So, Why Do Design Researchers Need to Be Storytellers?

The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais, oil on canvas, 1870.

Storytelling is big now, but why?

Essentially, if we put together what all these books, white papers, and company blog posts are saying, what we find is that stories give everything around us meaning- like the underlying theme in a story…. design is the part you don't see, but the part that makes the whole story worth while.

And, if this is true, then the job of the design researcher is to capture that meaning (by researching, understanding, and effectively communicating the characters, context, and plot of a product or service), to find where and when to add or remove meaning (minimizing bad experiences or give complicated ones a clear path) and ensure that the most essential parts of the story are carried on within new designs.

These bits of qualitative information are worth more than telling a designer where to put a button or how often a customer will use a product. …every bit as important as telling them where to put a button as why to put it there.

Innovation
Like any good story, design requires an editor- someone with a deep understanding of the theme, the reader, and knowledge of how they'll track to each other through the story. Editors help a story along, asking the writer for more bits where they're needed, cutting unnecessary plot points, and in helping to encourage the writer to take certain directions. Editors are an impartial set of eyes- they are liaisons, arbiters, if you will, between the reader and the writer- as so are design researchers between the designer and the user.

Testing
After research inspires innovation, one needs to test it, then gather the new stories to make sure that the design is effectively recreating an optimal experience for a variety of users. These new stories are just as important as the old ones, as they can find problems before they become expensive mistakes.