StoryStorm: A Collaborative Exchange of Methods for Storytelling

Author Keywords Storytelling; narrative; design methods; Reflection on design processes.

Abstract The very act of communication is fundamentally an act of storytelling and so the stories we fashion about ourselves to make sense of our life experiences are intrinsically linked to our identity, nation, and sense of self [1], shaping our understanding of the world. Narrative and storytelling are as critical in today’s society as at any other time in history. We see aspects of storytelling frequently appear in research, from development and design processes to new ideas, products and services. In these fields storytelling takes many guises, and, we argue, is often employed unconsciously. This workshop will take stock of existing storytelling processes and forms, and explore emerging digital means of capturing and sharing stories, as a methodological tool for addressing overarching empirical and collaborative interests of the DIS community. The workshop aims to bring together fields of design, HCI, ethnography and industry practitioners to understand and map the range of storytelling tools adopted during research processes, prototyping, and production; exploring how these processes are situated in a design lexicon. This will in turn initiate development of visual aids that distill and encode these practices for use in academia and beyond.

ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). DIS 2014, June 21–25, 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada. ACM 978-1-4503-2902-6/14/06.

Deborah Maxwell Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Evolution House, 78 Westport, Edinburgh, UK EH1 2LE d.maxwell@ed.ac.uk Mel Woods DJCAD, College of Art, Science and Engineering, Perth Road, Dundee, UK DD1 4HT m.j.woods@dundee.ac.uk Daisy Abbott Digital Design Studio, the Glasgow School of Art, 167 Renfrew Street Glasgow UK, G3 6RQ d.abbott@gsa.ac.uk

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Introduction Considering narrative and storytelling in its widest sense, including for example, Internet of Things and physical computing, ‘the medium is (indeed) the message’ [5]. Stories are now embedded in objects and accessible in a new era of distribution, and furthermore present in all aspects of research from communicating our work to peers, end-users, and to the wider public as a way of understanding and relating their own experiences and goals. Storytelling is often used in design processes (e.g. mood boards, personas, storyboarding, ethnography, scenario design [2,3,8]), and, we argue, is often employed unconsciously. Whilst there exists tested, formalized methods for storytelling, this workshop will contribute a more nuanced understanding of the power and potential for storytelling in contemporary design methods in a digital age.

Workshop Description This interactive collaborative workshop will explore the role and shape of storytelling and narrative present through key exemplars of collaborative engagement in multimodal and visual, written and oral storytelling forms. This will extend existing formalized methods and processes to include transformational methodologies (e.g. [4]) and highlight emerging ways that storytelling is being utilized as both method and output. The workshop is organized around the themes of the known and unknown (or unarticulated) storytelling methods as used in research, such as Personas and Scenarios, Forum Theatre [6], Dialectograms [9], and Design Fictions [7].

Workshop Aims

To identify and map the range of conscious and unconscious storytelling tools adopted in research

processes and artifacts, through positioning paper and artifact examples.

To explore transformational qualities inherent in storytelling e.g. participatory, collaborative practices.

To explore how digital forms of capturing, crafting, and sharing stories are responding to and generating new configurations of understanding.

To explore how collaborative storytelling methods can help create ways of working across different perspectives and valuing different registers of knowing (cognitive, embodied, affective).

To draw on participant expertise to populate a lexicon and craft multilayered, visual methods of encoding storytelling processes as a workshop output using lo-fi materials. Proposed Schedule Time Activity

0900 Welcome and Introductions

0930 Paper presentations & group discussions on emerging themes

1100 Break

1130 Mapping the Story Space (collaborative clustering activity)

1230 Lunch

1400 Encoding and crafting research story methods (i.e. processes) (small groups)

1530 Break

1600 Story Circle: Sharing the encoded story methods

1700 Plenary discussion

1830 Meal and social evening with the Vancouver Storytellers (TBC)

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The breadth and scope of storytelling within Design has yet to be truly realized and harnessed. Furthermore, much can be learned from other disciplines. This workshop will actively explore this potential, extending beyond the commonplace use cases.

Outcomes Direct outcomes from the workshop include a set of visually rich method stories to enable researchers and practitioners to adopt novel and alternative storytelling strategies in their work1. We will develop and populate a collaborative Storytelling lexicon for methods and consider the best means for its wider dissemination, for instance a limited print-run and online version, expansion into a field book or a special issue in an international journal. We believe that the workshop will accommodate and spark future collaborations and discussions around the concepts and principles of storytelling in collaborative and participatory design and artistic practice.

