This article describes how to use story telling in the early stages of the interaction design process. The author relates that: "I almost always begin design by talking with users. Initially, my goal is simply to collect people's stories. I believe that the stories people tell about what they do and how they do it contain information vital to designing good interfaces. Stories reveal what people like about their work, what they hate about it, what works well, what sorts of things are real problems. But although stories can contain a lot of valuable information, I believe that it is the process of collecting stories, rather than the content they contain, that is their most valuable contribution to design." (1999-10-10)