Storienteer is a portmanteau of ‘story’ and ‘orienteer’. In relation to StoryWork, the term means ”to (orient oneself) find one’s position in relation to unfamiliar surroundings.”(Oxford English Dictionary).
Orient yourself and your design team to the stories that matter.
Underpinned by nine years of research, storienteering is a trial-proven approach to story composition that uses simple, paper-based resources to prompt, guide and inspire.
The resources are grouped into three categories; Content Exemplars, Discourse Prompts and Narrative Fugitives.
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Content Exemplars
Resources that support narrative composition through development of story content.
Many Content Exemplars take the form of card sets. Card sets are well suited to activities that involve the creation, sorting and configuration of lists, categories and other forms of information. Apart from their low-cost and usefulness, cards are easy to create, adapt and edit. Since these card sets underpin the creation of stories, they are broadly referred to as ”Story Cards”.
Actor Cards
Actor Cards are used to help designers learn how to compose scenarios or stories by providing a cast of actors. Once designers become familiar with the process of composing stories with fictional actors, events and other narrative content, fictional actors can be swapped-out for real actors and other fictional content can be swapped-out for real content.
Event Cards
Even Cards are used to help develop the plot-line of stories as they unfold through a sequence of events. They’re typically used in conjunction with Dial-a-Plot and, like Plot Themes, are often assigned at random.
Prompt Cards
The role played by Prompt Cards in story work differs from that played by other cards. This explains their distinct shape, colour and inscriptions. While the primary role of Story cards – such as Event Cards and Location Cards – is directive in that they give information intended to guide activities, the primary role of Prompt Cards is acquisitive, in that they hold information that may otherwise be overlooked or lost. Used almost exclusively with Visual Plot-line, their resemblance to Post-it Notes is not accidental. The blank spaces allow users to make notes.
Bespoke (custom) Prompt Cards
This set of bespoke Prompt Cards is a good example of how simple narrative resources can be adapted to particular needs. This set of cards was designed to provide supportive prompts for a design story about future bereavement. Note that each card has a distinct shape and colour to aid recognition.
Location Cards
Locations can have considerable impact on stories. Not only do they shape events and set the scene for happenings, but they can be meaningful for particular actors. Simply put, Location Cards describe where events in a story take place.
Trait Cards
For designers involved in building fictional characters into their scenarios or stories Trait Cards provide some envigorative prompts.
Post-It People
Post-It People were developed to support creation of Visual Plot-lines, so they are particularly useful in storytelling activities that concern themselves with plot-line development and, more broadly, visualisation of stories. Often used in conjunction with Content Cards, Post-it People provide designers with simple figurative prompts that act as ‘placeholders’ and mnemonic devices that make reference to key actors in story work. These particular Post-It people were laser-cut from standard Post-it Notes. However, anyone with nimble fingers and a pair of scissors could whip-up a few of them in a matter of minutes.
Discourse Prompts
This category of resources invigorate strategic conversations that help designers develop stories that are well structured and effective narratives.
Proverb Randomizer
Sometimes all a design story needs to make it more meaningful and memorable is a good plot-line, something that helps the audience understand what motivates actors, underpins actions and drives events toward resolution. Proverb Randomizer is a game-like activity that, through the use of three-sided dice and a checker board, draws on principles of randomness and chance and the widely-used method of brainstorming to invigorate the stories that designers tell. Proverbs are commonly held truths that are often expressed as metaphors. Metaphors operate on a principle of comparison. For example, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ is like missing an opportunity to take care of something that will get out of hand if left unchecked.
Event Map
Event Map is adapted from a model described by Chatman (1980:54). The model helps designers plan and manage strings of events that determine the plot-line of a story. There are two types of events to consider; ”kernel events” (a) have a significant impact on the plot, whereas ”Satellite events” (c) have less impact and consequently can be changed more readily. Events are clustered into Blocks (b).
