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- [00:00]
Chris Abad
What I was doing was just following the design process, like research, problem identification, solution. So in that scenario, most likely the peak moment is like, somewhere towards the latter half of that. Like, probably what I'm most excited about is the way I figured out how to solve the problem. A really simple thing to do is to just front load that. This is what I think the world looks like. When all of this works really well and then work backwards. These are the obstacles that are getting in our way that are preventing us from realizing this. This is all the proof that I have that this is actually possible. So you sort of like, back into this exciting vision.
- [00:36]
Rid
Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid, and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is with Chris Abad, who's led design teams at companies like Google, Square, Dropbox. So needless to say, he's given a lot of design presentations. So we're about to do a deep dive into storytelling and all of the different things that you can do as a designer. Effectively share your idea and persuade stakeholders. So he shares, like, an incredible amount of tactics that you can start using right away. So I don't want to waste any more of your time. Let's just dive right in.
- [01:12]
Chris Abad
Just this morning I was talking to a guy who is going through school right now, and we, we were talking about, like, storytelling and, and some adjacent skills. One of the things I realized, because he asked me, he's like, do you just think that this skill is maybe, like, not emphasized enough in school? Well, that's tough because, you know, the thing is, design is still built on really good fundamentals of craft. You still got to know how to do the work and do the work well. And early in your career, like, that's the skill that you're building. But once you kind of. That starts to come naturally and you feel proficient and then you pick your head up, then you start to realize that it's not enough. Because for most people, especially if you're working in a company of any size, you can't go build this stuff yourself. You need to get people on board with you, whether they need to change their mind or, you know, help you or allocate resources, whatever it is. Like, people got to do something. They have to buy in to some extent for your vision to be realized. And then you realize, okay, I not only need to be really good at design and have the best design and the best ideas, but, like, people need to see that I have to somehow communicate all this excitement I have in my brain into their brain. So they'll hop on board with me. And then you realize that the better you are at that, the happier you are and the more effective you are and the more impact you're able to have. So I think at some point, once you get past the, like, I can do the thing, I'm good at my craft, you realize that all these other skills around actually getting stuff done, matter and storytelling is a good universal language. If all you ever had to do was convince other designers, it'd be totally different, because you could nerd out all day about the craft and the pixels and the interaction design and the visual design, all the stuff that you sweat the details on. But when they're not designers, it's totally different. And you have to be able to speak in a language that they get so that they understand why you're excited about it and why it's a good idea. So storytelling is classically that universal thing that people sort of bond around and get. And so that's why I think it's an important skill to have. It is not more important than just being good at your craft and being a good designer. But once you're there, if you want to get stuff done, it's like one of the top skills that you can build to be able to get your work into, like, out there in the world.
- [03:38]
Rid
Even as you're talking, I have, like, my graveyard of ideas that I still believe were really good that just weren't presented the right way and just died. Just never got off the ground at all.
- [03:50]
Chris Abad
I mean, every time you have of those ideas, you're like, you're over the moon about it, right? Like, you think it's amazing. Like, you see something that other people don't. And so you sit there, you're like, if only I could get you to see what I see. So that's storytelling. Like, it's a way to get that emotional reaction, excitement and conviction that you have in your head and be able to translate that efficiently into someone else's brain.
- [04:16]
Rid
Real quick message, and then we can jump back into it. There's one piece of interaction design that's been referenced, like, four different times on this show. It's the split screen in the Amy Calendar app. And it really is one of the most impressive pieces of design that I've seen, and it's a product that I use every day. But here's the thing. Dennis, the designer, said they wouldn't have shipped the split screen interactions without their play prototype. And it makes sense. I mean, you could never create something like this. In Figma. But that's where Play comes in. It allows you to create ultra realistic prototypes because for the first time, you can design design interactions with native iOS gestures and Apple's core animation. So if you want to raise your ceiling for interaction design, head to Dive Club Play and you can try it out today. For years I've been paying for third party website analytics, but I can finally cancel those subscriptions because Framer just released their all new analytics dashboard. It's built into every plan and it's even fully GDPR compliant without the need for a cookie banner. That way you can get a complete breakdown of how your site is performing, including live visitor activity bounce rates. You can see breakdowns by country device, and even get a glimpse into refers and UTM sources. You can then filter data automatically by clicking on any of the individual metrics. Like users on a desktop who found your site through Google. It's super powerful, but most importantly, it's built directly into your dashboard. So you can't beat that. It's just another reason why I tell everyone to use Framer for their next website. And you can start using it today. Just head to Dive Club slash Framer. Okay, now on to the episode. I'm excited to kind of get into the tactics around storytelling, but I kind of want to understand the role that it's played in your journey a little bit first. So, like, was there an inflection point for you where you started to more strategically invest in storytelling as a key part of your design practice?
