TRAN-508: Storytelling Fundamentals

The ability of designers to convincingly present their solutions to wide-ranging audiences is as important as the solutions themselves. The art of storytelling is therefore a fundamental basis of our curriculum. By storytelling, we mean visual narratives - a blend of well-chosen visuals and logical verbal or written explanations that are meaningful and efficiently informative to various stakeholders. These audiences might not be designers or even transportation experts, but they will often be very influential in the decision-making processes required to further the project. This is true whether it is convincing faculty to accept the validity of your work or whether it is to persuade an investor to fund your innovation. Because we welcome design students into the program with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, we recognize that our first-term students can have a wide variation of sketching and drawing skills. Therefore, the instructors of this course are ready to work with all skill levels to ensure that each student gains confidence in and improves their visual communication abilities as a prelude to producing compelling presentations - the latter a standard department method of reviewing students' project work.