I think the concept of engaging personas and narrative scenario explores personas in the light of what what it is to identify with and have empathy with a character. You can say that the concept of narrative scenarios views the narrative as aid for exploration of design ideas. Both concepts incorporate a distinktion between creating, writing and reading.
Lene Nielsen has some very interesting perspectives on the issue.
Boxesandarrows has an interesting article on "Use of Narrative in Interactive Design", I think it does apply on design in general. Doesn’t it?