Dial-a-Plot
Dial-a-plot is a paper-based game-like activity that has been designed to support story composition. It is frequently used in combination with other storienteering resources and common design tools, such as affinity diagrams and context maps. Dial-a-plot consists of a graphical ‘dial’ on which are inscribed eighteen numbered ‘plot episodes’. These are arranged according to the “three-act structure” dealing with the beginning or ‘setup’ of the story, the middle or ‘confrontation’, and the end or ‘resolution’ of the story.
More about Dial-a-Plot
StoryFrame
Not all design story work concerns itself with the creation of new scenarios or stories. Often story work involves editing, adapting or building upon existing stories that are either being developed and refined, transposed from one medium or mode of language to another or critically analysed and deconstructed. In these situations a set of nine Plot Themes arranged in a table or ”frame” provide a simple yet flexible solution.
Seed Stories
Seed stories are incomplete stories that provide starting points and/or end points for narrative development work. Seed stories harness the human tendency to draw on personal experience to make sense of ambiguities and bring closure to doubtful situations through the completion of stories. Seed stories work on the same principle as sentence completion.
Narrative Fugitives
Narrative Fugitives are resources that emerge in practice to fill gaps in story work. They appear to act in a number of interesting and diverse ways when designers are confronted with the challenge of dealing with both story (content) and discourse (expression).
Visual Plot-line
Visual Plot-line enables rapid capture of essential elements of narrative, such as actants, events, actions and happenings. Using hand-drawn graphics, annotations, Prompt Cards and Post-it People, stories are sketched-out either on whiteboards or large sheets of paper. Once expressed, Visual Plot-lines provide a framework for creating narrative (re)presentations in a variety of media, such as refined prose, storyboards or video enactments. The aim of visually describing the plot-line of a story is to turn what is often expressed in rough, general and abstract terms, typically open to wide interpretation, into a form that demands concrete particulars, interpretations of which can then be openly discussed.
“20-Questions”
Named after the classic television game show, “20 Questions” is a list of questions composed by designers to initiate desired conversations that not only probe for answers but also raise or touch on issues that resonate for design.
Narrative Blueprint
Narrative Blueprint is a kind of affinity diagram. It lays out and brings into focus key factors in play when designers are engaged in coming to grips with the settings or contexts of a problem or challenge. Centred on a timeline of narrative events, the arrangement of Post-it Notes provides the means to field, discuss and assess design concepts and scenario permutations.
Aspect Map
Aspect Maps draw on diagrammatic approaches used in the creation of cluster maps, affinity diagrams and ‘scenario matrices’ (Schoemaker, 2008: 286). They provide a means for designers to spatially arrange information related to their subject of inquiry. They facilitate information gathering and organisation (grouping/clustering) as well as affinity-based ideation.
Bibliography
Bruner, J. S. (1985), Narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought. In Learning and Teaching The Ways of Knowing. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
Chatman, S. (1980), Story and discourse: narrative structure in fiction and film. Cornell University Press.
Gruen, D. (2000), Beyond Scenarios: The Role of Storytelling in CSCW Design.
Schoemaker, P. J. (2008) Forecasting and scenario planning: The Challenges of Uncertainty and Complexity. In Koehler, D. J. & Harvey, N. (Eds.) Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making: Wiley.
Storienteering Use Cases
Use of storienteering resources has been documented in the following cases:
• 2021 – present: Post Graduate Research student workshops, Northumbria University.
• 2020–21: Masters in Design Innovation workshops, Northumbria University.
• 2020: MA Design for Industry student workshops, Northumbria University.
• 2019–21: Communication Design student workshops, Northumbria University.
• 2018–20: Second-year illustration student brief, 3-Narratives, Northumbria University.
• 2013: Near Future Design workshop at Frontiers of Interaction Conference, Milan, Italy.
• 2012–14: Five empirical studies conducted in the course of completing a PhD. Studies were conducted at Newcastle and Nottingham in the UK, and Delft in the Netherlands.