How to get the most out of storyboarding.

Storytelling is an important skill in our craft.

We are often creating storyboards to communicate all sorts of things from eLearning module content to the visuals of an explainer video. Sometimes it’s even broader than that, and we storyboard how we are going to make organisational change.

The unexamined life is not worth living — Socrates as described in Plato’s Apology. Here we turn the same design-thinking methods we use with our clients and apply them to ourselves. A storyboard that visualises our noble vision and our wicked problems.

Storyboarding is an essential part of the planning and design phases of a project. Without it you have no plan or vision of what the final product is supposed to look like. It’s unreasonable and unrealistic to scope the cost of a video or an eLearns without one!

There are a few traps that you might fall into when storyboarding for the first time. Even a seasoned vet can let things get away from them.

So I would like to share 3 tips I have learnt about storyboarding over the years.

Tip#1: Start small to get the big picture. Use post-it notes!

It is all too easy to dive into the deep end. To start dreaming up all the cool stuff that could happen in a video, or aligning slide text so that they don’t ‘bounce’ about on templates. Or maybe spending time making those buttons look just right. I mean you want this project to wow, right?

Stage 1 of our Learning Design team storyboarding 10 branching mini-scenarios. We did this in less than 2 hours.

Don’t do it! Especially when striving to deliver multiple learning objects. What’s more important at this stage is stakeholder acceptance, having a high level overview of how everything is actually going to come together and being able to double check that all learning objectives are covered.

Using this method also means everyone involved can help craft and talk about the major points in the story/interaction. This can help identify tricky issues with a subject matter expert now rather than later when significant resources have already been committed.

Using post it notes forces designers to think loosely and keep things high level. Less detail means less time spent to communicate intentions and we are more open to changes when we haven’t put blood, sweat and tears into making something.

Tip#2: Work fast and key frame like an animator.

In the animation world, there is a thing called a ‘key-frame’.

This is the ‘story-telling drawing. The drawing or drawings that show what’s happening in the shot’ (Williams 2001).

This activity has multiple endings, characters and settings. However we boiled the interaction down to it’s most key frames. You don’t need to be an artist to storyboard. I mean look at these!

You’ll note that our storyboards are rough. We are capturing the key moments of the experience. We use these images to bat ideas about in the team, quickly alter and improve our ideas. Where possible, we get our stakeholders and subject matter experts to view these and we talk them through. Again, we avoid costly changes later by swallowing our ‘pride’ and showing rougher work sooner than we might be comfortable with as professional designers.

Tip#3: Don’t get planning paralysis, prototype early!

Ever had this happen to you?

Learning Designer: Hi stakeholder, here is the storyboard for the eLearning module you requested. It’s got all the content, intended images sourced and it’s ready to go to a developer once you approve it.

Stakeholder: Great job!

Later…

Stakeholder: Approved! Let’s get this done.

A developer goes away and produces exactly what was in the storyboard.

Later, the learning designer shows off the first Alpha of the product.

Stakeholder: What is this?! This isn’t what I thought it was going to be like!

Learning designer: B-but you approved this. You signed off and all!

The temptation can be to secure stakeholder approval using familiar tropes like documentation. This is insufficient. Many stakeholders don’t know what they want or don’t want until they can ‘see it’ or hold it.

So rather than spending time make detailed documents, make rough, barely functional prototypes in a rapid authoring tool. Whether your making a video or a complicated interactive experience, the sooner you can ‘put something in their hands’ and help your stakeholders see and experience it, the sooner you will know if you are really on the right track.

Before worrying about what EXACTLY is going on each screen, BUILD IT. This is a common second phase for our learning designers when storyboarding eLearning.

I think the hardest part of storyboarding, as mentioned earlier, is ‘swallowing our pride’. Some designers don’t feel comfortable sharing rough work and worry that stakeholders won’t ‘get it’. I can assure you, they do, especially since you will be there to hold there hand through the process.

Share your stories and the associated storyboards sooner than you would feel comfortable and you might find that the journey afterwards is just that little bit smoother.

References

Williams, R. 2001. The Animators Survival Kit, A manual of methods, principles and formulas for classical, computer, games, stop motion and internet animators, London, Faber and Faber.