Storyboarding

What is Storyboarding?

 A picture is worth a thousand words. Storyboarding is the process of illustrating the story of an idea or concept. It helps you study a user’s experience with your service or product. By envisioning and telling the “story” of your customer’s journey through illustration, you are able to visually predict their interactions.

Why use Storyboarding?

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world.” Stories are a very convincing way of conveying ideas, emotions and imparting empathy. Through visualization and empathy it explains a concept in a way that is relatable. In addition, stories are memorable.  They captivate the attention of the audience and add a human quality to plain facts. (We all remember what happened to Goldilocks!) By imagining & seeing what your customer has or will experience you can empathize with them and identify pain points as well as opportunities for improvement. This collaborative method is a quick, inexpensive way of understanding existing and potential user journey scenarios.

How to Create a Storyboard

Before you begin to compose your story through illustrations you need to prepare. Determine the fundamental elements of the story:

• Who is the main character? Identify a specific persona and include their behaviors, appearance, thoughts and expectations.
• Describe the scene: Detail a real-world environment that the character finds themselves in. Include the place and the people around
• Layout the plot: Explain the back story, what happens next and how it ends.

Also consider the following elements of the story: Authenticity: Real people in real situations are key to engendering empathy. Simplicity: If it isn’t necessary, cut it out. Emotion: Relay the emotions experienced by your character. Now you can begin to compose your story.

1. First, set the scene. Begin with plain text. Break the story into small individual instances that your character experiences and write them down.
2. Add emotions to each instance. You can draw simple emoticons next to each instance to demonstrate how the character is feeling.
3. Draw the scene. In each storyboard frame, illustrate every instance you described above in sequence.

4. Establish a clear outcome. Be sure to end with a clearly stated ending to the story, whether favorable or unfavorable.

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