The design narrative in design learning: Adjusting the inertia of attention and enhancing design integrity

Abstract

This paper aims to guide students to adjust their attention by designing narratives and exploring the habitual ways in students’ narratives; the impact of narrative integration on students’ overall design. This study was a classroom experiment. We found that students would focus on specific areas in the narrative expression; there was a fixed attention pattern, the results of narrative expression were more affluent and diverse, and they could pay attention to content that was easy to ignore. The results of students’ performance after design narrative training show that narrative training can effectively enhance students’ attention to the key points that should be included in the design, with details and emotional content that we tend to ignore.

Keywords:

• Design narrative
• narrative tendency
• visual attention
• visual habit
• design narrative training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Althea Y. Chen

Althea Y. Chen is an artist and the IDA winner. She’s been a state-level pianist and an ex-pat in Japan and France. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial Design at the National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan.

Chun-Ching Chen

Chun-Ching Chen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Interaction Design at the National Taipei University of Technology in Taiwan. He obtained his doctorate from Coventry University, VIDe Design Research Centre, UK.

Wen-Yin Chen

Wen-Yin Chen is an Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial Design at the National Taipei University of Technology in Taiwan. He obtained his Master degree of Industrial Design from Ohio State University, USA.