The concept of “storytelling” is something RGI talks about often, and while it’s integral to who we are, we wanted to explore exactly what that means. Rebecca Ferlotti, who handles RGI’s marketing, sat down with Marnie Louis, studio coordinator at St. Joseph Parish School and concept developer at RGI as well as Paul Krajniak, retired executive director of a public innovation museum and advisor to RGI, to figure that out.
The three try to get to the heart of what “storytelling” means in the designed environments industry, how new technologies impact the art of storytelling, and what makes an effective storyteller. While they often use museum exhibits as a lens for exploring the concept, using stories within any business is a powerful tool to consider.
Exploring the Term “Storytelling”
Paul: Storytelling is like the term “craft beer.” At one time, craft beer was a market differentiator. It was a mystery, and then it became a thing that people gravitated to. It grew to be an overused term. That doesn't mean it doesn't work at times. It’s the same thing with storytelling. So when we use the term “storytelling,” how does it differentiate us? And does it need to?
Marnie: I agree with you. You definitely see the term “storytelling” all over the place. And it’s used in different ways depending on how the term benefits the person using it.
Paul: The idea of storytelling has got a little bit of warmth to it and familiarity. So it definitely has some power. When Ryan talks about the RGI team being storytellers, it’s contextualized by him. That contextualization is what gives storytelling its meaning for us. So if someone doesn’t already have that background information, does it mean anything to them?
Rebecca: That's a great point. There's a lot of different connotations to the word “storytelling.” It can be used in a mocking way or, with contextualization, it can be used to empower folks and incite curiosity. Telling stories can build and grow relationships, too.
What are some of the other traits that come to mind that can shape how all of us think of “storytelling” going forward?
Marnie: It depends on the context. We do corporate, museum exhibits, biomedical, libraries…all of those industries have stories about their history, products, the team, company values, or otherwise. Everyone is going to have different things that are important for them to tell.
When we prepare for any project—in the research and discovery phrase—stories are what people want to talk about. The stories mean something to them or it’s something they know is important to the company that they feel should be heard.
No one wants to just read a story up on a wall. There are so many other ways to tell a story. We personally do a lot of immersive exhibits that hit on all the different ways of learning, the ways that we take in information, and the various senses that we use as we take in information.
I think that’s how everyone needs to think about it going forward—looking at a story creatively and seeing how it can be represented.
Telling Stories with Lower Attention Spans
Rebecca: Speaking of not wanting to read stories on a wall, I think we'd be remiss not to talk about attention spans and how attention spans for stories have changed drastically even in just the last couple of years.
Paul: We did an experiment about 10 years ago based on the National Geographic Model which said that museums should only have about 30 words of copy.
We put up copy that ranged from 30 words to 300 words, and then we observed families and young people reading (or not reading). We had students who were dyslexic come in and test it. We had as many people with different backgrounds as we could.
We found that it didn't matter how long the copy was as long as people thought it was worthwhile—not even interesting, but worthwhile. Then if they found it worthwhile, they’d go deeper into what fascinated them. And then they might take their parents around to teach them what they had seen.
Marnie: That’s an interesting study. I'm wondering, though, did you ever follow up and find out what was most memorable though to them from the exhibit? Did they remember what they read, or did they more so remember what they were interacting with?
Maybe I'm just thinking of myself when I go to a museum…I’ll read a lot on the wall, but what I walk away with remembering is mostly what I experienced.
Paul: I think “experience” is the operative word. It's the combination of all the elements of the exhibit. That’s another superpower they have. For this experiment, we only used copy, and we had comedians write all of it.
There's an anticipation that good exhibits build. The comedians made things interesting because comedians have a knack for the unexpected. Just like they do on stage, the copy they wrote allowed people to believe that we were addressing them specifically. And that made a big difference in people’s attention spans.
So thinking about immersive storytelling, what happens before, during, and—most importantly—after the exhibit are all important and are parts of the storytelling model.
The Makings of a Good Storyteller
Rebecca: It’s funny you brought up comedians writing the copy. I edited my friend, Josh Womack’s, book last year in which he talks about his comedy career inspiring his copywriting career—how people’s past jobs can bring something different to the table for future careers. What backgrounds or characteristics do you think good storytellers have?
Marnie: The first thing that comes to my mind is education because if you have a good understanding (developmentally) of the different ages that you're going to be writing or targeting in an exhibit, if that's the case, certainly having that is super important. Also, I think you need to have people of different ethnicities, different races, different genders, different viewpoints, etc. If we’re saying something, it needs to mean something to an audience, so when you have folks with a wide variety of backgrounds, you can make stories more relatable. And you can tap into something memorable. It can’t just come from one person.
Paul: The question is: Is it a universal power to tell stories? Some people have a better ability than others. And I would say that part of the job you're in is to find the storytelling power in people and irradiate them with your ability. Anybody that hangs around RGI becomes a better storyteller and also makes RGI a better storyteller through practice.
Communicating Stories Through Multisensory Experiences
Rebecca: There are stories within built environments that can apply to a lot of people; they’re going to have something that clicks in every different person that comes across it. A smell that might evoke a story in someone's mind, but that won't happen in another person. So we can use these multi-sensory, multifaceted exhibits and built environments to give that familiarity, but also ideally prompt something in people that they didn't expect. I think that’s part of the beauty of what RGI does.
Paul: To me, the future of storytelling is multisensory storytelling. It has the power to make memories, reinforce memories, and make you want to spread those memories. The power of museum exhibits specifically is that they don’t have to follow story arcs. It's like reading a book but tearing the pages out and putting a new story together. And visitors should feel comfortable returning, finding the story that's intended but making up their own compositions.
