STORYBOARD IN UX

Being in the company of Film students, the term storyboarding is quite familiar and when I came across it in the Google UX course my interest was piqued and I paid close attention, so I’ll be sharing some information I picked up about this topic!

First, what do we mean by the term “STORYBOARD IN UX”?

In UX, a storyboard is a series of panels or frames that visually describe and explore a user’s experience with a product. Simply put when storyboarding comes to mind, we can think about it as a tool used to visualize potential solutions to problems your user is facing.

In Film-making a storyboard is essential because it clearly conveys how your story will flow, because you now see how your shots work together as they are divided into sets of panels and each panel tells a piece of the story and it’s a very important part of the pre-production process. It’s similar in UX design, HOW?

Well storyboarding is a tool for making a strong visual connection between the insights that have been uncovered during research and the flow of a user’s experience.

When we use storyboards to sketch an idea, it helps us work through the flow of the experience. A storyboard can also act as a visual aid to explain your ideas to stakeholders, because they can visualize how the product you’re designing will be used. Your product might have lots of screens but your storyboard should focus on just the most important part of the user’s experience with the product.

For instance we’re working on an app that lets us order snacks. There’ll be many screens in the app but for the storyboard I’ll focus on the flow for placing an order and as a means of constraint the storyboard consists of just 6 panels. This will ensure that I work only on what’s necessary.

There are four(4) elements of a storyboard:

• Character: This is the user in your story, just as in the case of movies and novels where the writer focuses on a particular individual, our character is the user who our product revolves around.
• Scene: The scene helps us imagine the user’s environment, are they in school, home, work, play station, wherever they might be at the particular time.
• Plot: The plot describes the benefits or solutions of the design.
• Narrative: This gives a detailed account of the user’s needs or problem and how the design will solve that problem.

When sketching a storyboard, the scenario is a short sentence that helps us understand the user and their problem we’re solving. The visuals guide us through the user’s experience with the app or product and the captions are basically texts that describe the action taking place in each frame, the captions are also useful for interactions that may be difficult to sketch out and they don’t normally go beyond two bullet points.

Let’s use an instance of a user who orders a ride because of an important appointment in order to arrive on time. When storyboarding, I’ll have a sketch of a hand holding a phone, I may not be able to sketch the user scrolling through the app to locate an available driver this is where my captions prove to be super helpful because after sketching my caption will read “May scrolls through the app to find available drivers”.

There you have it! My caption has been able to combine both the visuals and scenario by giving us a detailed description of how the user interacts with the app.

TYPES OF STORYBOARDS

Now we’ll look at the types of storyboards, there are 2 common types of storyboards:

1. Big picture storyboards: Focuses on what the user needs and their experience. It should show how the people use your product and why that product will be helpful to them, because it focuses on the users it’s important to use emotions to show how they’re feeling at each step of their journey to make it more relatable e.g. a sad face to show their initial frustrations and a happy face to show them finally achieving their goals.
2. Close-up storyboards: Focuses on the product and its functionality, how it works. It pays attention to what happens on each screen and what potential problems are in the flow.

STEPS TO CREATING A STORYBOARD

1. Start with a problem statement, this will help to establish a character and set the scene for your storyboard. (We’ll be using a snack ordering app as a case study to visualize the points).

2. Create a goal statement, it will determine a plot which is the benefit or solution for your storyboard.

3. Set up the storyboard, here’s a template of a storyboard,

it can also be drawn on a paper or sketchpad.

4. Add the storyboard scenario, you can now fill in the template by adding the scenario. At the top of the storyboard write a sentence that sets the narrative for the storyboard.

5. Draw one idea on each panel, the first panel is used to set the scene while the other panels contain actions that push the story forward and how the user feels.

6. Expose the pain points for the user, which is the reason why they’re trying out your product to get a solution.

7. Include the user goal or the conclusion of the journey in the final panel, include an emotion to show how the user feels at the end of the experience with your product/ as they finally achieve their goal with your goal, definitely happy and excited!

Check out this hand-drawn big picture storyboard for a snack ordering app.

P.S I’m not that much of an artist, so excuse my sketches

When creating a close-up storyboard, steps 1–4 are the same with the big picture story board;

• Start with a problem statement
• Create a goal statement
• Set up the storyboard
• Add the storyboard scenario

Big picture storyboards and close-up storyboards are different when we get to step 5, where you draw each panel. Recall that the Big picture storyboard focuses on the user while close-up storyboards focus on the product.

So for this close-up storyboard, you need to think about which product feature you want to center attention on each panel and why. You want to demonstrate the user flow within the product and how each action within the product will lead to the next screen.

Close-up storyboard for our snack ordering app

Thank you for reading my post and I hope you enjoyed it! To read more about this topic, here are some reference materials:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/storyboards-visualize-ideas/

https://uxstudioteam.com/ux-blog/ux-storyboard/

Image credit:https://www.nngroup.com/