- [06:16]
Chris Abad
Yes and no. I think a lot of storytelling for me has always been there because I started my career as a startup founder and one of the first things I had to do is go raise money. And so you have a vision and you have to go tell that story to investors in a way that gets them excited enough about you and your idea to get them to put money behind it. So storytelling was like not life or death, literally, but life or death in terms of the business. It was the lifeline of the business from the very beginning. And then I spent a long time as a product manager and I was in these head of product roles at a lot of startups and it was my job to figure out where's this all going and what is the vision and stuff like that. But there's a team around you and this is a team of a bunch of different people. I had a with marketing and sales and engineering and design and all these different roles. And so me going up in front of the company and talk them through like this is Where I think this is all going and we need to be excited enough about it and understand it well enough and believe it enough that we're willing to like go put weight behind it. That was the job. So in doing that, I got a lot of reps in. Was there an inflection point? There were a few moments where I started to get more intentional around the craft of storytelling. I can remember at least one book. I'm like, I don't know, I. I tend to read anything I can pick up like as much as I can. I like sucking up new information. And there's a book called Story 10X that for whatever reason, the approach that's described in that book and how to apply, call it like modified classic storytelling techniques. But in a way that's really effective both in a business context and specifically for people who are trying to talk about transformational change, which when you're on a design team and you're thinking about long term vision, that's kind of what you're going for. And so for whatever reason, that clicked for me and I started the tools and techniques and frameworks from that book. I started applying to my own presentations and. And then from there that got me more interested in the topic of storytelling and I started to think more about like, okay, specifically how can we make this better? How can we do this? It gave me a better language for the people that I was. I would work with on my team when we were working on presentations. Because before it was just kind of like hunch, like someone would show a presentation to me and I'd give them feedback and I would just sort of react to it. But I didn't have like a method or an approach that I knew I was doing. It was just like, well, here's the feedback. And so once I. Books like story 10x and other things I came across gave me a little bit more of a targeted approach and how I was thinking about this. And I think I made it a little bit easier for me to help people with it on my team also.
- [09:09]
Rid
Well, I want to get into some of those takeaways in terms of how it has impacted your approach and maybe the way that we can do it in order to make this as practical as possible is I want to try like talking directly to a listener that has some kind of an idea that they're excited about and maybe they even have an upcoming slot at a crit or a product strategy leadership meeting, something like that. So let's just like start at the very beginning. What are you doing to Figure out what, like, the core story behind an idea is.
- [09:44]
Chris Abad
So usually what you're getting is like some starting point with a collection of ideas that follow certain patterns. There's a couple things I see. One is like, okay, so you've got this presentation coming up for crit, or maybe it's like a review with senior leadership or something like that. It's probably something that you've been working on for a while. So there's a lot of context and detail. One thing that people will do is they'll go back and they'll start to create a survey of all their artifacts, whether it's Figma files or other presentations that they've done. And they'll start to assemble pieces like Legos. Like, they'll have all these piles and they'll grab a couple Legos from here, a couple Legos from here, a couple Legos here from here, and smash them together. And then, so they'll have this starting presentation and then they'll try to talk through it. But because it wasn't, they didn't start with kind of like, this is what I want to say. They started with the elements. There's a couple things that happen. One is they start adding a bunch of words because they're like trying to put together the story. And then when they present it, like let's say we're doing a dry run, they'll pull it up on screen, they'll look at the screen and then they'll decide what to say. So they'll sort of use these visuals as like their cue card and then repeat. They'll see it on screen, they'll respond to it, they'll react to it, and then they'll repeat and they'll go to the next slide. They'll look at what's on the slide, they'll decide what they're going to say. So you get a lot of content, but it's not cohesive. And for someone who hasn't been living and breathing this project for the last six months, it gets really hard to follow. That's a really, really common scenario. So a lot of times in my role, what I'll do is the first time that that happens, that's a good opportunity for me to hear everything, take a step back, kind of squint and say, okay, out of all of that, here's the most interesting thing I heard you say. And that'll happen. Sometimes you'll hear a 20 minute presentation, but there'll be like one little thing that stood out. And I was like, you know Four minutes in, I heard you say this thing that I thought was like really interesting and really impressive, like, tell me more about that. And then you start to realize, well, like, what if that was the thing? What if we built the story around that? Because for these particular types of presentations, again, I'm thinking like, you've got this project you've been working on for a while and you're trying to distill it down to something concise that you're going to present to someone who's not in the project all the time. Maybe it's a senior leader. If I'm doing this, I see a bunch of these and maybe I might see a bunch of them in the same day, back to back. And so I'll remember one point or two points out of your 20, 30 minute presentation. And so the idea is, can you design that into the story that you're telling? And you'll hear this all the time, like executive presentation, they'll remember the main point. I think one phrase I hear a lot more in video creation is peak moment. There's certain things psychologically that people remember. There's peak moment and last moment are sort of things. And so if you can figure out what your peak moment is in your presentation and then do that and pick that intentionally and then design around that, that's much more effective. Otherwise, what happens is you throw 20 different ideas at me and then I decide which one I want to hang on to. And that might not be the most important one to you, that might not be the one that you wanted to hang me to hang on to. And so if we can sort of work together to figure out what, what is the thing you, you, you want me to, to walk away with. So if you can decide that up front and then build your story around that, then now you have an end goal in mind and it's on purpose rather than on accident.
