Welcome back. In today's lecture, we are talking about storyboards. Visual presentation of stories about how individuals use their technology that's being developed to support their goals. You're probably already familiar with storyboards. These are the kinds of drawings that they used in comic books, and in film making and in other areas where description of story in visual terms is needed. A storyboard in essence is series of sketches that visually conveyed how user engages in an activity that involves the technology that is being developed. In this respect, storyboards are really scenarios visual cousins, it's storytelling about how a user uses technology to support his or her goals in visual terms. Let's look at one storyboard as an example of this. Sticking with our example of using technology to support physical activity, here is a very rough storyboard about person Jack who is trying to get to work in the morning and is running late. In the first panel, we see a Jack running out of the house saying. "I'm going to be late and then getting stuck in a traffic jam". At 7:30 in the morning, Jack is stuck in a traffic jam and is pretty upset about that. He says, "Great. An accident." At 7:42, Jack's activity tracker on his wrist vibrates to indicate to Jack that he has a message. When he looks at his phone, Jack finds a message that says. "Hi Jack, you've been sitting for a while. A few jumping jack is going to give you more energy". So, this is a suggestion that the application is giving to Jack after having been sitting for 40 minutes. Jackie's clearly upset, he says no. At eight o'clock, the activity tracker buzzes again, and he gets another suggestion. The suggestion says. "The weather is beautiful today. How about parking a little bit further away to get a relaxing walk before work? What we seen to the rest of the storyboard is that Jack's really upset, he says. "I'm late, it is not relaxing at all", and he's really frustrated and says. "That this app has to go." So, what did we learn from this little storyboard? One, we learn that if suggestions are not doable, it leads to user frustration. This is made pretty clear with just how annoyed Jack's responses are when he's getting these two suggestions. We also learn that if just-in-time suggestions are poorly timed, they can be really annoying because they're coming at a moment when person's attention is focused on other things, and what the intervention is trying to offer to the user is not relevant at that time. Finally, we'll learn that Jack's response is that frustration accumulates, enough of it, and the system might even be abandoned. So, from a very simple set of drawings, were able to start- really reflecting what kind of effect this particular technology is going to have on Jack's like in a particular set of circumstances, and how he might respond to it. So, why would you use storyboards if you already have scenarios? There are a number of reasons for that. One, storyboards allow you to think about the environments in which a system is used in a little bit more detailed way than scenarios are able to do. They're particularly good about describing physical constraints, things like sizes of the system, the space where something is being used, as well as providing a vivid way of articulating users motivation and emotion, and the relationship among multiple people. One really vivid example of this, especially in relation to physical constraints is something that occurred in a couple of my classes when I was teaching storyboards. One of the projects for example had to do with trying to develop a tool for recording lectures by students and annotating lectures in in-person class. A number of students had an idea that a tablet would be a really really good way of doing this. So, allows them to storyboard what that would look like? This is my very rough storyboard, but what you see here is a picture of a bunch of students sitting in a classroom, holding tablets to record a professor giving a lecture. What is immediately obvious from even this really really rough drawing, is that a tablet is large enough that something that is this big ones it's lifted up is going to be blocking the view. This is something that comes through in a visual representation that is much harder to convey in just a story, or physical constraints and promotion especially, having a visual representation of what is going on and how a user interacts with the technology and the consequences of that can be quite helpful. So, what are the elements of a storyboard? One is zoom, basically, how wide or narrow is the focus of a particular frame? The other one has to do with angle, from whose point of view is the contents in the frame. Is it from the point of view of the user? Like the image of the phone that we saw in the storyboards in this lecture? Is it from the point of view of the observer, as the initial frames in the storyboard where? What is the level of detail in the picture? What is it that the frame is really focusing on, is that the users reaction? Is it the technology itself? What is the content that the frame is trying to convey? Often, frame on the storyboard will show emotion, and this is as I was mentioning, one of the most useful elements in a storyboard is really trying to describe how the user is reacting to the technology and the circumstances in which the technology is being used. Finally, like with scenarios, the notion of setting, the context in which the activity is taking place is really key for storyboards and need to be thought through carefully. When we're designing storyboards, there are a number of considerations that need to be kept in mind. One is; for any given storyboard, we need to decide how many panels are needed. So, how many panels are needed to tell the story that you're trying to tell? What interactions will be represented? Is it the single interaction? Is it a series of interactions? How will time be represented? Is everything taking place at the same time, sequentially or is there a delay in time? In the case of the storyboard that I presented early in this lecture, often, the frames jumped by about 20 to 30 minutes between frames. I presented that just by writing down the time into the frame itself, but sometimes other ways of representing time will be needed. How will the user or the character peek into the frame? Are we taking the perspective of the character, is that user being described and displayed in the frame? All of these things need to be decided on when one is making a storyboard. Finally, what text will be used? Some storyboards don't have text at all, others will actually have a fair bit of texts to flush out the detail of what is happening in the frame. Regardless of what decisions are made on these other considerations, usually the way that storyboards are done is that screens are first being outlined in rough terms, and then we want to add detail as needed to be able to tell the story that we're trying to tell. If you think about drawing storyboards, here are few final considerations. One is, you really don't need to be a great artist to draw useful storyboards. I cannot draw well, and that is very clear from the storyboard I presented in this lecture. But in spite of the poor quality of the drawing in that storyboard, the storyboard can still be really useful in moving the design process forward. So, do not get intimidated by your inability to draw. Storyboards can still be created, and still be useful even with very minimal drawing skills. Second, story boarding quickly allows you to create multiple storyboards, which can move the design process forward more effectively than a smaller number of refined storyboards. Third, storyboards are most useful for conveying physical environment, users emotion, and the relationships among multiple individuals. This is where storyboards really shine, and where they can often be preferable to something like scenarios for conveying design ideas. Finally, the same set of design ideas or same set of uses of a technology can be often described equally well in a scenario or a storyboard. In these cases, just stick with the medium that you're more comfortable with, these are process artifacts and their only purpose is to move the design process forward. Sticking with the medium that the designer is comfortable with, would allow the designer to most effectively do that process and create representations that would allow further decision-making and further development of the design ideas. Really, for both scenarios and storyboards, that's the only point that these representations have. Thanks for watching and see you next time.
