#18. Persuasion Through Experience at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
From the section "The Story That Saved the Day Japan Edition” of The Sunday Tales.
The Story that Saved the Day is a section of The Sunday Tales that will inspire you through recounting fantastic brand stories. What makes them fantastic? Each of the featured brands were "saved" by implementing storytelling elements and methodologies in their business. Taken from a variety of industries and standpoints, these stories will show you how storytelling is a flexible and adaptable tool that, if used correctly, can produce exciting concepts and incredible achievements.
Along with some storytelling methodologies, I will also list some takeaways and lessons we can learn from each brand story. So get ready to take notes!
During my time in Japan, a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum sparked interesting thoughts around how to tell a story in a persuasive way. Just a few days before this visit, I’d finished my online workshop, The Power of Storytelling – and the final lesson was all about the persuasive power of stories.
So, in this issue I want to share some considerations about how, as designers, we can gain buy-in from our audience; whether a client, a colleague, or the end user.
Audience: Understanding the persuasive power of storytelling starts when we understand our audience
The persuasive power of storytelling can be illustrated as an essential triangle: the user (from whom we collect the story), the UX person (the storyteller), and the audience (to whom the story is told). This relationship defines how effectively a story can be communicated, understood, and internalised.
The storytelling triangle. The relationship between the user, the UX person and the audience defines how effectively a story can be communicated, understood, and internalised.
As designers, our work is incomplete if we cannot present our ideas in a way that resonates and can be retold by our audience. Without clarity and engagement, even the most groundbreaking concepts will fail to create an impact.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum serves as a profound case study in the art of persuasive storytelling: a compelling and impactful story, told in a way that means its disastrous content won't be repeated.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: A Story Told Through Experience
We left Kyoto under the snow, only to find a beautiful sunny day awaiting us in Hiroshima. We planned to spend an entire day exploring the city and were happy to soon realise that its major points of interest were all within walking distance.
As we made our way to the Genbaku Dome, we passed the Children's Peace Monument inside the Memorial Park. Eventually, we reached the large building that is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
It became clear to us that the museum was intentionally positioned to face the Dome, representing the beginning – and hopeful end – of a tragic chapter in humanity's history. They are connected by the Flame of Peace, which burns in the park until the world is free of nuclear weapons.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: the museum (behind us in this picture) was intentionally positioned to face the Dome.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is unique. It does not merely present artefacts or historical data. Rather, it reconstructs a single, pivotal, day – August 6, 1945 – that forever altered history, and the lives of many people who died without knowing what had killed them.
The museum tells this story in a structured, narrative-driven way. It begins with a massive image of Hiroshima on a normal morning before the bomb, when it was a peaceful city full of life. This image sets the stage for the inciting incident: the detonation of the atomic bomb, which instantly transforms everything.
What follows is a journey through destruction, pain, and the intergenerational trauma that still lingers today.
From this experience, three key lessons emerge for effective storytelling in design presentations.
The narrative structure of the museum: the way the story was told through each room, always narrated through the eyes of the victims and the survivors.
Emotions: The Importance of Research
Before you decide how you will present your idea, research is the critical first step.
UX research is not just a collection of facts, but the solid foundation for an emotional and logical appeal of your idea to your audience.
The Hiroshima Museum’s storytelling is effective because it embodies four specific qualities:
Honest and authentic story: it simply presents the events of the day through the eyes of victims and survivors, without dwelling on justifications or political context.
Simple and clear message: no rationale can justify the loss of so many lives.
The time stopped: stories told through little objects that belonged to the victim's everyday life today to remember the tragedy. It is this change of meaning of these objects that brings people to think deeper and how this experience can relate to their life and their own experience.
In the same way, UX designers should collect and structure user's narratives to enhance authenticity and emotional resonance, making the story both easy to understand and deeply felt by the audience.
Details should be curated carefully when presenting ideas. Clarity and authenticity ensure that the audience engages with and remembers the message, moving them into action or deeper thought.