At the museum I helped create, we had an experience where we sent people from one exhibit to another. They'd go to an exhibit, and it would say, “Find the guy in the blue coat.” Then you'd go to him, and he'd give you more instructions. The exhibit ultimately became the entire museum with people crossing paths and running around with instructions. But instructions aren't the story. The story is what they take home.
Marnie: We just did a big plant cell exhibit at the Studio with the sixth graders. One of the things that we did this year that was a little different than what we've done in the past was get them to integrate different sensory experiences. I asked them to imagine they were in a plant cell and asked them what they thought that would smell like. And they were so fast: “Lavender and eucalyptus.” There was no hesitation.
Then I said, “What kind of sounds do you think a plant would make?” And they were kind of stumped on that one. But we were able to find these recordings from a science lab, PlantWave, who put little microphones on plant leaves. Then they transcribe the sounds from the leaves into music. It's really cool. It's actually extremely soothing. And so we put that on and they were very quick to make that connection.
I think that comes from an increase in project-based learning, which is great because that's the stuff that the students are going to remember. That's what they take home with them.
Paul: I always say, “Innovators love tradition but hate the status quo.” People like the roots of their being. They want to know what's driving them. They get bored so quickly, but sometimes, those mundane things are the things that they clutch to.
At the museum, I worked with high school students, and they created pop-up museums in neighborhoods about the history of their city and the history of innovators in their city. And then they created interview environments where the people in the neighborhood brought objects and they interviewed them so people could tell stories about their teapots or whatever else they brought.
You want to give people familiarity with an intro, but you want to lead them to a place where they feel competent in a new world. And we found that that was very exciting.
I think exhibits really can do a lot in the future—more environmental things that pop up and go away that people will know how to access—because AI is going to be creating stories left and right. And if you can't curate them as an individual, you'll be overwhelmed by them.
Incorporating New Technologies Into Storytelling
Rebecca: I remember a time when we were just getting the Internet, and we had a computer that ran very slowly. I didn't have a phone when I was younger. And personally, I feel privileged to have grown up in that time. However, we don't have that ability nowadays. And there are positives and negatives to that.
Younger folks don't remember a time when they didn't have the technology that we have today, so that comfort level that we've been talking about—that familiarity—is sometimes grounded in tech savviness. Things like AI are coming into the fold and becoming more prevalent. How are we going to incorporate AI, AR, VR, and all of these other new technologies into storytelling in a way that is both effective and also encourages folks to go beyond technology to talk face-to-face about these experiences?
Paul: There are classes on how to program, but there are no classes on the psychology of technology for young people to make them masters of AI. The thing we're worrying about with AI to me is wrongheaded. The thing is: Who’s running AI? It's not robots. At a certain point when you don't know what's happening, you can be manipulated.
An exhibit allows you to interact in time. You can go back again and learn more. So even if there's AI present, the gift of AI is that it can change the story and you have to now be sharp enough to know what sky hook you have on. In fact, it'd be interesting to do an exhibit that changed every time you went there and said something different. But that means education and pre-experience is going to become important for any exhibit.
Rebecca: There are definitely threads of creativity that connect all of these different jobs, these different parts of the world, whether it's AI, comedic tendencies, educational providers…all these different people are contributing to what a story is and what a story can be.
Paul: Tangibility will become a superpower as things get more and more abstracted through AI and screens. In a world of screens, we can’t forget about the importance of physical objects.
Inciting Emotion Through Storytelling
Paul: Exhibits used to be specimens that you would go and look at or dioramas. Then, the Franklin Institute and the Museum of Science and Industry gave you things to witness. You would have an exhibit in glass, you'd push a button, and the piece of glass would bend. Or you could talk on the telephone or even be on a video phone, which was a World's Fair thing.
Frank Oppenheimer, who founded the Exploratorium in San Francisco, believed all you needed to have people do was witness phenomenon. So his idea of storytelling was that you experience it and you live your life.
The founder of my museum said you not only need to experience it, you need to have a frame of reference. Context, in an exhibit, seems to be everything.
That contextualization gives the St. Joseph Design-Build Studio some kind of quality of feeling in the room. That's another futuristic storytelling term I would use—”quality of feeling.” Emotions, along with sensory things, are going to be big.
Final Thoughts on the Future of Storytelling
Rebecca: It seems like the future of storytelling is not only finding ways to incorporate technology but hearkening back to how we've always told stories—the way that humans built connections. Do you two have any closing thoughts about the future of storytelling and how not only RGI can continue to enact all these foundational principles RGI is built on but also how other people can enact these storytelling tenants we hold to be true?
Marnie: I don't have anything too profound to say, but Paul, I liked your last comment about the quality of feeling. I think that that's something I try to incorporate into the Studio. I've always been pretty proactive about incorporating emotion into my way of teaching. I think it stems way back to when I worked with children who had autism and Asperger's who had a really difficult time identifying feelings and emotions. So it's something that makes a lot of sense to me, not only working with the youth population but with everybody. People should be able to get a feeling from stories—an emotion that they can identify and relate to.
Paul: Like Kurt Cobain said, “Here we are now; entertain us.” That’s the model that I think we're confronted with. The word “storytelling” can be a one-way street, but how do we position storytelling as a built rapport where story-listening and storytelling become a new thing? The future of storytelling is reciprocal. The person you’re telling this story to is actually learning how to be a better storyteller and therefore making you a better storyteller.