UX Storyboard

Storyboards are linear sequences of illustration used to visualize a story. Animators, filmmakers, comics use storyboarding for storytelling

Storyboards in product design

Storyboards help to define the narrative. You start to explore the world in which the experience will take place. You define the experience the user has with the product and the aspects that matter around it. You create empathy by visualization and buy-in within the stakeholders and the clients.

Airbnb hired an animator from Disney’s Pixar to illustrate the storyboards of the customer experience (see the video)

A UX storyboard focuses on problems and situations rather than features(and diving deep into each interaction).

Storyboard used by Simple.org

How to create a storyboard

1. Gather your data: user interviews, usability tests, or site metrics. If no real data: use a storyboard as a form of ideation
2. Define Persona, Scenario/User Stories: One storyboard per one path that the user takes. A separate storyboard should be created for different scenarios.
3. Choose your fidelity level: You can show what the user’s environment looks like, speech bubbles with quotes from the user or a sketch of the screen that the user is interacting with. How will the storyboard be created(will team members participate via sticky notes)? The goal is to form a shared understanding to visually communicate stories.
4. Quick Method: Write out the steps determining the users’ emotional state.
5. Feedback: Ask for feedback from team members and stakeholders and iterate over.

Storyboard of how I learn any Topics. Template by Nielsen Norman Group. Get it here

Few questions to ask during/after storyboard:

1. What are some details in your product’s experience that are simply there because that is how it has always been done?
2. What, if any, invisible problem or opportunity did the storyboard you created makes you identify?
3. What solution, if any, did you include to help solve it?
4. Could this solution be relevant as a future iteration of your product?

Credits:

How Airbnb Proved that storytelling is the most important skill in Design
Storytelling in Design: Defining, Designing, and Selling Multidevice Products: Book by Anna Dahlström
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/storyboards-visualize-ideas/