Guidelines: Storyboarding
Movies, cartoons, and animated features all begin with storyboards that tell
who the players are, what happens to them, and how it happens.
- Help gather and refine customer requirements in a user-friendly way.
- Encourage more creative and innovative design solutions.
- Encourage team review and prevent features no one wants.
- Ensure that features are implemented in an accessible and intuitive way.
- Ease the interviewing process - avoiding the blank-page syndrome.
Simply put, storyboarding means using a tool to illustrate (and sometimes animate)
to the users (actors) how the system will fit into the organization, and to
indicate how the system will behave. A facilitator shows an initial storyboard
to the group and the group provides comments. The storyboard then evolves in
"real time" during the workshop. So, you need a graphical drawing
tool that allows you to easily change the storyboard. To avoid distractions,
it is usually wise to use simple tools, such as easel charts, a whiteboard,
or Microsoft® PowerPoint®.
There are two distinct groups of tools to use for storyboarding: passive tools
and active tools. Passive means you show non-animated pictures, while active
tools have more sophisticated capabilities built in.
Examples of passive tools for storyboarding are:
- Paper and pencil
- Post-it® Brand Notes
- GUI builders
- Different kinds of presentation managers
Examples of active tools for storyboarding are:
- Apple HyperCard
- Solutions Etcetera SuperCard
- Macromedia® Director Shockwave Studio and other animation tools
- Microsoft® PowerPoint®
Caveats and comments:
- Storyboards need to be easy to create and change. If you didn't change anything,
you didn't learn anything.
- Do not make a storyboard too good. It's neither a prototype nor a demo
of the real thing ("realware" perception).
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