In both physical and digital experiences we have proven that storyboards are an invaluable way of getting early buy-in from stakeholders on a project by demonstrating what an experience could look like at a very high level.
Storyboard Example
The following storyboard shows the physical experience at the war museum. The visitors enter the room and get a sense of the scale of loss prior to a macro view of all 30,000 fallen servicemen and women.
Storyboards not wireframes
To use storyboards effectively you have to know the difference between a storyboard and a wireframe.
Wireframes are invaluable way of capturing what should be on a user interface or structuring a set of related content.
Storyboards show a journey through a process at a much higher level without the granularity of what is specifically occurring.
To make this concept even simpler, you should always build your storyboard before you work on your wireframes.
Personas and Settings
Even if you are designing a purely digital experience, it is often valuable to story board the experience with some of the personas of your users in typical scenarios. The ability to think about a user’s setting often unlocks user experience requirements that may not be part of the functional requirements identified to date.
We recently designed a mobile app for a client and by using a story board for one of the user personas we identified the need for a completely different offline experience just by visualising that persona and placing the application in context to that user’s typical working environment.
Your projects
Next time you’re designing a user experience, try a storyboard. We’d love to help you with this process, so please do get in touch.