Short post on why you should storyboard

From the Bhimbetka cave paintings to graphic novels, we have expressed ourselves visually through narrative. Storyboarding your ideas – be it for products, web page design, or actual stories – is an essential and natural tool of communication.

As I briefly discussed in my post about sketching, Buxton (Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies)) recommends using a storyboard to sketch out how you intend a product to be used. If you’re designing an application, website, or building an actual physical project, helping users (and hey-hey investors) understand its intended uses is a good practice.

Writers and filmmakers alike use storyboards to help them decide where their story is going like the narrative arcs and subplots.

Because our tradition of storytelling is so long, it comes naturally to us. We automatically want to engage with something that’s narrative rather than static. The story doesn’t have to be long and complicated, but it should employ our basic constructs of storytelling (introduction – conflict – resolution). Unless you want to be Andy Warhol and film people just eating breakfast, staying within those traditional schemes is your best bet.

My next post will be on building a storyboard that’s flexible and clear.

Tags: Innovation, narrative, product, story, storyboard, user experience, ux