- [13:20]
Rid
Are there common arcs or patterns that you're reaching for in order to effectively frame that peak moment?
- [13:27]
Chris Abad
If I look back at how I would tell these stories early in my career, there was kind of a default structure that I realized wasn't super effective. I would set a bunch of context on like what's going on with the business, the user, the product. I would present the problem that we were running into, the problem that we would solve. I'd present how we decided we were going to solve that problem. I would try to get people really excited about that. This is so cool. And then at the end I would say, and that's it. And I'M open to questions. So there were two problems with that. And I, I did this a lot like this, this was not like a, a short stint in my career. This was probably like the first half of my career. The two problems were one, the arc itself was fairly flat, like it wasn't interesting. What I was doing was just following the design process, like research, problem identification, solution, I don't know, ship. So it made sense to me as a designer, but it wasn't necessarily the right structure for that moment. And then at the end, I didn't necessarily have a goal in mind. I had done all this work to like make sure you understood my, my, my process, my thought process as a designer of I did the research, I identified the problem and then I solved it in a really creative way. But there was no end. Then what? And so my end was like open, open up to questions. But I didn't have a goal in mind. And so where the conversation went more depended on the person that I was talking to than me. So in that scenario, most likely the peak moment is like somewhere towards the latter half of that. Probably what I'm most excited about is the way I, I figured out how to solve the problem. A really simple thing to do is to just front load that. And so as I started looking at, and again, this is not the universal structure everyone should use. But one way to do this is to start with, this is what I think the world looks like when all of this works really well and the customers are happier and the business is better, and then work backwards. These are the obstacles that are getting in our way that are preventing us from realizing this. And these are all the different, this is all the proof that I have that this is actually possible and that we can overcome these obstacles. Like, I've thought through it, I've tested some of these things so you sort of like back into this exciting vision. But depending on who you're talking, if you're talking to say a business leader that isn't in design, they want to know like, what does this do for the business? What does this do for our customers? And so you start there. Rather than all of this sort of like context building around the research and problem identification and stuff like that. Like just start with like, where does this get us?
- [16:01]
Rid
I like that a lot because I think most people just default to telling a story chronologically and like the chances that that is the correct order in order to like achieve some desired outcome. Most of the time I think it's like kind of low. Like there's Almost always a more compelling way that you can order things. And so he even hearing you work backwards from like, okay, what do we want to accomplish? And like, how can I set the stage for that in that first, maybe even like 45 seconds is. I'm just kind of underlining that for myself.
- [16:31]
Chris Abad
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could think of it as the classic trap that people might fall into, sort of this crescendo, building up to the peak moment. But if you've ever been in a room giving one of these presentations to a manager or an executive who's super busy, and you lose them in the first few minutes, and then by the time you get to the part you're really excited about, I don't know, they're responding to emails on their phone, you've already lost them.
- [16:57]
Rid
Slacks open.
- [16:58]
Chris Abad
Yeah. So you cut to the chase.
- [17:00]
Rid
Okay, so you kind of hinted at tailoring your message based off of who you're talking to. Can we go a little bit deeper onto that? Just like, how wide is the spectrum of how you would even approach this act of storytelling? You know, whether you're presenting to like the CEO versus, you know, more peer product managers, things like that. Like, talk to us a little bit about that part of your process.
- [17:25]
Chris Abad
The overall structure might be the same, but like, the. The details that you get into can change quite a bit. If I'm presenting to my skip level, who isn't super familiar with a lot of the details, and a lot of those details don't matter because they're not actually building the thing that's different than say, if I were presenting to my cross functional team, say, the product and engineering work, those are the things that change. And so I think the general approach of storytelling, those tend to be very universal. But when you set up what your goal is, what is my main point? What do I want out of this? That has a lot to do with who your audience is. And so that's where the tailoring sort of comes in.
- [18:05]
Rid
How do you even think about the right level of context to give?
- [18:07]
Chris Abad
Yeah, there's a few, like, approaches and tips that I think come up over and over again, regardless of who it is. First of all, I think time management's really important. If you have been really thoughtful about the pacing and the structure and the peak moments and all that, but you only get halfway through your presentation, you run out of time, and then you're rushing at the end, like, everything goes out the window. The best case scenario is when you get into a lot of those details, have them Ready. But the person's actually asking for them. I think is, is really helpful. Like sometimes I'll ask, sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll hit the key points and I'll say there's a lot of work behind this and it's actually kind of interesting. If we have time, would you like me to go into it? No. Okay, well then let's move on. And so you kind of ask for permission on where you want to derail and, and where you don't.
- [18:49]
Rid
Almost having like the core presentation and then like an appendix even that's like a, it's like obvious in retrospect, but that's a really helpful mental model. You have things ready if someone does say like, yeah, like let's go a little bit more into the details. But you're also prepared to kind of skip past it and being a little bit more flexible in terms of what you're bringing to the table as even like a core deck. I can already see how that would have benefited me in past presentations.
