Build Prototypes

Storyboard

When to use it

Use this template to quickly communicate the story of how a user discovers, interacts and experiences your proposed solution.

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What’s the purpose

A storyboard helps you break down how your solution will fit into your user’s life. Much like a comic strip, you can get your message across in a step-by-step sequence, using illustrations to bring your ‘script’ to life. By telling your story from the user’s perspective, you make it easier for others to understand what you’re imagining.

How to do it

Give your idea a name.
Start with the story. Fill in the description boxes for your storyboard frames in steps 1-4. Scene 1 should introduce the characters and the challenges they are facing, whilst the final scene should provide a resolution to the story. The scenes in-between should show the steps that the user goes through, and demonstrate how they interact with your proposed solution.
Once you’re happy with the script, you can then add visuals to bring your story to life. You can use images, shapes, icons, illustrations, speech bubbles and sketches.
Label anything you feel is an assumption, which you can validate when testing with users.
If you’re working with others, discuss your storyboards and build on one another’s ideas to make improvements, or combine the best ideas into a new storyboard to create your ultimate story.

Helpful tips

Sometimes a blank canvas can be intimidating. Starting with the descriptions can be helpful to ground your thinking before starting to visualise each scene.
Remember, you can always change and refine your storyboard once you’ve completed each scene. The goal is to get to a story that you feel could actually become a reality.
You don’t have to be an artist. Any visual that communicates what you’re thinking is just fine!

Using this method in your day-to-day work

When you have an idea and struggle to get others to understand your thinking, the storyboarding template helps you bring to life how a user will engage with your solution and make it feel real to others. Rather than presenting slides with bullet points of an idea in your next meeting, use a storyboard to help others see how your idea works and how users will interact with and benefit from it. Try it out and see how it enables you to tell your story.

Learning Lab

The lessons behind this method

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