Design for Narrative Experience in Product Interactions

This practice-led investigation asks if and how design can enhance the user’s experience of interacting with everyday physical domestic objects through the application of narrative storytelling devices derived from film.

The concepts of tellability and narrativity are used to explore the way people interpret interactions with objects and to develop methods for product designers to integrate narrativity into the product experience of mundane objects, things we use every day, objects which are often overlooked.

The interest of the design community in experience and interaction design has tended to focus on digital products or interfaces because these fields emerged in large part from computer science in the area of Human Computer Interaction. By contrast, this investigation draws attention to the way users can also have meaningful and interesting interactions with tangible non-digital products.

Since interactions with products happen over time, the concept of narrative is useful to help envision how experiences will unfold. Narratives are used in everyday life to communicate, engage others, and interpret our experiences. Narrative is closely tied to memory and we tend to remember information better when this is presented in narrative form. This research focuses on how products can prompt or reveal a narrative through their use, and how the designer of a product can embed qualities that enhance the narrativity of the user experience.

This research develops design work, a set of domestic kettles, specifically to address the area of design praxeology, or research into the process of designing, so that in the first instance its direct audience is product designers, in particular those designers working within speculative design and product design research. However, the scope of the study has also produced approaches and design methods applicable to product design for mass production and design for social impact.