Humanizing Design through Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

An increasing number of practice-based disciplines are embracing narrative inquiry as a powerful means of teaching the more intangible, human-centered issues of professional practice.While the field OF design has a long history of using narrative metaphorically-that is, creating designs that tell a story-less emphasis has been placed on examining the potential of narrative as design method-as a tool for exploring ideas and guiding decisions throughout the various stages of the design process. This article examines the potential benefits of a narrative inquiry in a studio setting on design process and product.The authors present findings from an exploratory study in which twentyeight senior level interior design students formally integrated narrative (storytelling) into three different phases of their creative design process: Programming, Conceptualization, and Presentation. The studio setting became a laboratory for exploring the unique qualities of narrative method in relation to more traditional 2-D and 3-D design methods. Personal insights and self-reported changes in thinking were collected, indicating how the students perceived the impact of the narrative intervention upon their design inquiry, design decisions, and quality of work. A content analysis of the written reflections of the students revealed that designing with stories resulted in a transformative learning experience that encouraged a deeply humanized design process by nurturing empathy, enhancing multi-sensory conceptualization and visualization, and facilitating holistic designing. JOURNAL OF INTERIOR DESIGN 10HUMANIZING DESIGN DANKO, MENEELY, AND PORTILLONarrative thinking involves the process of developing connections between one's past experiences and those of others.

Towards humane digitization

“…The human-centric design has already focused on humanizing values in the design aspects such as usability, functionality, reliability and emotional aspects of design [12]. However, humanization concerning design [8], involves human factors such as empathy, multisensory optimization and attention to holistic thinking in design aspects [8], and all these aspects relate to human well-being, which goes hand in hand with a broader aspect.…”

“…There are still unused factors of well-being that can lead to focusing on more than the "wow" aspect of design but also on the "humanizing" dimension of design, such as meaningful goals, positive emotions, achievement and gratitude [5]. Danko explains the importance of a new method for the design, which focuses on the emotional connection between design and person [8].…”

Narratives in design

“…User or persona narratives are often used to achieve a greater empathy with real users than could be obtained with target group data [38] [8].…”

Sociological Survey on Humanised Communication Design of Public Hospital: A Case Study

“…Under the theoretical background of social responsible design (Wang, 2002;Pevsner, 2004;Tatum, 2004;Bonsiepe, 2006;Danko, 2008;Pan, 2012;Manzini, 2014;Tong, 2014;Corby, 2016), this research followed the procedure and method (Giddens, 2003;Burke, 2010) which are in attempt to achieve the target aiming to discover the "humanised design" related problems and give the revising suggestions based upon the reasonable survey and comparative analysis. Research procedure: 1) Research target setting, 2) Seminar, 3) Sociological survey, 4) Analysis based on survey data, 5) Results presenting.…”