What Is a Storyboard? Understand the Benefits, Important Elements, How to Create, and Examples

Storyboards are one way for businesses to get to know their consumers or users and find ways to improve their experience. The experience in question can be the buying and selling transaction process, use of applications and products, to services after purchasing a product.

Storyboards can provide values ​​that businesses were previously unaware of regarding their consumers or users. Of course, with the aim of maximizing revenue and increasing customer satisfaction.

Learn more about storyboards, from various elements, how to make them, and examples below.

Definition of Storyboard

A storyboard is a visual representation and depiction of a story or narrative. Storyboards are included in the creative process used to create scenes or main visuals in films, television series, and advertisements.

However, in recent years, storyboards have not been limited to the creative world, but the business world as a whole has taken advantage of this. Storyboards for the business world are a visualization technique for various business plans, marketing campaign strategies, and consumer or user experiences.

Storyboards encourage the creation of design thinking that prioritizes consumers (customer-centric) in the planning process to its execution. Everyone involved in the storyboarding process must be able to see consumers from a different perspective.

In business, storyboards are used in product development, which is a business strategy to identify product development, maximize customer value, and plan new products.

In addition, storyboards are also used in user experience or UX, focusing on touchpoints between users and businesses.

Storyboard Elements

According to Miro, in general, here are four main elements in a storyboard:

Scenario

The scenario is related to the purpose of the storyboard. Its task is to form the basis of the story, reasons, and causes of a situation or problem. An example is low engagement. From there you can create a storyboard framework to find the customer journey.

Activity

This storyboard element is the most important part because it relates to the advanced stages of the customer journey or product development. This element is a decision from the discussion in the storyboard, an example of its application is "register an account to get a 10% discount" or "add new features to the application".

Visual

This element comes in the form of images, shapes, or videos that support the storyboard. Visuals also provide context and make your storyboard more interesting.

Story

The narrative in the storyboard is also important, because it relates to the activity element. When the storyboard is finished and decisions are made, you and your team can still understand the overall story and goals through the narrative.

Benefits of Storyboard

Here are some of the benefits of storyboards:

• Better understand consumer needs and habits.
• Strengthen the relationship between the product/brand and consumers.
• Increase team engagement and collaboration.
• Become a way to introduce new ideas to stakeholders or company leaders.

How to Make a Storyboard

Storyboards can be made with various types of applications that certainly make it easier for you and your team to collaborate. Now, after choosing the right application, here's how to make a storyboard:

Use a storyboard template

A variety of storyboard applications already provide templates that suit the goals or needs of collaboration. You just have to choose which template suits your needs. You can also create a storyboard template from scratch if you want to hone your creativity and make it more personal.

Determine the scenario

The scenario or goal of the storyboard includes the reason for making it and the goals or targets to be achieved. The purpose of these two things is so that your storyboard has a clear direction.

To start creating a scenario, first determine a statement related to why you are creating this storyboard, for example: “to understand the customer journey and identify areas or features that need to be developed”.

Once you have that statement, you can add some details that will help the discussion and collaboration process to create a storyboard. Some information that can be included are:

• Who your customers are and what factors influence them.
• The main goals and needs of consumers.
• Challenges and problems faced by consumers.
• What they need to do to achieve their goals and needs.

You can also help user personas to better understand your target consumers or audience. User personas can help you determine the ideal target for your product.

Design a storyboard

Start by adding details related to the customer journey that your target consumers or audience will take to achieve their goals. Identify and define the actions or activities they need to do to reach a touchpoint with your product or business.

Add images or visuals to mark the different phases or stages of the customer journey. Once you understand the customer journey, you and your team can collaborate to determine areas that need to be improved or developed.

Brainstorm and discuss these to produce the ideal customer journey and customer value for your business.

Present the storyboard

Present to other stakeholders who will be involved in the product development process. You can also receive new input and ideas that are useful for developing the storyboard.

Storyboard Examples

Quoting Storyboard That, based on the industry and its use, here are two examples of storyboards:

Advertising industry storyboard

Things to consider in an advertising storyboard are:

• The interaction model between consumers and new products.
• The appearance of advertisements in public, including color, copywriting, and visuals.
• How advertisements appear, whether offline on billboards or online banners on websites.

In advertising, video storyboards are also known. This form of storyboard is often referred to as a preview of the various versions of advertisements that will air.

Movie and TV storyboards

The basis of the storyboard comes from the world of film and television. In this industry, the storyboard functions as a visual and abstract representation of a scene before it is recorded and edited.

So this storyboard is usually in the form of a hand-drawn drawing that determines the sequence of scenes, camera angles, actor positions, scenes performed, spoken dialogue, and the situation around the actor.

It can be concluded that a storyboard is a visualization strategy in the process of recognizing and understanding consumers and the process of identifying problems to product development. Storyboards must involve various people in the team so that the execution of the plan can run optimally.

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