This thesis is the final project of the master study Design for Interaction at the Delft University of Technology. This project researches the creation and impact of “material narratives”. Generally, it takes around 20 years until a new material is fully adopted. Material narratives can show the potential of new materials and make people aware about the underlying reasons, by using methods of storytelling and narrativity. Material narratives reflect the life stories and possibilities of new or newly used materials, as well as our relationship to materiality, which includes the personal and cultural stories of the people behind it. The goal of these material narratives is that the receiver can better relate to these materials, enriching and enhancing their “materials experience”. This led to the following design goal: "Design a method for designers to create material narratives to positively influence the materials experience."

This graduation project started with the broader goal to stimulate and facilitate the use of local and natural building materials, as an alternative for the conventional construction techniques through material narratives that positively influence the materials experience, based on my vision and prior experiences (p.3).

An extensive research on narratives, based on literature (chapter 2) and existing example narratives (chapter 3), led to the definition of the material narrative model (chapter 4). This model describes six essential narrative elements, including sub-elements, interrelations and influential factors. This model is an addition to existing research in the way it describes the relations and effects.

As a way to apply and test this theory in the field, a showcase was executed in South Limburg (chapter 5). During the showcase several material narratives were created, focussing on local natural materials and its related crafts and people, and shared for feedback. Furthermore, tools and templates were explored and developed to make the model easily accessible through a guiding method. The method consists of four main phases: inventarisation, selection, translation and communication. The first two phases include the research preparation to acquire the material narrative input; the latter two phases facilitate the actual narrative creation, based on the material narrative model.

These two parallel processes - the narrative research and the showcase - led to the final product: the Material Narrative Method. The method is designed as workbook that can be filled in by the user and taken along to the project (chapter 6). The thesis concludes with a strategy for the method workbook, opportunities for collaboration with other methods, such as the MDD method (Karana et al.,2015), and recommendations.