Tune in to stories as data

Most years offer a personal lesson or two - last year laid them on thick and fast. We were keen, even anxious to know what might happen next. The pandemic also messed with the ways in which we got to mix with our families, work colleagues and communities. One positive spinoff for me came from tuning in to strangers; some of these people I now call friends. I’m learning to love the opportunity to reinvent who my tribe is, the people I want to connect with to make progress change the wicked problems that COVID is creating, problems that stretch our capacity to keep on bouncing back.

I had a Zoom 60th birthday; you might have celebrated or shared milestones like a birth, graduation, wedding or funeral online. A snapshot of data on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meets from April to October last year show how these platforms grew to rule day to day work life. Online conferences took over from the rich face to face encounters of our pre 2020 world and event marketing stats show just how quickly these new models are evolving . Yet I feel we are sharing more stories than ever with strangers. In Australia, we’re still shifting in and out of lockdowns, keeping physically distant and changing our travel habits to suit whatever restrictions each day brings. At the same time, I am making deeper connections with people I might never have met in far flung countries and making new progress. Some people are more isolated than ever.

If you search the terms ‘reinvent’ with ‘COVID’ you might get near 16,000,000 hits. Reinventing business models, ways to improve social cohesion, our links with the local environment, health systems, retail, education. There is virtually (pun intended) no end to this list. A search for ‘stories’ and ‘COVID’ returns 2,900,000,000 hits. If stories, lived experience from across the globe, can help us redesign our world then now is a good time to learn how to use narrative at scale, to get good at doing this real-time and fast. There seems to be plenty of information, online and offline, about what we can do to improve the lives of billions of people at the moment, but too few ways to coordinate the detail of that information on our decisions, to make that information useful. for policy and programs. If we don’t have ways to coordinate our efforts, the genuine needs of people doing it tough might not get met and that can lead to unnecessary hardship, to conflict or at the very least, missed opportunity to thrive.

As an experience designer I’m keen to have good quality data to guide me in making a contribution in a fast moving world so that the good hearted actions and generosity of spirit of volunteers, the gifted and hardworking people inventing vaccines, the courage of business leaders and everyday citizens can make a difference. Like many countries, there us real concerns for the potential for long term, possibly negative impact of COVID in Australia on how we ‘hang together’ as families, businesses and communities is not something we can expect to just switch off with our vaccines. What can you do to help? Listen respectfully, deeply to other people’s stories and be sure to share your own. And please look out for requests to  you to share these authentic stories of lived experience. Stories are gaining new kudos as genuine data, a means to improve the places and ways we live, work and play. So stay tuned in and ready to share.