What is storyboarding in UI/UX?

Key takeaways
Storyboarding is a visual tool used to express ideas, widely utilized in film, animation, education, and marketing.
It organizes graphics in sequential frames to illustrate narratives, aiding the design process by mapping user journeys and scenarios.
In UI/UX, storyboarding helps create user personas and scenarios, fostering team communication and refining product definitions.
It offers advantages over text, as visuals create a consistent understanding and evoke user empathy.
Simple illustrations are effective for storyboarding; complex drawings are unnecessary.
The process involves developing a storyline, dividing it into frames, illustrating, and adding brief explanatory text.
Popular use cases include film and animation, video game development, advertising, training, UX design, marketing campaigns, and live performances.

Storyboarding is a creative tool that allows us to express ideas visually. Storyboarding is used in film and animation for visual planning, in UI/UX design to map user journeys, in education for outlining lessons, and in marketing to conceptualize campaigns. It's a powerful tool for visualizing and organizing ideas.

Storyboarding is defined as the organization of graphics in the form of pictures that can be used as a previsualization tool. It contains many frames, each with illustrations depicting various facets of a larger narrative. Sequentially reading these frames allows the reader to construct a narrative. UI (user interface) refers to the design and layout of interactive elements in a digital product, while UX (user experience) focuses on the overall feel and ease of use of the product. Together, UI/UX aim to create engaging and intuitive user interactions. Their goal is to enhance user satisfaction and accessibility.

Storyboarding has an older history than UI/UX. It originates from the film industry, where it is used in the preproduction process to express the story cheaply, easily, and efficiently. It was introduced by Walt Disney Productions to be used for creating animated cartoons and movies. However, its use case is not just limited to the film. Storyboarding can also be utilized in the design process for software products.

Storyboarding in UI/UX

Let's learn when and why to use storyboarding in UI/UX.

Placement in the design process

Storyboarding can significantly aid the design process. It is done in the earlier stages of the design process when the team is still ideating about the product. In this part of the design process, the product and its features are still being narrowed down. In these earlier stages, storyboarding provides a useful tool to express ideas about the user and the product.

Use of storyboarding in UI/UX

Storyboarding is used as a tool in creating user personas and user journey maps. During the design process, storyboarding is used to create user scenarios. The narrative of these scenarios follows the user trying to fulfill a need and presents the solution to these needs. The aim is to establish the user's interaction with the application (which would be the solution to their needs). This allows these ideas to be communicated between the team effectively and efficiently. As a result, the team is brought on the same page, and the definition of the product is substantially refined and narrowed down.

Let's discuss why storyboards are preferred over text to achieve this goal.

Storyboarding vs. text

Text can be utilized for the same purpose. However, using text to illustrate these user stories has certain limitations. Text can fall short of expressing these complex scenarios succinctly. Each individual consuming the text would visualize it differently. As a result, there would be a disparity in the team's vision. Therefore, the text must be further elaborated on, wasting company resources. Storyboarding provides this information efficiently, where the visualization of the goals of the product would be consistent across the team. Moreover, emotions can be highlighted more easily in storyboards as well. This creates empathy for the user, an essential trait for designers of software products, as it allows them to create user-centered applications.

Note: We do not need to create complex drawings for our storyboards. Simple and functional storyboards are just as effective at illustrating user scenarios.

Develop a storyline: The first step is to create an engaging storyline. The storyline should follow a very simple structure. We must create a scenario where the user goes through a journey of realizing their needs and then actualizing them through our recommended solution. The storyline should be short and direct. We should try to remove unnecessary details in the narrative.
Divide it into frames: The next step would be to divide the storyline into frames. We can achieve this by dividing the narrative into individual parts[object Object], all of which come together to form the whole narrative. We must make sure that each beatA beat in storyboarding is a key moment or action in the narrative. It breaks the story into clear, digestible segments. is self-sufficient and understandable on its own. We must make sure we do not have any unnecessary beats. Each of these beats would form a frame. Therefore, make sure not to go overboard on the number of frames.
Illustrate: Now, we illustrate and sketch the content of each frame. We translate each beat into a sketch that fills a frame. For illustrations, composition is very important. We must understand how to compose the beat or the scene that makes it understandable, succinct, and expressive. This composition can be in shots we choose or the way we place the characters or objects in our scene. Additionally, we must make sure that the characters are emotive and that the illustrations convey the emotion of the beat well. However, we do not need to make our illustrations complex. On the contrary, the illustrations must be simple and easy to follow.
Add text: Finally, we add text below each frame to explain the beat briefly. We can add text into the frame itself for labeling as well. The text should be brief and precise. We do not need to explain the scene's emotions in the text but rather just what happens in the beat.

Using these simple steps, you can now create your storyboards to make it easier to communicate complex ideas with your team.

Use cases of storyboard

Here are a few popular use cases of storyboarding:

Film and animation: This includes visualizing scenes and sequences before filming or animating to plan camera angles, timing, and transitions.
Video game development: This includes mapping out gameplay mechanics, character movements, and story arcs to create a cohesive gaming experience.
Advertising: This includes designing commercials by illustrating key messages, visual elements, and narrative flow to convey a brand's message effectively.
Training and e-learning: This includes structuring educational content in a logical sequence to enhance understanding and retention in instructional design.
User experience (UX) design: This includes visualizing user journeys and interactions with a product to identify pain points and improve usability.
Marketing campaigns: This includes planning multichannel marketing strategies by illustrating the customer journey and touchpoints across various platforms.
Theater and live performances: This includes organizing scenes, stage directions, and actor movements to ensure a smooth and engaging live performance.