Biographies Daisy Abbott has a background in theatre, film and television studies. She is currently a Research Developer at Glasgow School of Art, specializing in 3D digital documentation and visualization technologies and methods, across the heritage, arts, and medical domains. Her research interests include digital representations of ephemeral events; interaction design; performed heritage; and serious games.

1 For examples of conceptually similar method suites see IDEO’s

method cards (http://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards/ accessed 18 April 2014) and NESTA’s Prototyping Framework (http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/prototyping-framework accessed 18 April 2014)

Deborah Maxwell is a Postdoc Research Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Her PhD research, with traditional Scottish storytelling, reinforced the importance and relevance of storytelling in today's society. She has applied storytelling methods into research projects in cultural heritage and interface design. Research interests include the ways that people interact with and reshape technology.

Mel Woods is an Artist and Reader in Art and Media based at University of Dundee. Her work has explored problems and opportunities associated with the convergence of technology, media and content and designing interfaces to support stories and interaction between people. She is interested in the challenges we face in designing emotional digital spaces and in the emerging fields of knowledge exchange.

Call for Participation The very act of communication is fundamentally an act of storytelling and so the stories we fashion about ourselves to make sense of our life experiences are intrinsically linked to our identity and sense of self (Bruner, 2002), nation, and shape our understanding of the world. Stories are now embedded in objects and accessible in a new era of distribution, and furthermore present in all aspects of research, i.e. in communicating our work to peers, end-users, and to the wider public as a way of understanding and relating their own experiences and goals. Storytelling is often used in design processes (e.g. personas, storyboarding, ethnography, scenario design), and, we argue, is often employed unconsciously. This workshop aims to develop more nuanced understandings of the power and potential for storytelling in situated community and culture environments in a digital age.

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This 1-day interactive workshop will map the range and characteristics of storytelling tools adopted in research practices, exploring how these processes are situated in contemporary design, and will collaboratively develop a lexicon and suite of visual aids to distill and encode these clustered ‘story methods’ for a wider audience.

We invite applications from multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners across HCI, UX, design, art, psychology, design ethnography, and from the worlds of design, art, film, photography, or storytelling. Participants will be encouraged to engage fully with the concepts of storytelling in research projects and community settings, through sharing ideas and experiences and taking part in group activities. Interested participants should provide either a positioning paper in CHI Extended Abstract format (maximum 4 pages) or a storytelling artifact (e.g. visual, film, documented performative evidence). Submissions will be peer-reviewed and evaluated based on their quality, relevance and originality. Submissions may be sent by email to the workshop organizers. For more information please see the workshop website at https://sites.google.com/site/wearestorystorm.

Recruitment Strategy This workshop will bring together multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners and will be promoted through established academic networks, with particular focus on design communities and interdisciplinary groups of practitioners and theorists. In addition, we will invite networks within the international digital storytelling community, including StoryStorm and associated networks. Participants will be requested to provide either a positioning paper or an evidenced storytelling artifact. All submissions will be peer-

reviewed and evaluated based on their quality, relevance and originality. Accepted submissions will be available on the workshop website.

References [1] Bruner, J. S. Making stories: law, literature, life, Cambridge, Mass.; London, Harvard University Press, 2003. [2] Carroll, J. M. Making use: scenario-based design of human-computer interactions. The MIT press, 2000. [3] Cooper, A., and Saffo, P. The inmates are running the asylum. Vol. 1. Sams, 2004. [4] Cooperrider, D. L. & Whitney, D. K. Appreciative inquiry, Berrett-Koehler Communications, San Francisco, Calif., 1999. [5] McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding media: the extensions of man, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. [6] Rice, M, Newell, A., and Morgan, M. Forum Theatre as a requirements gathering methodology in the design of a home telecommunication system for older adults. Behaviour & Information Technology 26,4 (2007), 323-331. [7] Tanenbaum, J., Tanenbaum, K., and Wakkary, R. Steampunk as design fiction. In Proc. CHI 2012, ACM Press (2012), 1583-1592. [8] Van der Lelie, C. The value of storyboards in the product design process. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 10, 2-3 (2006), 159-162. [9] Vormittag, L. Making (the) subject matter: Illustration as interactive, collaborative practice. Journal of Illustration 1, 1 (2014), 41-67.

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