Why (not) adopt storytelling in design?: Identifying opportunities to enhance students’ acceptance of storytelling

Abstract

Several methods and tools have been developed to support storytelling used in design. While the benefits of storytelling have been argued extensively in literature, the willingness to adopt it in actual practice, especially in students’ design projects, has however been slow. The lack of empirical studies on actual adoption of storytelling calls for a deeper understanding of the considerations that influence design practitioners, especially design students, to adopt or reject storytelling in design. This paper presents an exploratory study that aimed to identify the main obstacles that design students raise against using storytelling in their design process, and to explore ways to address such obstacles. The results imply that the main underlying reasons for poor adoption are the lack of perceived usefulness and the lack of tools to support. Based on the experimental observations, an opportunity for enhancing students’ acceptance of storytelling is identified.