It often presents an overview picture of the experience and serves as an instrument for identifying specific pain points or to foster collaboration and responsibility across different departments in an organization. It is fairly complex, and often contains extensive textual information about the different steps of the journey - including not only the user’s actions, thoughts, and emotions, but also insights that can be drawn from different stages of the process. Journey MapsĪ journey map is a visualization of the process that a customer goes through to achieve a goal. Because the image is the primary content in a storyboard, captions are concise and don’t typically exceed two bullet points. The caption describes the user’s actions, environment, emotional state, device, and so on. CaptionsĮach visual has a corresponding caption. Images include details relevant to the story, such as 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. Depending on the purpose of the storyboard and on its audience, these images can be quick, low-fidelity drawings or elaborate, high-fidelity artifacts. The steps can be sketches, illustrations, or photos. VisualsĮach step in the scenario is represented visually in a sequence. For example: Corporate buyer, James, needs to replenish office supplies. The description of the scenario or story is clear enough that a team member or stakeholder could understand what is depicted before looking at the visuals. A short text description of the scenario is also included. The persona or role that corresponds to that scenario is clearly specified at the top of the storyboard. Storyboards are based on a scenario or a user story.
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Not sure where to start? Here's a storyboard template ( PDF version). There are always 3 common storyboard elements, regardless of form: a specific scenario, visuals, and corresponding captions. Using images makes the story quick to understand at first glance and easy to remember. In the world of UX, we use storyboards to provide additional context to our teams and stakeholders. Simple visuals and a basic, but specific scenario will be memorable for your team and stakeholders. A storyboard doesn't have to be complicated or high-fidelity. While the level of fidelity differs across industries, storyboards always communicate a story through images.ĭefinition: A storyboard communicates a story through images displayed in a sequence of panels that chronologically maps the story’s main events. You may already be familiar with the concept of storyboards from film, animation, or comic books. There are many ways to visually communicate stories to our teams and stakeholders - UX stories, storyboards, journey maps, and empathy maps being a few examples. A story captures attention, provides clarity, and inspires teams and stakeholders to take action.
Storytelling plays a large role in our job as UX professionals.