Work Guidelines: Storyboarding
Movies, cartoons, and animated features all begin with storyboards that tell who the players are, what happens to them, and how it happens.
- Help gather and refine customer requirements in a user friendly way.
- Encourage more creative and innovative design solutions.
- Encourage team review and prevent features no one wants.
- Ensure that features are implemented in an accessible and intuitive way.
- Ease the interviewing process - avoiding the blank-page syndrome.
Simply put, storyboarding means to use a tool to illustrate (and sometimes animate) to the users (actors) how the system will fit into the organization, and indicate how the system will behave. A facilitator shows an initial storyboard to the group, and the group provides comments. The storyboard then evolves in "real time" during the workshop. So, you need a graphical drawing tool that allows you to easily change the storyboard. To avoid distractions, it is usually wise to use simple tools, such as easel charts, a whiteboard, or PowerPointÖ.
There are two distinct groups of tools to use for storyboarding: passive tools and active tools. Passive means you show non-animated pictures, while active tools have more sophisticated capabilities built in.
Examples of passive tools for storyboarding are:
- Paper and pencil
- Post-it« notes
- GUI builders
- Different kinds of presentation managers
Examples of active tools for storyboarding are:
- Hypercard, Supercard
- BricklinÆs Demo-ItÖ II
- Macromedia Director and other animation tools
- PowerPoint
Caveats and comments:
- Storyboards need to be easy to create and change. If you did not change anything, you did not learn anything.
- Do not make a storyboard too good. ItÆs neither a prototype nor a demo of the real thing ("realware" perception).
