Designing with Scenarios & Storyboards

30 August, 09-17h, Impact Hub Garage, Geroldstrasse 33, 8005 Zürich

Designing with Scenarios & Storyboards

Kim Goodwin

Kim Goodwin

Learn how journey maps, character-driven storytelling, and storyboards can help you generate and communicate ideas, define better navigation and flow, and even design layout and visual hierarchy, independent of platforms and viewport sizes.

Once you have data from user research, how do you turn that into a compelling design solution… and herd the cats along with you? Storytelling helps with both.

In this workshop, you’ll start by using a journey map to identify opportunities. From there, you'll create ambitious service-level scenarios, then scope down into product-level scenarios to guide your sketching. You'll use storyboarding alongside the scenarios to develop structure and flow. You'll even use scenarios to translate your research data into visual design priorities.

Topics will include:

  • Benefits of using journey maps, like bridging the gap between problem and solution, persuading the team to come along…even sharpening your interview skills.
  • Techniques for developing effective journey maps from interview data, with a chance to practice.
  • Comparing scenarios to use cases, Agile user stories, and requirements.
  • Deciding when to use different types of scenarios.
  • Using personas (or not) in your scenarios and design.
  • Creating an effective scenario, with a chance to practice developing several types.
  • Using scenarios to generate clear, effective requirements.
  • Using scenarios to help translate solutions to any channel or platform, whether you're mobile-first, desktop-focused, or translating between digital and brick-and-mortar.
  • Using your initial scenarios to drive structure and flow in your sketching, then using increasingly detailed scenarios to iterate and test the solution—fast!
  • Supporting design decisions with scenarios, even at the pixel level.
  • Using scenarios to sell your solutions.

Expect realistic exercises where you'll put theory into practice. Throughout the session, we'll discuss practical realities like limited scope, skeptical stakeholders, and the challenges inherent in certain industries or consumer settings. Bring your questions and frustrations as well as your success stories!

What you'll learn

  • Narrow the gap between understanding your users and knowing what to do about it
  • Develop a shared view of the problem, stop feature creep, and minimize opinion-based wrangling about solutions.
  • Create user-centered solutions that don't mirror your org chart or ignore users' real cross-channel behavior.
  • Make your user experience better by examining every touchpoint and using emotion–not just functions and tasks–to inform your choices.
  • Fit scenarios seamlessly into your existing process, whether it's Agile, waterfall, or Agile-fall.
  • Make design choices and trade-offs visible to the team (and even users) quickly and cheaply.
  • Help drive the requirements process instead of responding to it when it's over.

Intended Audience

Any designer, engineer, or product manager who's had to figure out what to build, how it should behave, and how it should look…and sell the rest of the team along the way. The content is equally applicable whether you're designing something new or improving what you already have.