Jennifer Kaiser — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:50:18 GMT

Slicing and dicing and quantifying (oh my!) are rather the antithesis of storymaking. Frankly, narrative models are, too. (Ever lose interest in a movie because the dialogue emblazoned “exposition” all over the actors’ heads?) In other words, you can’t get narrative flow by thinking about getting narrative flow. Stories are collections, not dissections. Narrative flow looks like kids playing “let’s pretend.” Let’s Pretend is actually a great way to approach a creative project like this, but all the charts, and deliverables, analyses and re-analyses that business clients want rather kill it dead. I am intrigued by the role-playing you said was so effective in the beginning of the project, because I think this was when you were actually using storymaking in the design process. In fact, I wish you had described it story-style rather than with a chart. Would have been much easier to picture exactly how it worked and helped—and would have demonstrated your point.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Jennifer Kaiser