Applying Storycraft to Facilitate an Experience-Centric Conceptual Design Process

摘要

The design profession is shifting from designing objects towards designing for experiences, and the main premise of this paper is that designers need strategic guidance in bringing the emotional, contextual, and temporal aspects of experiences into discussion. Existing externalization strategies are not obviously equipped to help incorporate the transient characteristics of experiences into the designer's creative thinking. In this paper, we propose that designers may be able to achieve this by including visual storycraft into their creative process. Storycraft is the skilled practice of generating/building stories. Stories and experiences share a sequential structure with a beginning, middle, and end that can be crafted and influenced through design to evoke and affect the emotions of their experientors. Several activities of designers are already very similar to those of professionals in storycraft, as the tools and techniques used in both domains are aimed at creating emotionally satisfying experiences. While harnessing the power of storycraft to elevate strategies in designing for experiences is an attractive idea, which has been embraced earlier by the design research community, it is not a proposal that can easily be put into practice. We have iteratively designed, evaluated, and improved Storyply as a method that combines 'conceptual design' and 'story planning'. Our studies have confirmed that incorporating storycraft within conceptual design by means of Storyply resonated well with design teams and indeed helped them to discuss and frame ideas in an experience-centric fashion.