What is Storyboard in UX?
Be it Kids or Youngsters or oldies, everyone loves stories. Storytelling plays a very important role in order to communicate and explain things in day to day world. In fact, Storytelling plays an important role in UX design process as well.
A visual story not just captures attention of people, but provide clarity as well, and inspires team to move ahead progressively and take action.
There are in many ways to communicate stories visually like journey maps, empathy maps and storyboards.
In this article we focus on storyboards and learn
What is a Storyboard?
Storyboard in UX Design.
4 Components that makes a Storyboard.
Lets Dive in :)
What is a Storyboard?
Simply put, a storyboard is a sequence of sketches/images/illustrations which makes the scenes planned for a video.
Before the modern tools came into existence, Animators and filmmakers used the method of story boarding before making a video. It was done to make a plot coherent and consistent.
Making a storyboard before making a video helps in pre-visualizing a motion picture.Hence, though videos can be made quickly now a days, as compared to earlier times, storyboard is still a major component of video production in order to mitigate costs or delays.
Walt Disney Productions is credited with developing the storyboard in the early 1930s with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Moreover, it allows you to explore the best way to tell story in a visual form before spending on to produce it.
Because in this process you also get to hear feedback early on and instead of making huge changes while filming, you can make simple adjustments to your storyboard.
Story boarding | Comics
Like comics or children’s picture books, storyboards are made up of frames and organized in a sequence in order to tell a story
Storyboard in UX Design
Storyboards are a great tool for the filmmakers and animators. Now you would be thinking , So how does storyboards fits into UX design?
In order to design products which simplifies the life of users by solving their problems, product teams begins by understanding the Users by carrying out contextual inquires, interviews and workshops.
Various tools like user stories, user flows and Wireframes are then used to express the Findings and then Design a solution. Everything goes well, however, in order to design for real people, you need to stay connected to the User’s world.
To design products that make the user’s life better, product teams must understand what’s going on in the user’s world. And that’s where storyboards come in.
In UX, storyboard is an Ideation instrument which helps in visualizing the user experience with a product/Service. And frames out how people would interact with product/service; all in context with the User’s environment.
Example of the storyboard of a new service | Yukti.io
Designing a storyboard in UX, in fact helps
- The UX Designers to understand user motivations and experiences in relation to a certain problem.
- To visually predict and explore a user’s experience with a product. ‘Its like a movie about how Users will use your product’
People often argue that Why do we need UX storyboard when we have already defined user journeys.
Designing a Storyboard helps you in visualizing how people would use your product/service just like you see in a Video. It helps to understand the flow of the user Interaction over time, in the User’s environment, thereby giving the designers clarity about what is really important for users.
And this helps you in creating a strong narrative.
4 Components that makes a Storyboard.
Its True that storyboard is not used by all UX Designers. Moreover, many tend to overlook this Exciting Design tool and focus more on creating Personas, user stories.
However, I am a Fan of this Design Tool and I do make sure to include Storyboard in UX design process.
A Storyboard is made of 4 components
1. Character
A character is the persona of the Target User. It is a fictional yet realistic representation of Target user of the product.
The Character in the Storyboard represents the user needs, goals, pain points,motivation and context of use. Just like in a movie the story revolves around a central character. So, in a storyboard you should have at least one character.
2. User Scenario
User Scenarios describe the stories of a user tied to a persona, while performing a task in order to accomplish their goal using the product/service. It also describes the context behind how and why the user comes to your site.
For example- — Chris is immunodeficient who Needs Help with Groceries and Can Pay
3. Visuals
Each scenario is represented visually. The visuals can be photos, handmade sketches, illustrations. Don’t stress yourself on creating high fidelity drawings/time consuming illustrations.
The sole purpose of a visual is to convey the details relevant to the user story and not to win trophy by mastering the art of Storyboard making. Include visuals like device used, office space and social group for a better understanding of the User world and situation
Visual includes how the user’s environment looks, include the low fidelity screen sketch showing which part of the screen the user is interacting with.
4. Captions
A caption is a heading or title, or words on a screen that communicate what is being said. It describes the Action user takes in the given Scenario and describes the emotional state of the User as well.
A Caption is concise and not elaborated and should not exceed more that 1 or 2 sentence.
Why should you create a Storyboard?
1.Designing human-centered design.
By putting a Human Face to the story, Storyboards unconsciously puts the Human being at the heart of the design process.Doing this makes the UX Designers to walk in the user’s shoes.
Infact this allows designers to understand user problems and test hypotheses from User Point of View; and then ultimately Design a Human Centered Design.
Most importantly Working with storyboards involves key team members like stakeholders, UI and UX designers, developers, researchers, and this ensures that the result is User Friendly.
2.A Visualization tool to developing the product.
From Non-Designers; to Developers; to every stakeholder of the team, Storyboards helps to visualize what a user journey might look like and how the key interactions take place in the user story.
Story boarding helps developers to define and develop the digital product correctly by identifying the needs of potential users. And allows them to have a diverse look at the application design.
3.Refining user’s journey map.
To design products that make the user’s life better, product teams must understand what’s going on in the user’s world. And that’s where storyboards come in.
In order to convey the details relevant to the user story, One of the most important components of a storyboard is including visuals.
By Including visuals like device used, office / home space etc you create a better understanding of the User world and situation. This helps designers to understand and refine user interaction points of potential scenarios in the User Journey Map.
A designer is forced to think through the details because he has to draw them.
4.Prioritizes what is important before starting development
Visualizing user experience gives a better understanding of the user’s environment. If after discussion with the stakeholders you find that a particular section in the storyboard is unimportant then you modify it or remove it.
This helps you in cutting off irrelevant features and helps you Prioritizes what’s important to user before you develop the product. Thankfully, you can save on a lot of unnecessary work and hence save money.
5.Pitch and critique
Story boarding is a team-based activity. Because of its simplistic nature, everyone in the team can work together to contribute to it.
And this opens the door to pitch the storyboard in front of every team member and get meaningful. Storytelling inspires collaboration and spark new design concepts.
6.Iterative Ideation Tool
You don’t need to rely heavily on creating high fidelity storyboards using online software tools as this makes it difficult to iterate the storyboard.
Go ahead and simply start to sketch on paper. It makes it easier to iterate the storyboard and you can design test multiple design concepts at the same time.
The bonus point is that you can experiment at little or no cost. Moreover, Because the storyboards are rough and quick Nobody gets too attached to them.
6. Identify design gaps.
Story boarding is effective because it doesn’t just use the words to describe the User interactions and story while accomplishing a task.
You give a human face to the user and include their emotions while they take actions as they move ahead in the story.
This, in turn, allows identifying design gaps and take actions to remove inconsistencies in the design, if any.
Thankyou for Reading.😀