- [19:17]
Chris Abad
Yeah, having having an appendix ready is really common. And again, like there are certain people that you'll present to where that like people just know that you need to do that because they're going to ask those questions and they want to have it ready. But. And it depends on the situation. But also sometimes what's okay is just say we have a lot of really interesting things to share around that. But we have limited time today. Like can I just come back a week from now, tomorrow, whatever their schedule is, can I just come back and like I'll put that together for you and I'll answer that for you or after the meeting, like I have a bunch of stuff, I'll just, I'll record myself talking about it or I'll send you an email or I'll put together a PDF or something in some cases. Also okay to not do too much off roading and to kind of like stay on track and just ask for permission to either share it with them offline or to come back for a follow up.
- [20:04]
Rid
So you talked a little bit about the visuals in terms of maybe not working backwards from what you have in terms of like mocks or core imagery or anything like that. But how do you actually think about the way to assemble a deck or some kind of a visual artifact to support this story?
- [20:24]
Chris Abad
So if I'm starting from scratch. So the situation I described earlier is usually if I'm working with someone on my team, this is what they come to me with. But if you get to start with a blank slate. So this is what I'll do for myself. Or if I've already worked with someone and they kind of understand this process, this is maybe where we'll start. I'll start with an outline first. And just like, let's say you're writing a blog post or an essay or whatever. I'll start with an outline. I'll structure. Here's my main point. Here's sort of the stages of the story arc that I think is going to be appropriate for this. I'll fill in some bullet points around the details that I want to bring in, and I'll look at that to make sure that sort of the flow and the main points are hit and things like that are sound. So that's a low investment to kind of get the foundational part right. When I'm working with someone, I'll ask them for the same thing before we get into the visuals and the details and the slides. Like, just go into a doc and write the outline and then I'll give you feedback on the outline. And a lot of times you could spend a lot of time discussing, like, why are you telling it in the sequence? Or this is your main point. Is that the most important thing for you to talk about? Or actually, I can see from this outline that you actually have two or three main points that are competing, and that's going to be a little bit of overload for just this one meeting. And so how do we whittle this down to one? You can figure out a lot of these issues that if you had already put together a full deck, you're less likely to react to because they get really difficult to change when you're that far along. Because these are sort of like fundamental issues with what you're saying. They're not sort of details that you would tweak once you go to the outline. Then I'll do this for myself. And if someone is willing to put in the work, I think it's helpful and sometimes I'll ask for it, figure out the full voiceover of what you're going to say. My belief is when you're in a presentation like this, the part that is most important is, what are you saying? And that is much more important than what the person is seeing, even with design work, unless it's like a real deep dive, like a true design crit, where, like, it literally is about what's on the screen or what's on the page. But if it's more of, like an executive presentation, a lot of times, what's much more important is, is what are you saying? So start with that. Sometimes what I'll do is I might literally go out and actually write out word for word. I'll kind of simulate in my head what I'm going to say. Another thing that I might do is because usually what I'll try to do when I present, I'll try to go off of an outline. But when I get into the presentation, it's the first time I've done it and everything's kind of on the fly. So I'll just simulate that. I'll hit record on my microphone and I'll look at the outline. I'll just pretend I'm giving that presentation for the first time and I'll just kind of talk through it. Even if I fumble, I'll kind of talk through it and I'll record it and then I'll transcribe it. And so without me sitting there having to write word for word, I've both done a dry run and now I actually have the word for word talk track of what I'm going to say. As a little hack, sometimes what I'll do with people on my team is in the early stages, I'll say, okay, just let's do a dry run, like take your outline, just talk me through what you're actually going to say, and then we'll just record it and then that'll turn into like the word for word script. The reason why that's helpful is because you probably are fumbling a little bit along the way. And so as you're looking through that just like you would edit maybe an article, you can kind of clean it up and kind of think through some of the things that maybe you got hung up on. But then you can, then you can start to break that into what your visuals are. And usually what I. What I try to tell people is the purpose of the visuals is to reinforce what you're saying. And so as you're just imagine in your head, like imagine as you're saying these things, what do you want them to look at that is going to sort of like put emphasis on the right things or like reinforce what you're saying as you're going. But the main thing you want is for them to actually listen to what you're saying with some visual cues. The problem with starting with the visuals is usually you get the reverse. When there's a lot of content on the screen because of where you've started, they're sitting there reading the slides and then they're Having to multitask and listen to what you're saying, as well as read what's on the slides. And nine times out of 10, I think what happens is people default towards what's on the slide. So if you've ever seen, you've either been in this situation or you've seen a presentation where there's a bunch of content on there and people are sort of like trying to decipher what's going on. And when they're done looking at the slide, then they'll check back in and then they'll catch the end of whatever you just said. Outline, full script, start breaking that into different sections. And then from there, what I usually end up with is something that looks a lot like a storyboard. The reason why I use a storyboard is, I think a lot of problems with the way that people tell these stories and put together these presentations is sort of inherent in the tool. Like the tools kind of incentivize bad behaviors. And tools like PowerPoint or Keynote or Google Slides or whatever you're using are like, inherently about the visuals, and that's it. And the notes are sort of jammed somewhere else to kind of prevent other people and myself from getting too sucked into the visuals too early. I needed like this intermediary artifact that put the words first and foremost and made the visuals visuals secondary. I've done this in, like, Google Docs. I have like a template that is like mostly the words, but there are like little thumbnails of each image along the way. And in the beginning, I might just type in some quick notes in each cell, like just a description of what I think would show up here. Then I might go back and for some of them, do quick sketches or some shapes or something to kind of rough it out. And then even I've gotten value out of even when I have the full presentation, exporting those like, images of those slides and putting them into the document. And for certain presentations where it's important to kind of do a lot of prep and you're collaborating with other people, I've sort of put in the work to do that. The reason why that's been so helpful is when you start getting feedback from other people. If you send them like a Google Slides, even if it's got all the. All the notes, the main thing people are commenting on is like, what's on the slides and what it looks like. What I actually want to know is, let's talk about what I'm going to say. Am I saying the right things? Does the flow make Sense. And so even in review cycles, if I'm getting feedback from peers, other people on my team, I want the comments on what about what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Are we missing anything? And so that format works a lot better, which is why, even when I figured out the detail of the slides, what I might send them is kind of this storyboard thing where the words are on the side and that's the most important part. And maybe there's like thumbnails of the visuals and I'll link to the deck, but I'll try to get them to look at the words first. And so that's an area where I think a lot of presentation software has it backwards. The emphasis is all on the visuals. And what I want to spend my time on is what's being said.
