 20 minutes to prepare create a 2 minute share-out (do a verbal run-through too) create a 2 minute share-out here’s your chance to inspire!