StoryStorm: a collaborative exchange of methods for storytelling

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 paper takes 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. An accompanying 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 distil and encode these practices for use in academia and beyond.