Storyboarding in UX

How the process of Story boarding in a design sprint works.

First of all, somebody needs to be the storyboard “artist.” We put the word
“artist” in quotes because the job doesn’t require artistic talent. In this case, the “artist” is just someone willing to write on the whiteboard a lot.

Draw a grid

First, you need a big grid with around fifteen frames. Draw a bunch of boxes on an empty whiteboard, each about the size of two sheets of paper. If you have a hard time drawing long straight lines (and who doesn’t), use masking tape instead of a marker.

You’ll start drawing your storyboard in the top left box of the grid. This frame
will be the first moment that customers experience on Friday. So . . . what
should it be?

What’s the best opening scene for your prototype?

If you get it right, the opening scene will boost the quality of your test. The
right context can help customers forget they’re trying a prototype and react to
your product in a natural way — just as if they had come across it on their own.

Choose an opening scene

How do customers find out your company exists? Where are they and what are they doing just before they use your product? Our favorite opening scenes are simple:
• Web search with your website nestled among the results
• Magazine with an advertisement for your service
• Store shelf with your product sitting beside its competitors
• App Store with your app in it
• News article that mentions your service, and possibly some competitors
• Facebook or Twitter feed with your product shared among the other
posts .

There are other possible opening scenes. Your prototype might begin with an
everyday routine: a doctor’s folder of paper reports, an engineer’s email inbox, or a teacher’s classroom newsletter. If you’re testing a new kind of store, you might start the moment people enter the front door.

It’s almost always a good idea to present your solution alongside the competition. As a matter of fact, you can ask customers to test out your
competitors’ products on Friday right alongside your own prototype.

Once you choose an opening scene, you only have nine hundred more decisions to make before you’re done with your storyboard. Just kidding . . . kind of.

Storyboarding is a simple process, with a ton of tiny decisions along the way.
Those tiny decisions can be tiring, but remember — you’re doing your future self a favor. Every decision you make now is something you won’t have to think about when you build your prototypes.

Fill out the storyboard

Once you’ve selected an opening scene, the storyboard “artist” should draw it in the first frame. From there, you’ll build out your story, one frame at a time, just like a comic book. As you go, you’ll discuss each step as a team.
Whenever possible, use the sticky notes from your winning sketches and stick
them onto the whiteboard. When you come to a gap — a step in the story not
already illustrated by one of the solution sketches — don’t fill it in unless it’s critical to testing your idea. It’s okay if some parts of your prototype don’t work.

You can have buttons that don’t function and menu items that are unavailable.
Surprisingly, these “dead ends” are generally easy for customers to ignore in
Friday’s test.

If you decide the gap does need to be filled, try to use something from your “maybe-later” sketches, or from your existing product. Avoid inventing a new
solution on the spot. Coming up with ideas on Wednesday afternoon isn’t a
good use of time or effort. You will have to do some drawing, of course: filling in gaps when necessary and expanding on the winning sketches so that your
prototype will be a believable story. Remember that the drawing doesn’t have to be fancy. If the scene happens on screen, draw buttons and words and a little arrow clicking. If the scene happens in real life, draw stick figures and speech bubbles. Making your storyboard will likely take up the entire afternoon.

To make sure you finish by 5 p.m., follow these guidelines:

• Work with what you have — Resist inventing new ideas and just work with the good ideas you already came up with.
• Don’t write together — Your storyboard should include rough headlines and important phrases, but don’t try to perfect your writing as a group. Group copywriting is a recipe for bland, meandering junk, not to mention lots of wasted time. Instead, use the writing from your solution sketches, or just leave it until Thursday.
• Include just enough detail — Put enough detail in your storyboard so that nobody has to ask questions like “What happens next?” or “What goes here?” when they are prototyping on Thursday. But don’t get too specific. You don’t need to perfect every frame or figure out every nuance. It’s okay to say: “Whoever builds this tomorrow can decide that detail.” And then move on.
• The Decider decides — Storyboarding is difficult because you already spent a lot of your limited decision-making energy in the morning. To make it easier, continue to rely on the Decider.

You won’t be able to fit in every good idea and still have a storyboard
that makes sense. And you can’t spend all day arguing about what to
include

• When in doubt, take risks — Sometimes you can’t fit everything in. Remember that the sprint is great for testing risky solutions that might have a huge payoff. So you’ll have to reverse the way you would normally prioritize. If a small fix is so good and low-risk that you’re already planning to build it next week, then seeing it in a prototype won’t teach you much. Skip those easy wins in favor of big, bold bets.

• Keep the story fifteen minutes or less — Make sure the whole prototype can be tested in about fifteen minutes. That might seem short, especially since your customer interviews will be sixty minutes long. But you’ll have to allow time for your customers to think aloud and answer your questions — not to mention starting up the interview at the beginning and winding it down at the end. Fifteen minutes will take longer than fifteen minutes. And there’s another, practical reason for this limit. Sticking to fifteen minutes will ensure that you focus on the most important solutions — and don’t bite off more than you can prototype. (A rule of thumb: Each storyboard frame equals about one minute in your test.)

Once you’ve incorporated all of the winning sketches, the storyboard will be complete. And you’ve finished with the hardest part of the sprint. The decisions are made, the plan for your prototype is ready, and Wednesday is a wrap.

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