Crafting user experiences by incorporating dramaturgical techniques of storytelling

Design is changing into an experience-oriented discipline and therefore designers need appropriate tools and methods to incorporate experiential aspects into their designs. We argue that the creative skills required of designers are starting to overlap with those required of professional storytellers. Understanding the structural strategies behind storytelling and learning how to incorporate them into a design process is becoming increasingly relevant for designers when they want to envision, discuss and influence user experiences. We have specifically investigated dramaturgical techniques from film and sequential art (also known as comics) in order to establish how they can inspire existing conceptual design methods such as brainstorming, scenarios, personas and storyboarding. The specific tool entitled "Storify" that we present at the end of this paper is a concrete proposal for how to support designers in their creative efforts when crafting and communicating stories about envisioned experiences.

[1]  G. Freytag.  Freytag's Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art , 2010 .

[2]  Bill Buxton,et al.  Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design , 2007 .

[3]  A. A. Lucero Vera,et al.  Co-designing interactive spaces for and with designers : supporting mood-board making , 2009 .

[4]  Cennydd Bowles,et al.  Undercover User Experience Design , 2010 .

[5]  Nancy Duarte,et al.  Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences , 2010 .

[6]  Arnold M. Lund,et al.  Mobilizing attention: storytelling for innovation , 2010, INTR.

[7]  Pieter Desmet,et al.  Designing Products with Added Emotional Value: Development and Appllcation of an Approach for Research through Design , 2001 .

[8]  Virpi Roto,et al.  Understanding, scoping and defining user experience: a survey approach , 2009, CHI.

[9]  Alan Cooper,et al.  The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity (2nd Edition) , 1999 .

[10]  Marc Hassenzahl,et al.  User experience - a research agenda , 2006, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[11]  M. Uprichard.  The nature of research. , 1959, The Canadian nurse.

[12]  Dave Gray,et al.  Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers , 2010 .

[13]  Helen Pain,et al.  Children's Story Authoring with Propp's Morphology: An Exploratory Study , 2011 .

[14]  P. Desmet,et al.  Framework of product experience , 2007 .

[15]  Turkka Keinonen,et al.  Product concept design : a review of the conceptual design of products in industry , 2006 .

[16]  Francis Glebas,et al.  Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation , 2008 .

[17]  Bill Moggridge,et al.  Designing interactions , 2006 .

[18]  August Issue.  Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design , 2008 .

[19]  Corrie van der Lelie,et al.  The value of storyboards in the product design process , 2006, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[20]  Karen A. Smith,et al.  Middle-Earth Meets New Zealand: Authenticity and Location in the Making of the Lord of the Rings , 2005 .

[21]  Scott R. Stroud,et al.  Narrative as Argument in Indian Philosophy: The Astavakra Gita as Multivalent Narrative , 2004 .

[22]  Donald A. Norman.  THE WAY I SEE ITSystems thinking: a product is more than the product , 2009, INTR.

[23]  Whitney Quesenbery,et al.  Storytelling For User Experience: Crafting Stories For Better Design , 2010 .

[24]  Brenda Laurel,et al.  Design Research: Methods and Perspectives , 2003 .