Design conversations are a narrative in the mind of your customer (and sometimes the conversation moves outside the mind into the real world, via sales & customer services).

For the sake of simplicity, imagine you make toasters, the “design conversation” might go like this:

Customer: “Hmmm, hungry – what’ll I have before I go out?”
Toaster: “Hello! Hello? See my shiny loveliness and big, beautiful (and practical) toasting slot – imagine how toasty the bread will be when I’m done”
Customer: “Stick bread in the slot…”
Toaster: “Look, look – here’s my big handle on the right (we didn’t cater for left handers, just turn me around, I look great from behind)”
Customer: “Mmmm, smells lovely. [salivation commences].  Let’s get the butter out”
Toaster: “ding, ding – oooh, I’m all hot… no need to worry about being electrocuted, I’ve pumped my toast right out for you…”
Customer: “Oooh, ow hot hot… [scrape of knife buttering bread] Mmmmmmm…”

OK, this sounds a bit like toast porn but this customer happens to like sexy toasters.  The point is that designers have to establish a conversation between a design object and a human.  That needs a deep knowledge of the human behaviours that are going to be influenced by the design, in order to project the right messages at the right time in the toasting process.

Looking at design as part of a narrative to see how their lives really unfold around your products or services will without fail help you find out stuff that’ll differentiate you and impress your customers.