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Narrative in design/ing ~ 

• Design: noun – the intent, the process, the output, the outcome ~
• Designing: verb – the action ~

Narrative is a general term, for a story long or short; of past, present, or future; factual or imagined; told for any purpose; and with or without much detail. Narrative in design and in designing is looking at how stories support design better, with a focus on phases, in iterative and interactive modes: before the making, during the designing, and after while the designed thing is experienced.

Narrative (the story, the argument, the anecdote, …) is a tool to trigger and channel the expression of intent, as well as for envisioning the innovation impact; narrative allows to move from the implicit to the explicit, and to structure the design journey. Coming up with ideas is quite easy; travelling from an idea (or a set of ideas) into an appropriate experience is a complex journey, full of constraints and contradictions.

Sometimes (often would claim the experienced designer), these constraints are contradictory and this is where the design team has to create conditions for the user to choose, while making sense.

Navigating in uncertain context and interacting with knowns and unknowns require a set of meta-tools and hyper-tools, here named as Strategic Design Radar and Narrative Design Radar. It allows to fill the gaps, to feed the gaps, in resonance with some other tools, models, canvas, visualisations, … in order to express the appropriate questions and shape an optimal set of propositions.

To know more about the Strategic Design Radar and the Narrative Design Radar, let’s interact via the contact webform or connect via @aloknandi on Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.