Why You Should Use Graphic Storytelling

If one picture is worth a thousand words, a graphic that tells a story that viewers and listeners can see themselves in can be a powerful way to engage an audience especially in these Zoom fatigued times.

For example, check out the following graphic for Design Thinking Suicide designed by Visual Congruence mentioned in the short video above:

Design Thinking is a process for creative problem solving well known to the design and technology industries.

The first step, Empathy, is the one that most problem solvers have the greatest challenge with. That is because it requires letting go of any biases you may have – which may be very difficult – and what we refer to as “your here” to completely empathize with what is most important, critical and urgent in the minds of your customers, talent and investors and go to “their there” (to find out more about going from “your here” to ‘their there” and how that can increase your influence, check out this excellent Business Book Summary of Real Influence by Mark Goulston and John Ullmen).

Doing that means having to let go not only of your biases, but potentially also products and services that you have spent thousands to millions of dollars developing (and how are you then going to recoup your R & D costs, not to mention your inventory that doesn’t work?).

Being a suicide prevention specialist for more than forty years, I used Design Thinking in the above graphic to describe the story of how someone emotionally and psychologically can fall apart and arrive at the low point of wanting to die to end their unending pain. Fortunately, the graphic also demonstrates their getting through it and then getting better.

That graphic became the Prototype in Design Thinking Suicide that I have been using with mental health professionals, teachers, coaches, parents and most importantly with people who are having suicidal thoughts and feelings.

When those people suffering with those thoughts and feeling see the graphic, they see themselves in it, can then express and safely feel the emotions that are listed and feel relief, and then see that they are on a path where they can get through and past those thoughts and feelings.

If graphic storytelling can engage a person who is having suicidal thoughts and feelings and save a life, think of what it can do for you when you’re wanting to engage an audience, customer, client, talent, investor.