- [26:57]
Rid
I mean, even going back to what you said earlier, you're right. The software forces us to view the visuals as cue cards. Even the lines in between what you are saying are drawn by picture to picture to picture. And. And it's almost like reactive to the visuals. It did kind of make me wonder a little bit, like, are you using any text on these slides at all? Or like, where is that line for you? Where it's like, okay, this is helpful, whereas this is distracting a little bit.
- [27:25]
Chris Abad
I mean, if there's like a. If there's a key point that might be text. But generally, and this has been the case for a long time, generally when I do slides, the text on the slides is very light. And so the one downside that I'll run into is because of this sort of bad behavior, what people have gotten used to is like, hey, can you send me the slides? And usually what I end up telling people, I'm like, that's not going to do you much good because there's nothing on the slides. It was about the talk track. And so I'll send them a version that includes maybe the speaking notes or if we've recorded it, I'm like, you got to watch this. But I'll warn them. I'm like, with a lot of people, the slides sort of stand on their own as a. As a document. If that's important, then what you have to do is basically create a separate document that will serve that purpose. There is one software that I've been experimenting with over the last year or so that actually follows more of that workflow that is super interesting. And I'm still kind of getting the hang of it because it's a really, really different workflow, but it's IA Presenter. They also make IA Writer, which has been around for a long time and is like pretty well known as, as a writing software. But I Presenter. It helps you visually see just how different of a workflow that is. Because the way that you create a presentation is you start with the script and what you're writing and then you create the slides next to them. And even at the end, like if you export, you have the slide version with your speaker notes and they'll do it sort of teleprompter style. But if you export, it'll actually export as a PDF that does like the slides and the notes together because that's what people need because the visuals won't stand on their own. If you've sort of done it right.
- [29:00]
Rid
When you were teeing up the software, I thought for sure that I would be familiar with what you were talking about. I've never seen IA Presenter and I'm on the website right now. It actually looks quite fascinating and I like how it leads with text. It's very clear that it makes the script the first class citizen rather than the slide itself.
- [29:15]
Chris Abad
It's such a different approach and so counter status quo that I think that's probably their biggest obstacle is just the behavior change. People have been doing presentations a particular way for years and they have all the this muscle memory around it. And to like be asked to do it in a completely different way, almost backwards, is really weird. And not a lot of people will stop and take the time to like relearn a different approach. But my argument is the way that most people are putting these things together really gets in the way of your ability to tell a cohesive story.
- [29:47]
Rid
I've even noticed the behavior shift for myself a little bit already that is tied to the quality of transcription software. Like, I never thought that I would be someone that would talk at my computer, but even when I'm working on like the mini episodes for dive, I find myself just talking to myself. I'll just talk through ideas and then I'll say, you know, some combination of words. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Like I liked how I was able to boil that down. And then I'll just hit option space bar and then speak it to Super Whisper, which will then transcribe it and then I'll move on to the next section and I'll just kind of like start talking and verbally processing until I get to the point where I'm like, okay, cool, let's, let's capture that. Okay, option spacebar. So I'M looking at Ia presenter and I'm like, this is. I think this is exactly what I would want, actually.
- [30:33]
Chris Abad
I just did this the other day. Literally this. This workflow where I had an idea, and so I put together an outline of it, and then I hit record and I just started, like, doing a dry run without slides of what I would say, and then transcribed it and then dropped it in there. And like, going back and like almost acting as your own editor as a way to kind of work through and clean up your thoughts, I found is super helpful. And that's. That's something interesting that I haven't been able to do in the past because transcription software maybe hasn't been as high quality or as prevalent because you sort of do, to some extent, you do outlines out of laziness. Because it takes a lot of time to, like, script something word for word. Like, most people don't want to do that. They don't have time for that. But it means that a lot of these things you sort of have to work out on the fly how to, like, stitch them together. Some people are really good at it, but not everyone. And so, like, being able to practice that, but then getting, okay, these are the words that came out of my mouth word for word, and then just being able to go back and tweak those and work on certain things that you got stuck on, I find really helpful.
