DESIGN RESEARCH IN ACADEMIC PRACTICE Every Design Tells a Story Suresh Sethi Industrial Design Center, IITB, Powai, Mumbai 400079, India ABSTRACT Design involves feelings and storytelling helps build meaning and emotion in design. Metaphors, analogies and stories have become powerful tools to bring concepts to life. Designers often create objects not as a set of logical proposition, but as a pattern of experiences. They link apparently unconnected elements to create new designs. Visual experiences draw from the features of the visible world. The visual impression, rather than the actual object, becomes localised to form the visual experience. These experiences are by definition stored in the unconscious and become manifested through the ideas they generate. Lived experiences as a result of direct perception appear to be a critical factor in the generation of design ideas. Little has been written about non- formal methods, approaches about the designer’s playful, childlike exploratory sketching – visualization at the earliest stage of design process. How do designers start sketching their first ideas – where do these ideas come from? The aim of the research is to establish that designers use images and memories from their own lives that help them in visualising forms at the earliest stage of design process. The idea of storytelling becomes a theoretical instrument, a tool for helping designer discover new possibilities and opportunities within the creative process. KEYWORDS Design visualization, storytelling, memory and experiences PROLOGUE It is the story and not the object alone through which we construct meaning. I have always been amazed as to how feelings and things, things and memory are mixed together… you care for things that are layered with emotional experiences. ǮThe story of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan, of the devoted wife and the grieving husband, is so much a part of mythology of the Taj that visiting the building feels almost like meeting a proxy. The Taj is a medium through which we encounter their personal relationship. ǯ i Taj Mahal is a metaphor of love –sustained by viewers own lives and loves. Experiencing Bill Violaǯs art works in a gallery in Berlin was breathtaking. Viola is a contemporary video artist whose works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences and capturing the essence of emotion. His personal experience with water is used as an important part of his pieces. He lets the viewer to have both an internal and external view of his work, allowing them to get in touch with emotion and make a soulful connection. INTRODUCTION Designers often create objects not as a set of logical proposition, but as a pattern of experiences. They link apparently unconnected elements to create new designs. Metaphors, analogies and stories have become powerful tools to bring concepts to life. The richness of the visual form, a designer creates, depends, to a certain extent, upon the nature of his/her visual surroundings. Designers use visual material and memories from their own lives as a source of inspiration during design conceptualization. According to English art critic