Sticky Stories

d.school Seminar
Instructors: Jonah Willihnganz, Erik Olesund, Emi Kolawole

For designers, the creative process is bookended by stories—we start with the story our users tell and we finish with the story that our product, solution, or service tells. Good designers therefore need to be very good story-listeners and story-tellers. This short course will help students develop the core skills to become both by applying what linguists, psychologists, narratologists, and neuroscientists have learned about how exactly stories generate meaning that sticks.

This class is a deep dive in interviewing, synthesis and storytelling. Students who apply should have a strong familiarity with the design thinking process, a commitment to develop their empathetic capacity, and a curiosity about how the mind makes meaning.

By application only. Undergraduates and graduate students encouraged to apply. Apply here with the d.school Pop-Up common application.


Maria Bamford

Maria Bamford (1)
Maria Bamford (2)

Monday, January 26, 2015
8:00 pm
CEMEX Auditorium, Stanford University
Free Admission; Limited public seating
Doors will open for SUID holders at 7:30PM, doors for Public at 7:45

Maria Bamford can be seen this fall on USA’s new sitcom “Benched.” She is the creator and star of “Maria Bamford: the special, special, special!” and starred in both the film and Comedy Central series “Comedians of Comedy.” She voices characters on numerous animated series including “BoJack Horseman,” “Adventure Time,” “Word Girl,” “Puss in Boots” and “Legend of Korra” and recently recurred as DeBrie Bardeaux on Netflix’s “Arrested Development.”

For more information, visit http://events.stanford.edu/events/474/47419/


Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed

Wild
Tiny Beautiful Things

Tuesday, January 13, 2015
7:30pm
CEMEX Auditorium, Stanford University
Free Admission; priority seating for Stanford students

“Big-hearted, keen-eyed, lyrical, precise … Cheryl Strayed reminds us in every line that if defeat and despair are part of human experience, so are kindness, patience, and transcendence.” –George Saunders

At age 22, Cheryl Strayed found herself shattered by two major life events: her mother’s sudden death from cancer and the end of her young marriage. After hitting rock bottom, she decided to confront her emotional pain by trekking more than 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. In 2012, the story of that journey became the New York Times bestseller Wild, a memoir so rich in honesty, humor, and lyricism that it inspired Oprah Winfrey to restart her book club and Reese Witherspoon to bring it to the screen this winter.

In addition to Wild, Cheryl Strayed is the author of the New York Times bestseller Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of her popular “Dear Sugar” columns for The Rumpus, and the acclaimed novel Torch, a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award. Her writing has also appeared in The Best American Essays, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Allure, The Sun, and elsewhere. She is a founding member of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and serves on its board of directors.

Join us for an evening with one of the most gifted and fiercely honest storytellers in America today.

This program is co-sponsored by The Stanford Storytelling Project and Stanford Continuing Studies.