- [31:39]
Rid
I also think there's like this natural delta between what. How we would write and how we would talk a lot of times too. And I think really good writers close that gap. But if I write a script, it's common where I would write sentences, and then if I would then, like, speak them out loud, I'd be like, I wouldn't actually say it like that, you know? And so even just like, verbally processing as that initial input to whittle away at and refine, I think is helpful even from the standpoint of just like. That's probably closer to how you would want to actually say it on Zoom or in a conference room anyway.
- [32:14]
Chris Abad
Oh, totally. I found that myself also. Rather than sitting down and trying to write it out. That's why I think taking an outline and just talking through it, but recording that and transcribing it into your written word, it's a much better way to get to something that feels natural, that's going to line back up to what you say. And by the time I present something, a lot of times I'm not reading from word for word script. One of the fun things I did Actually with this presentation is working through it. Word for word was really helpful for me to think through in detail some of the ideas I was getting stuck in and how to kind of like smooth that out. But then I converted it back into bullet points just so I could. I wasn't stuck reading as I was presenting. And that was pretty cool. ChatGPT was really good at that. Taking, taking like my expanded word for word and just saying like, okay, now I turn this into like cues for me to give a presentation because I don't want to read it word for word. Like, just give me the highlights so I can kind of like make sure that I stay on track. And that was pretty easy.
- [33:12]
Rid
Okay, so returning to our hypothetical, you have the core kind of outline, core story that you want to tell. You've identified what you want to get out of this. The peak moment. You've now supported that with a set of visuals. Is there anything else that we're not talking about? Any general communication advice or things that a designer could be doing or thinking about in order to make the most of that moment where they have the Microsoft.
- [33:38]
Chris Abad
A couple things come to mind. One is depending on the stakes. If this is a high stakes, I don't get to do this very often. Definitely practice. I think not enough people take the time. Like if you're giving a 15, 20 minute presentation, find 20 minutes in your day to just like run through it and actually stand in front of your computer, whatever. In an office, however you're going to do it and just as realistic of a scenario as possible and just walk through it and see what happens. That really helps with time management. But you also kind of figure out like there's certain things that you get stuck on that it sounded right in your head, but you've never actually had the words come out of your mouth and then your mouth gets stripped up on them. So that's really helpful. And the other one is, even though there's all this prep in figuring out structure and story, I think the discussion is such an important part of it. And so, and most of these, like, there's room for discussion. And so my general rule of thumb for people is however much time you have, fill that two thirds of that with content and anticipate that the other third is going to be questions either at the end or throughout. And just be comfortable fielding those questions. But also be good at getting things back on track when you need to. You can't rehearse everything because you can't perfectly rehearse what questions you're going to get. But even though you can't control it, I think it's important to kind of leave that part open. One of the things that's talked a lot about in the story 10x book is this important step of making sure people understand how they're included, how they're brought along, and what their role is in realizing this vision. And so that discussion is, like, a really helpful way to do that.
- [35:12]
Rid
Is there anything you're doing to structure that discussion, or is it really just, you know, you just open it up for questions and. Simple as that.
- [35:21]
Chris Abad
I have been in either dry runs or practice sessions with people that I've helped with this, where you'll try to pick certain areas where you're like, this is an area I'd like to get into discussion around, or this is an area where I think they'll have questions. And so you'll pause there and say, like, is this something you want to talk more about? So, yeah, like, even try to be a little bit intentional about where you want the discussion to go, what questions you want to ask. I actually think the questions that someone asks you can use as a barometer for whether or not your message is getting across, because you've probably been in those presentations where the questions feel out of left field, like they have nothing to do with what was on your mind. Sometimes you can't help that, but sometimes it's like you actually have, I think, a lot of control over that, depending on how you shape the conversation, because the story that you're telling kind of directs what they're thinking about. And if they're asking questions that feel on topic or sort of in line with what you wanted to get out of it, you're like, okay, my message is landing. Especially if they start repeating back some of the things that you said. Maybe you have a really interesting insight that no one had heard before. Oh, we did a bunch of research, and we learned this thing, and this thing told us this about our customers. Now we got to figure out what to do about that. And if they come back in the questions and say, that was really interesting, Tell me more about that. So this is what customers think. Oh, that's really cool. I never would have thought that. So when those questions are sort of on topic, and if that was one of your really important points, you're like, oh, good, I nailed it. The thing that I wanted them to think about is the thing that's stuck in their mind. Like, I've done a good job.
- [36:59]
Rid
Is there an example you could give of what that final prompt or question could be like, how do you get more specific than what questions do you have?
