Module 7 - Telling Your Story
Module 7 recognizes that having the best product that no one has ever heard of or cares about is called “going out of business.” Your story is how you’ll connect to the audience you care about and how you’ll make them care about you. You’ll figure out what you can offer the world and develop a strategy to communicate it. Click on each section below to jump down the page. What will be covered:
Complete the downloadable activity sheets available and use these as your journal throughout the Designing You modules. You can choose to download all activity sheets with the button below or choose to download them individually under each section.
Value in this Module:
Understand why delivering on your mission is about the intersection of what you can do and the story you tell.
Start by transforming your unique value proposition into your portfolio.
Every product designer must face the fact that the seemingly “best” product doesn’t always win. In fact, it could be argued that the “best” products rarely win. Usually the “best” product that also has the best story wins. Sometimes, the “good enough” product with the best story trumps the “best” product with no story.
The final critical dimension of designing you is effectively communicating to your audience (potential employers) that your product (you) creates the most value for them. You’ll do this using the art and science of persuasion.
For great product designers, launching a successful product is not only about having the best features; it’s about your audience believing your product offers them the greatest benefit and value and then having them act on it. This is an essential goal in Designing YOU. As you launch YOU, you want to have your audience line up in anticipation of the value you’ll bring to them or their organization.
Activity 7.1
Why You?
At the heart of your story is the reason your audience should be interested in you. For most products or services, you buy, you’re persuaded not by the features, but by the benefits. Think about any car advertisement. Yes, it may mention features like fuel efficiency or horsepower, but what the ad is really selling are the benefits of freedom, status, safety, and convenience. It’s these benefits that’ll ultimately persuade you to buy one car over another. When you’re designing you, you must translate the features of the Whole YOU into concise benefits. This is your answer to “Why you?” The following table demonstrates the difference between features and benefits.
Activity 7.2
Translating Features to Benefits
In this exercise, we want you to answer the “Why you?” question by outlining your benefits. Replicate the following table in your journal. In the first column, identify the features of the Whole YOU. In the second column, note whether these are current features or ones you’re still working toward. In the third column, translate these features into the benefits for your audience. In this case, your audience is the target organization or industry you articulated in your professional mission from Module 4. An easy approach to this is to simply state the feature followed by “and this means…” For example, “I am on the student council executive team (the feature) and this means I have proven leadership in managing both people and budgets (the benefit).”
To fill the fourth column, you need to find your empathy. Remember, the role of the Professional YOU is to create value for others, so you need to enter the mind of your audience and prioritize your features and benefits. What feature and benefit is an absolute need—a showstopper? Refer to the outcomes of your informational interviews so you can properly prioritize your features and benefits. Reflect on the language your interviewees used. How did they articulate the benefits they required? Did they describe a need for creativity, or problem solving, or people who can work in diverse teams, or employees who can get the job done with high-level instruction rather than detailed directions? It’s critical in your story to describe the benefits in your audience’s language. This is the value of empathy.
Here’s an example to get you started:
This table of features and benefits is critical for creating your story. It’s worth sharing this with your design team and getting feedback. Others will often see benefits that you miss and be able to help you prioritize the benefits that you have.
Implicit in “Why you?” is “versus someone else.” Your “Why you?” must be unique, otherwise you won’t stand out from the crowd. Think about being “unique” as having something that is rare relative to your competitors (e.g., others applying for the same job). Being rare is critical since otherwise you’re a commodity. Being a commodity means competitive products are virtually identical. You need to ensure you can deliver a unique collection of benefits that others cannot deliver.
At this stage you may be thinking, “I’m too young to be unique. Well, maybe, but we highly doubt it. A person with a sociology degree who has taught English in Asia, volunteered on a crisis help line, and started their own non-profit is totally different from their peer who has the same sociology degree, is a gifted musician, has published a research paper and has worked with autistic children.
Your answer to “Why you?” isn’t tied to a single feature or benefit. The complex combination of your many features and benefits will make you unique, rare, and difficult to replace. As you consider your features and benefits, ensure you look at the Whole YOU. Can your relationships and reputation (a features) open valuable doors for your audience (a benefit)? Are your competencies something that took you a long time to acquire, thereby ensuring others can’t easily learn them? As we’ve pointed out, your degree or diploma is likely just a feature, and not a very rare one. The reality is, the more multifaceted your features and benefits are, the rarer you are.
If you aren’t satisfied with your current features and benefits, then it’s time to start acquiring more. If you know your audience wants a specific benefit you don’t have, figure out how you can add it.
Click the button below to learn about How to Write Your Own Story.
Your Portfolio
As product designer, a key decision you’ll make is where and how to sell your product. This decision has big implications on a product’s success. It’s not an accident that when you’re in a particular store or mall you often come across the exact product you’re looking for. It’s because the product designers were one step ahead of you. To find just the right spot for their product, the product designers did a bunch of research to learn where people like you shop and what things you tend to buy. This helped them decide how and where they want to sell their product to you.
In the context of selling you, think about how and where you want to sell yourself. Do you want to use an online social platform that already has your target audience engaged (e.g., LinkedIn), or do you want to build your own website, or do you want to use a combination of platforms? Wherever you choose to host it, we recommend you develop a portfolio.
Your portfolio is a dynamic and public collection of experiences, materials, relationships, and evidence that proves that you’re rare, valuable, and able to deliver benefits to your target audience. It follows the old adage, “Show, don’t tell.” Building your portfolio demands a blend of all the work you’ve done in Designing YOU.
We highly recommend you build your portfolio on a dynamic online platform, such as LinkedIn. With LinkedIn, you have a portfolio that is intuitive, relevant, has no cost and is used by more than 90 per cent of employers when hiring. LinkedIn as a platform has a variety of advantages, and because one in three people in North America are already on it, it’s the most likely place your target audience is already hanging out.
Developing your portfolio on LinkedIn takes some time. Your portfolio is typically the first impression anchor, and it sticks with influential people. You need to ensure it tells your story directly to them and offers evidence of your features and benefits.
For any organization, big or small, hiring the right people is critical to their success. They aren’t only risking their financial resources on salaries, but a bad hire means that the important problem they wanted solved isn’t getting solved. Therefore, your portfolio is not only intended to position your features and benefits, but also designed to minimize your audience’s risk.
Here is some of the evidence you should incorporate in your portfolio:
Letters of reference
Examples of school project outcomes
Examples of previous work-related outcomes (with permission)
Work and volunteer experience
Academic transcripts
Performance evaluations
Awards
Photographs/videos/graphics
Articles/blogs you’ve written
Click the button below for Activity 7.3 - Collecting Evidence for Your Portfolio.
