Narrative conversations
Narrative Conversations is a research methodology for Human-Centered Design that helps individuals and teams build shared understandings of human experiences. It fosters both individual reflection and collective sense-making by creating communicative relationships that support the continuous exchange of knowledge through verbal and visual interpretation.
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The methodology was developed as part of an academic research project at Universidad de los Andes, where I worked as a research assistant. The project focused on improving communication processes during the research phase of Human-Centered Design projects. My role involved analyzing research data, co-developing the methodology and its implementation in an undergraduate design course, and co-authoring academic publications discussing its results.
Design Research • Design as Conversation • Narrative Methods
Colombia
Principal Investigator: Juan Manuel González
Research Assistants: Valentina Sierra and Camilo Rodríguez
The methodology
The methodology takes a narrative approach to understanding human experiences. People make sense of their lives through stories, and this methodology builds on that idea—using storytelling as a way to interpret, share, and reframe experiences. Throughout the process, team members collect and transform these stories to co-create narratives of experience, helping them develop new, shared understandings.
1. Research Cycles
A framework of narrative factors that guide a systematic exploration of human experiences.
2. Stages of Comprehension
A series of narrative encounters in which participants gradually transform stories into coherent narratives.
3. Narrative Units
A visual and verbal thinking tool that facilitates reflection, communication, and the exploration of different interpretations.
1. research cycles
The methodology includes three Research Cycles that examine both the intrinsic and extrinsic factors shaping human experiences. Designers explore each cycle individually with a Conversation Partner, someone who has lived the experience under study, and collectively within their design team. They gather and reinterpret stories related to the factors in each cycle, then share, compare, and analyze their interpretations to collaboratively build a narrative that integrates the insights they uncover.
2. STAGES OF COMPREHENSION
The methodology includes three Stages of Comprehension that define and characterize the types of conversations designers engage in throughout the research process.
Across the three Research Cycles, designers move through the conversational stages of Territories, Horizons, and Frontiers of comprehension. In each stage, participants explore the experience under study, from the concrete details of personal life stories to the abstract insights that form their shared narrative.
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Each conversation has specific goals, prompts, and interaction guidelines designed to foster creative psychological safety, encouraging the exchange, exploration, and integration of multiple interpretations.
3. narrative units
Throughout the methodology, participants create Narrative Units, which are tools that help them externalize their thoughts and spark reflective conversations to explore different interpretations and understandings.
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To build these Units, designers use visual and verbal media such as collage and proverbs. Their inherent ambiguity encourages reflection and curiosity, motivating participants to engage with and learn from one another’s perspectives.
Each Narrative Unit represents a critical element of a story or a key component of a larger narrative. The Units capture concrete insights about human experiences and serve as a foundation for developing more complex interpretations and shared understandings.
Narrative Units made by design students at Universidad de los Andes
narrative conversations in the classroom
Design students at Universidad de los Andes using the methodology
process highlights
literature review
The research began with an exploration of narrative studies, Design Thinking practices, and relational components in innovations processes and . This review helped us understand that the knowledge created in Human-Centered Innovation projects is relational and dialectical, it emerges through conversation rather than through simple information transfer. These insights shaped the foundations of the methodology.
Implementation and Iteration
We implemented the methodology in an undergraduate design course at Universidad de los Andes to test, adjust, and refine its components. Through class sessions and hands-on experimentation, we adapted the stages, prompts, and tools of Narrative Conversations to better support collective reasoning, mutual trust, and the co-creation of shared understandings.
Dissemination
The results of the two-year research process are being consolidated into a book. The book explains the methodology, its theoretical grounding, classroom implementation, and the insights generated throughout the project. Partial results were also published in the International Journal of Design Education