- [37:09]
Chris Abad
I feel like with so many teams I've been on, it's a lot about getting the resources that you need to actually. Because if, if you're presenting something, it's like, I have this really great idea, we go build this thing. Could take us like six months and I can't do it on my own, so I need help. And so usually there's like a resource ask associated with it. So that would be a really concrete example. Like the thing I need from you is to agree that we are going to stop this project so that we can move these people over to this project and start on this in the next quarter, or we're going to open up to headcount and bring on these specific skills so that we can go do this thing. That's like, at least for me, that's a really common one.
- [37:48]
Rid
Hey, it's Red. I'm constantly asked about my favorite products, so I'm going to take just one minute and give you a quick rundown of my stack. Destin is how I ship design changes without having to code. Framer is how I build my websites. Genway is how I do research. Jitter is how I animate my designs and Play is how I design and prototype mobile apps. Visual Electric is how I generate all of my imagery and Raycast is my short shortcut every step of the way. Now, I've hand selected these companies to partner with me so that I can do these episodes full time. So the best way by far to support the show is to check them out. You can find the full list at Dive Dot Club slash Partners. Okay, now on to the rest of the episode. A couple more. Just catch alls. I want to make sure that we're covering everything. So are there any missed opportunities or common mistakes that you see designers making when it comes to storytelling that we haven't talked about?
- [38:45]
Chris Abad
I think a lot of people try to. They overestimate how much someone who hasn't been in the details of the project for as long as they have can absorb. They're trying to make multiple points maybe without even realizing it. And so you have to like take all of that and just. You're like, okay, you got one shot. Like, there's one thing you can get across. What's the most important thing? Another one is sort of like the altitude. Like, what is the altitude of the story that you want to tell and is it appropriate for your audience? So I'll give You an example, I was working with a designer who we were. We were working on his portfolio presentation and similar thing. Like, there was a story that he needed to tell about himself and his capabilities. And we had kind of figured out what his headline is. Like, what kind of designer is he? And what makes him special? What's he really good at? And as we were getting into the different case studies in his portfolio presentation, they were all meant to support that. I mentioned earlier, you could sort of use the questions that you get as a litmus test for how well your message is landing. When I first started working with him, he came to me and he said, I'd done this interview recently, I did my portfolio presentation and we didn't move forward. And the response that I got back was they didn't feel like the work I was doing was it wasn't complex enough and it was sort of like in a very narrow space. And because of that, they were sort of positioning him as more of a junior designer. He had a lot of experience and what he should have been applying for is a senior design role, but they didn't see him that way. It wasn't necessarily the work. So we spent a bunch of time, kind of did the same thing, the same process I was telling you about. I said, well, just give me everything. Talk to me about the work. Take me through your presentation. And then I stepped back and I said, there was something that you said there that I think was really interesting, but it sort of got lost in the story. And so let's talk about that. Let's dial that up. And in that particular case, what we realized is he was telling the story of how he was solving complex interaction design problems around this particular feature that he was introducing. And we said, but that's not. That's not the most important story. That's not the story people care about. What people care about is a story about how the research that you did to figure that out caused the company to change their strategy around this product. And so this feature actually changes the type of product that this company sells. Like, yeah, you did a really good job figuring out the screens and the interaction design and the ui. But if you want to be thought of as a senior designer, you don't want to tell people how you did a really great job on the interaction design. You want to tell people how you did really thoughtful research and caught something that everyone else missed that caused you to change the strategy. So it was the same work, the same project. We just told the story differently and that it up leveled the story that he was telling and it up leveled his. The perception that people had of who he was as a designer. I was just talking to him the other day, and we had, over the course of the last few months, had done a lot of rework. And we kind of took this approach on all his different case studies. And, you know, he started applying again, and he said he's getting, like, a surprising number of calls back, which is awesome. He's been on a handful of interviews. And I asked him, like, what do you think is the difference? He's like, because we reworked my portfolio. And so it's much more obvious for people why he's applying for senior design enrollment and the questions he's getting. If he is getting pushback, it's not about is the work impactful enough, Is it complex enough? Because he was able to sort of take this work and explain how it's having broader impact on the business. Actually, if I think back to the specific thing that we ran into last time, now what he needs to do is sort of back up and prove the impact that he was able to have on the business. So, like, feedback that he got from the hiring manager was, that's really interesting, but are you sure that's what you were able to do for the business? And so the next step now is like, now we need to sort of prove that out and kind of bring the data. And. But they weren't skeptical that he wasn't strategic enough. They wanted to know now, like, did that actually benefit the business and how did you actually pull that off? So they. They sort of understood the strategy part of the story.
- [42:51]
Rid
I have a smile on my face because it's so clear how that same skill set and approach to storytelling can apply to both you and your own personal story and how you position yourself as an individual and also how you position your ideas at potentially even like a big company. Like, you can walk through the same compelling vision, but if you don't effectively tie it back to ultimately how it moves the needle for the business and why an executive should care, nothing matters.
- [43:18]
Chris Abad
Yeah. I mean, even. Even, like, we'll take this example. When putting together your portfolio, like, there's. That's a story. You're telling a story about yourself. And so you have to sort of start with, what do I want people to know about me? Like, what's my. What's my headline? What makes me different? And then start with that and then build up to that. Okay. Like, let me. Let me select work that does a really good job showcasing that and then let me tell the story about that work in a way that aligns with this idea that I want people to have about me and who I am as a designer.
