Storytelling
2020 | Qualitative Research | UI Design | Graphic | Interviews
overview
Storytelling is a fundamental part of the human experience, it transforms everyday moments into meaningful journeys. This project explored how narrative could be used as a powerful tool to engage and inspire international university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. By encouraging them to share their personal stories, we aimed to foster a sense of connection and build a shared consciousness tied to the city of Edinburgh. The project investigated how storytelling served as a form of social communication, helping students expand their social networks and find belonging in a time of isolation.
An urban archive site in Edinburgh city.
Research
To ground the project in a well-rounded approach, I began by identifying three key disciplines that could frame the concept from different perspectives. I investigated the formats in which people naturally share stories, as well as their emotional responses to the narratives of others. The initial concept was to design an interactive platform, one that would not only collect personal stories from international students but also curate and showcase them publicly, transforming individual voices into a collective experience.
• Unstructured Interviews
Through a series of unstructured interviews, I aimed to explore participants' natural tendencies around storytelling without guiding their responses. This open-ended approach revealed that participants felt more comfortable expressing their stories verbally, often drawing on emotion and spontaneity. These conversations also uncovered a preference for consuming stories through visual formats—images, videos, or illustrated narratives—as they found them more engaging and easier to relate to.
• Card Sorting
To better understand how participants categorise and interpret narrative content, I conducted a card sorting exercise. This method allowed me to observe how individuals intuitively grouped story elements, themes, and formats. The results revealed consistent patterns, participants tended to organise stories based on emotional tone, personal relevance, and visual cues. These insights helped inform the structure of the eventual platform, ensuring that the storytelling experience felt natural, intuitive, and emotionally resonant.
Collective Consciousness
In response to the global circumstances at the time, I chose to focus on reflections from individuals living in Edinburgh, capturing through personal texts and photographs that represented meaningful experiences. As I began collecting stories from international students, I noticed they often wrote more than expected. Once they started shaping what they wanted to share, it naturally evolved into a reflective and engaging process. Many stories referenced familiar city scenes or shared moments that others could easily relate to. This revealed a subtle but powerful connection between individuals, forming a collective memory of place and time. These insights ultimately shaped the purpose of the platform to create a digital space where people could connect and interact through the act of storytelling.
Drafting the storyboard.
Support local business
The project also gathered stories from local businesses in Edinburgh to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their operations, communities, and sense of resilience.
Local business stories during the COVID-19 lockdown in Edinburgh.
Result
This platform was designed to spark connection and conversation during a time of isolation, allowing people to enjoy stories and photographs from others while sharing their own reflections through the website. The process became both a communal effort and a personal response to the crisis we were all experiencing.In the midst of the unprecedented disruption caused by COVID-19, the project highlighted not just the challenges we faced, but the strength found in community and shared experience. As emotional distance grew, the need for storytelling as a way to feel seen, heard, and connected became more essential than ever. This project stands as a quiet tribute to Edinburgh, its people, and the resilience we discovered together.
