Connect your Ideas with the Storyboarding Technique
The storyboarding technique is amazing because by developing a visual story to explore the problem as a narrative, your team will be able to see how ideas interact and connect to form a solution.
In the film industry, storyboards are used to plan out an entire movie, shot by shot, before filming begins. The storyboard for Scene One opens with a sketch of what the first shot, or camera angle, will look like.
The next shot, from a different angle, is shown in the next image on the storyboard. With each new camera shot or action, a new image is added.
In a business environment, it’s the same idea. But instead of making a movie, you might be planning a product launch, managing a project, creating a marketing strategy, building a new process, or identifying a cause-and-effect relationship.
Your storyboard then details each step in the process. But instead of using words, and writing out a to-do list, your storyboard allows you to see everything that must happen, and in what order.
As a group, your team creates a detailed outline of the steps that need to be taken. Then they work to spot problems, identify complications, and rearrange tasks as necessary.
Step to Step
Take a few minutes to write out your ideas as individual notes. These don’t have to be complete thoughts — physically pinning up quotes, pictures, user info, and the like can help you see new relationships between different components.
Once you have a group of sticky notes to work from, start arranging them on the board as a progression: first this, then that. Organizing your ideas as a continuous series will help you see new connections and eliminate extraneous material that doesn’t support your end goal.
This is good because the storyboarding allows you to see your ideas in a sequential pattern.
You’ll be able to see an overarching overview of a new or current process — without digging too deeply into the details.
You can start from anywhere — the beginning, middle, or end — then fill in the blanks.
