Narrative Objectification: Processes and Methodology of Value Creation through Narratives

Design innovation first belongs to the symbolic and cognitive dimension, rather than to the material dimension. Its outcomes are cultural objects even before being tangible and technological objects. Therefore, the design activities - even those that precede the creative phase - are never solely acts of understanding, but also of interpretation, encoding, and translation. This happens through a real intervention of re-writing that orients the system of detected signs towards the design intention. Within these systems of signs, processes of abstraction take place and lead to visualize the design problem. These are processes of objectification that make contents which are typically transmitted by verbal/visual narration, as in the case of reconstruction of cultural contexts. The descriptions of intangible facts - such as lifestyles, visual and expressive languages or artifacts – should be regarded as scenarios in which there are new values, attitudes, consumptions use, and thus orient the design practice. In design thinking, the convergence of many different disciplines, most of which come from the area of humanities, has always fueled a great interest in the transfer dynamics of content, practices, methods, tools and in the related processes of appropriation, assimilation and adaptation which renew design practices as well as the theoretical debate around them. Considering this successful relationship the paper will focus on recent theoretical interests that animate the debate within the disciplines of design of the nature, and on some conceptual tools that the design sphere borrowed from the humanistic disciplines.