Story+PD: Vision Stories

Part of a series at the intersection of Storytelling and Product Development.

Someday, we will change the world! And here’s what it would look like, sound like, and feel like. 

A static image of a futuristic product is not enough, not matter how well done. The best Vision work pulls us into a narrative of experience in which we participate or empathize.

Brian Chesky of Airbnb famously brought in a Pixar-trained storyboard artist to help visualize and tell the story of an Airbnb experience that would be an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. The exercise was then used internally to drive design and development of the Airbnb Trips offering.

One of my favorite projects was in creating a vision and strategy for a premium electric vehicle ecosystem. One doesn’t just imagine what each piece of the system could be, progressed along technical innovation or adoption scale.  To do this right, we had to learn, and imagine, what the experiences of ownership could be, in accordance with our client’s brand pillars. End to end, how would our character of an EV shopper go through a journey to and through ownership? How would we help our clients see and empathize with this future customer? Thanks to amazing visualizations of Mike Smith and Kyle Schenone, and built on research and strategy with Chris Weber, we presented a comprehensive and concrete guide for use to sit with our client and break into this future into work processes required to make it real. 

For another project, my brilliant colleagues presented how imaging and printing products could transform and enable new value, by literally writing and illustrating a children’s book about a child’s birthday party. My colleague Lucas McCann’s drawings were so evocative and compelling, I was sad that it was confidential.