Storyboard

What is this technique about

Storyboarding is a technique that visually depicts a user’s interaction with your product. Storyboards consist of several steps graphically representing the person’s path to achieving a particular goal. Each step may also include specific information about what people do, feel, think or say.

The storyboard is a technique that depicts an interaction between a person and a product (or multiple people and multiple products) in a narrative form. Storyboard contains a series of drawings, sketches or pictures and words that tell a story.

Designers can create storyboards to identify how a user interface changes in response to users’ actions and show things that happen outside of the system. The good storyboards allow design teams and users to gain insight into experience streams. Usually, they are not very detailed and use the minimum amount of detail required to get the key points about the big picture.

Where does it come from 

The storyboard was originally created for use in the film industry. The filmstrip form as it is known today was developed at the Walt Disney studio in the early 1930s. Years later, large companies like IBM and General Electric developed the storyboard as a planning tool for coordinating the creation of proposals, reports, and presentations.

For which purposes it is used (why in your engineering teaching)

It is used by individuals – managers, start-up founders, researchers, entrepreneurs, project leaders, innovators – to communicate their ideas, products or findings to investors, colleagues, customers and the press.

It is used by groups – companies, organizations and teams – to help people with different thinking processes and skills work towards a common goal in their creative collaborations.

It is recommended to be used in engineering education, showing and sharing projects and designs, planning flows and processes.

There are several benefits to the use of this technique:

• • First, a storyboard helps the team to collaborate.
  • Team members put themselves in the position of their customers and see and experience the product through their eyes.
  • It enables fuses independent and collaborative work within the team, enabling participants to ideate separately but join to create a coherent narrative together.
  • Finally, it allocates resources efficiently and leads to more effective decisions.

How to use it

The techniques stems from the world of cinema where storyboards show in a visual way the scenes that need to be played out. The technique uses the same philosophy to map out a user experience or customer interaction with a product or service. Docus should be on the narrative. 

In this sensw there are several questions which can help to guide the process of creating this narrative:

• • Who is the main character, what scenario are you depicting, and what goal is the persona trying to achieve?
  • When and in what circumstances is this goal relevant to the main character of your story?
  • Where might the action take place?
  • Why do users want to achieve this particular goal?
  • How are they going to achieve it?
  • During the process, how might they be using your product?

Once the story/interaction/experience you want to communicate is decided and the meesage ot be conveyed is clear, the global story is written/drawn. Think about the steps of the story and how to convey them in pictures. It is ensured that all-important information is communicated in a simple but complete and understandable manner.

A good way is the do several interactions, make  a quick sketch and improve it, as you have tp make sure that the story is clear and the message conveyed. A good way is to pass on the drawn storyboard with its short text explanations to someone not involved in the activity and see whether they understand the story and capture the message.