Purpose: Accuracy and Transformation
Stories have the power to challenge existing beliefs and encourage transformation. Lisa Cron, in her book Story or Die, emphasises that a well-crafted narrative shifts the audience's perspective, helping them embrace a new reality.
A journey of transformation: from Lisa Cron's book “Story or Die”.
As storytellers, we have two options for influencing our audience's beliefs: we can either deceive them or provide accurate information. I encourage you to be an ethical storyteller, which means deception is not an acceptable choice. The truth will inevitably come to light, while lying to your audience can have serious consequences. So, I invite you to create believable, contextualised narratives that reveal the truth in compelling ways.
The Hiroshima Museum achieves this by offering tangible proof: the clothes of survivors, images, interviews, and remnants of the city. Each room is meticulously arranged to allow visitors to reconstruct the moment in their minds.
Tangible proof: the clothes of survivors, images, interviews, and remnants of the city.
In design, this principle translates to structuring stories with accurate, relevant details that align with the intended message (purpose). We must prioritise what we want the audience to understand, ensuring that every detail reinforces rather than distracts from the core idea.
For instance, the museum deliberately avoids focusing on Japan’s role in World War II because this would detract from its primary message (purpose): the necessity of eliminating nuclear weapons.
Resolution: Ending the Story Well
A compelling story, like one told at TED, must have a resolution that leaves the audience with a sense of closure and reflection.
At the museum’s entrance, there was a picture of a young child, shown without context or explanation. It was clear she was a victim, but I couldn’t help wondering: did she survive? Did she die in agony?
The image of a young child at the entrance of the museum: the image was shown without context or explanation.
After traversing the heartbreaking journey of the atomic bomb’s events, the final room contained a surprise. Full of natural light through large, high windows, here was an image of a young woman in her 30s. This time there was a description: she was the same child we had seen at the start of our journey, now grown and smiling.
I read that even though she bore the event’s painful scars, she had built a life for herself.
This ending was unexpected: after all the horror we’d just witnessed, I had forgotten about that little girl. Finding her image at the end of the experience left me contemplating the wonders of humanity and our collective resilience, rather than despair.
There is another lesson we can learn here, and it’s one that I have stressed continuously throughout my online workshop. We must end the experience in a way that enables the audience to weave the message into their own thinking. After our story is told, we are responsible for the connection we’ve created with our audience and we must not leave them lost in distress.
Instead, we must provide a safe place to land; a conclusion that explains and aligns with the story’s purpose, while serving as a catalyst for meaningful action and thought.
Emotions: symbols that stay with us
A persuasive story becomes all the more memorable when it is anchored by a tangible token or symbol, something simple yet meaningful that the audience can carry with them, whether physically or in thought.
At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (and everywhere in the city), this symbol is the delicate paper crane.
The paper cranes of Sadako Sasaki: using the paper from her medicine wrappings, Sadako folded 1,000 cranes, in the hope she would be soon cured by leukaemia.
The crane embodies peace, hope, and resilience, made widely known by the story of Sadako Sasaki. She was a young girl who survived the atomic bombing but later developed leukaemia. Using the paper from her medicine wrappings, Sadako folded cranes, inspired by the legend that anyone who folds 1,000 cranes will have their wish granted.
Today, these cranes serve as a universal reminder: a wish for peace, a testament to endurance, and a call to remember.
Final thoughts
During the last day of my online workshop, held while I was in Japan, I found myself asking questions about how we can influence others’ opinions and beliefs. The answers were waiting for me in Hiroshima, in that I saw how thoughtful storytelling presents ideas that resonate, inspire, and drive change.
In order to achieve all of this, we must define why we are telling our story (purpose) and understand the internal, external, and philosophical issues we wish to address (resolution).
Finally, as designers and storytellers, we bear the responsibility of translating ideas with honesty and clarity. This involves thinking about what we communicate, but also about how.
If we can do all of this well, we will not only ensure that our audience understands what we want to say, but also that they feel moved to act: remembering the message and communicating it to others…
…just as I am doing here today.
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