The Pearl Diver. The Designer as Storyteller.

Design for social innovation and sustainability proposes radical changes for the present time, having an impact not only in the short term but also possibly in the future. It inserts conflicts into our everyday lives by challenging well-established habits and ethics, visions and personal agendas.1 Innovation processes related to matters of sustainability (social and environmental issues) deal with complex issues and multiple stakeholder systems. The actors in- volved often have different backgrounds and speak different languages. They refer to diverse visions and have a wide range of expectations.As designers and design researchers working in the field of social innovation we often make use of storytelling to involve, engage and create fruitful dialogue. Stories can be considered as a means through which to share visions, desires and expectations of the actors involved. The observation of practices of design for social innovation throughout the world in the different design schools belonging to the DESIS Network show that stories are used as design tools that contribute to the generation of new meanings and values for the context in which they are framed. Not only it is a design prerogative to generate new meanings and values, it is also a characteristic of stories themselves that have traditionally been considered as vehicles for values to be shared and new meanings to be created. In social innovation, stories can therefore be considered as a design tool with a specific role in generating new meanings and values. The use of stories in social innovation carries its own risks, as the idea of storytelling has in the past been increasingly burdened with negative connotations. Within the design community, we often perceive a tension between the need to use storiesand the fear of being somehow manipulative when using them, despite one’s intentions. Facing this dilemma – shared with many colleagues around the world – we decided to start a collective investigation with some of them into values and meanings produced by the uses of stories in practices of design for social innovation. This work records the first two years of discussions.