Storyboarding: an empirical determination of best practices and effective guidelines

Reviewer: Bernice T. Glenn

This interesting paper attempts to describe important elements of storyboarding, as applied to interactive media design. Although the paper contains a great deal of information that can be helpful to interactive design instructors and their students, the reader is hampered by an overly wordy presentation that needs more precision in some areas. The study described in the paper compares the work patterns of experienced storyboard professionals with those of novice students. The paper also includes the assessments made by consumers regarding their feel for and understanding of the storyboards, in relation to the activities they present for an application. By "consumers," the writers appear to mean prospective users of a software application who have been chosen to review the interactivity design prior to final development; they haven't truly defined who the consumers are, or their relationship to a project. The writers note the stages in successful storyboard generation by observing how professional designers create storyboards. They compare the practices of professionals to those reported by novices. The storyboard study consisted of an analysis of the work of, and interviews with, eight novice student practitioners and five professionals. Included, too, was a comparison of storyboard projects from 32 teams in an introductory human-computer interaction (HCI) class to 26 storyboards developed by professionals. Attention was paid to the following features: level of detail, text inclusion and content format, inclusion of people and emotions, number of panels per function segment, and how time flow is indicated. Analysis of the professional storyboard design process showed that professional HCI designers brainstorm on their own about alternatives, making quick pencil sketches. Afterward, they meet with their team to discuss ideas. After sharing ideas, the designers go back to work, alone, and augment their sketches based on team input. Then, in an ongoing iterative process, they meet with their team for discussion and review, and then return to work alone to further their design. After completing their sketches, the designers used a variety of digital applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and PowerPoint, for finishing their work. Professionals used a limited number of storyboard panels to define a function feature, generally no more than five panels per function segment. If the function to be illustrated needed more descriptive detail, professional designers broke it down into a series of additional segments, limiting each segment to the description of a single discrete function. Professionals found that a single short sentence would describe each short segment. Students, on the contrary, tended to work together as a group, rather than alone. They also did not know what to start drawing, and were concerned about not having good drawing skills. Student novices generated at least two to three times the number of sketches needed to illustrate the application's functionality. Once the group completed its storyboards, members would review the total number of sketches used to illustrate functionality, and piece them together to form a sequential storyboard. It looks as if novices lack critical thinking skills in this area, since they were unable to analyze the function and feature set in order to break it down into short segments. The authors assert that storyboarding is an important process in HCI design, but a difficult skill to apply effectively in practice. They found that novice storyboard designers might lack the skills needed to create both a compelling and understandable story and a visually appealing and intelligible set of panels. Based on the results of their observations, the paper provides an excellent set of guidelines for storyboard creation, covering analysis and design, information content, and the creation of interaction design scenarios to specify how users would interact with the system: (1) Brainstorm with team participants to create the story line. (2) Use no more than three to six panels to convey functionality. If more panels are required, break the story functions and activity into small discrete segments. A single short sentence ought to describe each discrete segment. (3) Draw sketches corresponding to each of the short sentence descriptions. (4) Use some text when demonstrating novel applications, but be conscious of its influence. (5) Include people in the storyboards when responses to the interaction are necessary. Avoid including people if detailed feedback is needed. (6) Indicate the passing of time only when it is relevant to a particular feature or function. (7) Use the minimal level of detail required to note the salient features of a system. (8) Test and iterate on storyboard development. The information in this study is highly relevant for HCI educators dealing with storyboard design and application development. However, an editorial revision to shorten, clarify, and emphasize salient information would be of great benefit. Online Computing Reviews Service