To start off, I asked participants to tell me what they were doing. Could they describe their project in clear and simple terms so I could understand who it was for and what it did? 

We had two rounds of conversations. The first time round, a number of organisations talked about the tech they were developing, a part which clearly excited them. As a developer, one can see why, but as a user, your eyes glaze over when people describe technological features. You want to hear about the benefits. 

To be too caught up in the technological side of things is to be in technical debt, when you focus on developing the software and later realise that there are other important elements you now have to deal with. These could be fundamental issues such as how the user will benefit from the product. 

In our conversations, I tried to get participants away from the notion that the product or the features are the important part and move towards a lean user experience.

Sometimes the best person to be able to describe the meaning of the product you’re developing isn’t you the creator, but the users. Involve the people using the prototypes/using the product, frame the narrative from their perspective. They are the ones whose stories and voices are crucial for funders or institutions who invest. 

The other important component is making sure you know who you’re telling your story to. The utility or benefit of your service to funders may be quite different from its benefits to users. It’s an entirely new experience for organisations to find themselves speaking to a funder or a company who is never going to be the user of a product facilitating social change. What you need to be able to do is understand what their priorities are – do they care about performance indicators, in which case what is the best way to issue your invitation? 

I asked the participants to tell me a story about their product or service. I reflected these stories back to them to understand in narrative form what it is that they’re offering, what sort of invitation they’re putting out. We spoke about sharing their narrative in different ways using different technology and different phrasing. 

For future funding, their ability to describe the product for different audiences is practical for them. If you’re capable of breaking up your story about your product into smaller narrative chunks then you can use those parts in text, video, audio, along with face-to-face conversation. The more you try to simplify it, to consider it from different angles, the better you understand your own narrative, the more effective it is as a storytelling device.  

We also talked about the usability of a product or service for different forms of impairments and divergences or ways of being. This also requires a real comprehension of what the product or service is as does the ability to explain it across cultures, using mental models that differ to one’s own cultures and societies.

Break up your story about your product into chunks, into smaller stories, into chapters that are comprehensive, appropriate for different audiences and adaptable to other forms of presentation.