- [43:51]
Rid
Yeah, I mean, same kind of thing. Like, you probably want a single takeaway. Like, if people have three to four takeaways, they probably have no takeaways a week later.
- [43:59]
Chris Abad
Sometimes the way I'll explain it to people is if I think about everyone on my team, even if they're all in the same role, even if they're all product designers, it's very common for me to have like a one liner around, like, where that person fits on the team. That's the person who's really technical. That's the person who's really good at research. That's the person who's really strategic. That's the person who can align the stakeholders. That's the person who can create really beautiful designs that get buy in. You kind of have this thing about everyone. So you can reverse engineer that. If I'm hiring for a role, I'm trying to fill that kind of slot. And so, like, what's your. What's your one liner? And just like I was saying before, I can look at all your work and you can either design that in. You can decide what you want your one liner to be and then try to reverse engineer that, or you can just show me everything and leave it up to me to decide. And, you know, it might be the thing that you're really good at, or it might be the thing that you're. Does not make you exceptional, but you just happen to include and sort of muddy the water. So, yeah, like, if you can. If you can pick the thing that makes you stand out, especially right now with the market being so competitive, if you can decide what is that thing that makes me different than the hundred other people that just applied to this role, and then design that into your story, and then bake that story into your portfolio. Bake it into your resume to some extent, Bake it into your portfolio presentation. If you do your first screen with a recruiter and they say, tell me about yourself. Like, have that in mind. Like, what. What is my brand as a designer? And how do I, like, structure my story around that?
- [45:34]
Rid
It's so simple and super practical. I love that. Before I let you go, I want to, like, take that hypothetical all the way. Because you can have the perfect story, you can have the perfect set of visuals, and the chances that the executives are just gonna be like, yep, we're sold. Green light, like right off the bat are probably still pretty slim. Like there's a good chance that you're gonna have some pushback, some resistance. So can you talk a little bit about what you've learned overcoming that resistance from stakeholders?
- [46:06]
Chris Abad
Even though it's important to come in with a lot of conviction around these ideas, like, you have to be excited about the idea, otherwise how are you going to get other people around you excited about it? You also have to be flexible, right? So it's an iterative process. Even something as big as this bold vision, sometimes people get hung up because they're so excited about this idea and it has to be this way. So like if I'm presenting an idea, it's very rare. Like I have presented ideas multiple times over the course of multiple weeks. Like, I'll come back with a slightly different version, we'll get feedback, I'll adjust it based on what I'm hearing and based on new information I'm getting and then I'll tweak in. Well, what about this? So just in the same way that you get user feedback and you iterate based on what you learn from customers, whether they're giving their reaction or you actually like having them use a product and you know, you have to adjust because it's new information. A story is the same way, at least in this context, where you're in an environment where it's really difficult for you to have all the information. The products are actually built based on a multiple, multiple different perspectives, different people. Like, yeah, you have to sort of be flexible in the story that you're telling and tweak it along the way.
- [47:23]
Rid
Well, before I let you go, for people who want to go even deeper, you also have a course on this topic too. So can you just tell us a little bit about who's it for and what they can expect to get out of that program?
- [47:34]
Chris Abad
The course I'm doing is going to be on Maven and it's all about being able to tell a story specifically for how do you get your experience vision and your product vision across and get buy in and reduce resistance. A lot of the stuff that we've been talking about. And so what we'll do is actually go through step by step of identifying who your audience is and how do you design your key points and actions for that audience and how do you build out what you're going to say and then reinforce that visuals? We'll go through actual exercises that I found helpful to do this stuff. I'll be there. It's a live cohort based class. And so I'll be there to give folks feedback based on my own experience. I'll go through all the different stages along the way and sort of coach people and in the end we'll end up with a presentation that hopefully people are happy with and tells a good story. So I'm really excited about that. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. But the best way that I found to help people with this is to actually get hands on with their story that they're trying to tell and be able to walk them through how to apply some of the concepts that we've talked about, but in more of a real world situation.
- [48:44]
Rid
Quick aside, the fact that you can learn and get feedback directly from someone who has 20 plus years of experience at Google and Dropbox Square is like kind of crazy. The fact that that exists. So if you've enjoyed this episode and you want to go even deeper and level up your storytelling abilities, then I wanted to let you know that Chris has agreed to offer a special discount just for Dive Club listeners. You can head to Dive Club Slash Abad. That's a B, A D and I'll also include that link in the show notes. Okay, let's finish this episode. I mean, I love that just being able to get your feedback alone is probably invaluable. I'm sure I could have benefited from that a lot of times throughout my career. So, Chris, thank you for coming on today and letting me ask you some of the hard questions. It's been super, super valuable and just hearing even how you think and the different things that you latch onto and emphasize throughout this process has been pretty insightful. So appreciate it.
- [49:38]
Chris Abad
Yeah, thanks for having me on. This is great.