storytelling

Discipline for giving design work narrative structure that makes people care. Provides four canonical patterns — protagonist-arc, choreography, situation/complication/resolution, what-is/what-could-be — each with a goal, shape, and named pathology. Use when design work needs narrative structure, when stakeholders need to see the user's experience as a story, when presenting design rationale to non-design audiences, or when a journey, blueprint, brief, or deck feels lifeless. Trigger phrases: "what's the story here?", "tell the story", "story mode", "narrative mode". Restated inline in journey, blueprint, strategize, evaluate (and presentation when that skill ships). Refuses to smooth user data into clean arcs, manufacture strategic tension, substitute emotional appeal for evidence, assume conflict arcs are universal, or engineer stakeholder assent by shortcut.