Team Reflection: Using Visual Storytelling to Foster Empathy

The Communications Team reflects on their role as translators of student data and the impact of visual storytelling as a tool to foster empathy in data-driven work. 

Written by the Communications Team

---

At the start of the term, we could not have anticipated how much impact storytelling would have on our team. But as we started to get to know each other and work together on different projects, it became clear to us that storytelling fosters empathy and can create meaningful connections. As the communications team, we make complex information accessible. Much of our work involves translating ideas into stories that can connect people across different media, spaces, and communities. 

As a result, we’ve seen how visual storytelling fosters empathy within the iHub and beyond. These past few months, we’ve watched our work develop deeper connections within our team, between our team and other iHub teams, and within the greater U of T community. Bringing our projects’ insights to life with visual storytelling showed us the connection between visual storytelling and empathy—one cannot exist without the other. 

Empathy Within Our Team

We learned early on that a key to our team’s success was our ability to connect with each other throughout the work. To help us do that, we practiced through a weekly empathy-based reflection, where we asked each other questions beyond icebreakers to learn more about each other. We learned about our strengths, weaknesses, and how we can all play a role in supporting each other in our work. From practicing empathy and reflection each week, we learned more about each other and developed a stronger connection, helping us work better together.  

Bela: When I participated in these Intention Setting Activities during every weekly meetings, I was able to have a warm-up interaction before I started working. With questions that are designed to help me reflect on my role at iHub or where I can express freely on what I do outside of work such as hobbies. This allows me to help build a boost in energy and get a better idea of who my co-workers are. 

Arsh: Holding space in meetings for reflective thinking and intention setting activities became essential as it helped me understand each of my team members’ strength, and it helped me leverage their working style to effectively move projects forward. 

The empathy we built within our own team helped us to connect with other teams in the more collaborative aspects of the work. 

Connecting With Other iHub Teams

Learning about each other’s strengths and having a strong team front helped us address other teams’ needs and better implement different perspectives. By knowing how well we work together, we were then able to support other teams. One creative challenge that we encountered was representing persona stories for the Supporting Student Leaders (SSL) team. The team wrote personas that were driven by data points from various stories in their research. We wanted to ensure that the personas successfully translated those stories, but we weren’t personally familiar with the data. We discussed the task and decided to divide the work based on how we each connected to the different persona stories. While designing for the personas, we tried to personally empathize with each one and create the visual designs while relating to the stories.  

Diana: The question I always came back to during this process was the question of whether we were representing these student and staff stories fairly. Designing with this thought in mind pushed me to consider the personas holistically, rather than latching onto a single aspect of their character. By making the persona illustrations well-rounded, I showed the multi-faceted reality of students today. 

Arsh: Working with different teams cross-functionally taught me how to better support their needs by being open to feedback and working iteratively together.  

Supporting different teams and iterating their work taught us how to design for readers outside of the iHub, and help them connect to our work.  

Fostering Empathy Beyond the iHub

As a team, we learned how to take complex information and bring it to life with our visuals, for students and staff beyond the iHub. By doing so, we learned how to design to foster community and optimism rather than apathy. Whether through reports, presentations, or event materials, our team was always creating for a wider audience with the goal of connecting them to our stories. One thing that we really wanted to share with others was the empathy generated through our work.  

In the winter, the main project we worked on was the iHub’s 10-year anniversary report, which celebrates a decade of iHub data, student stories, and student accomplishments. Usually, at this time of year, the iHub communications team produces an annual report. But the anniversary report steered us away from the usual way of doing things: it was a creative challenge which needed to paint a much larger picture. 

Bela: Being tasked to design the 10th anniversary report made me feel excited yet challenged. When we were designing the inside of the report, I sometimes got carried away and forgot about the core idea of empathy in the design. To help remind myself of the context of the report, I was always thinking: “how are the readers going to read it?”, “can they understand the message?”, or “is it accessible?” When designing a report to bring people together, it’s important to remember that goal.  

Diana: Designing for a university community as large as U of T isn’t always easy. There’s more to consider behind-the-scenes than I thought about at first glance, and the same is true for our projects, whether we’re working in collaboration with a partner or not. But one thing that’s true no matter who we’re designing for is that designs built on empathy, those that tell a story, are always more effective. Visual storytelling gives the reader something to readily connect to. And translating student data into something that people can feel uplifted by has been really rewarding.  

Empathy is Everywhere

We always thought the ability to connect with others and empathize with them only showed up in the design research process, but when we reflected on the work we did this past year, we realized these soft skills can be applied to any type of work. More importantly, we learned how to show up for our team when they needed us the most. We encourage you to reflect and think about how empathy can show up in your work. 

---

Contributors