Research Report: "The value of storyboards in the product design process"

By Bianca Nickols, Storyboard Project Team

Abstract:

Corrie van der Lelie's article "The Value of Storyboards in the Product Design Process" illustrates storyboard representation as a design process that models a narrative through a series of scenes and interpretations. She regards this development with a high degree of importance since the growing world wide market of advertisement and cinema requires different communication tactics, with groups of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities; this is a key advancement for a world wide and expanding market.  In her own words, "storyboards not only help the product designer to get a grip on target groups, context, product use and timing, but also in communication about these aspects with all people involved." The storyboard provides visual language which sets a common ground for all people, and models what cannot be seen in the text.

Description:

Corrie van der Lelie's article on storyboard representation, delves into an in depth examination of all the different aspects and elements of visual communication. Even though most publications of storyboards deal with advertising product and cinema, a visual narrative can be used as a modeling interpretation to present any sort of story. She supports her technique by applying "visual language" to her projects which allows for people of different backgrounds to understand the aspects of the design.

Van der Lelie expresses the storyboard design process to be a powerful means of telling the different parts of interactions from the story because "it enables the reader to express ideas at two different levels." At these levels, the reader can both "experience" and "reflect" on the visualized interactions. When the readers experience interaction they establish a common ground of understanding and communication. Within the storyboard are a series of abstract scenes. This way the designer is able to communicate with people from all different disciplines. The next level of viewer communication, reflection, is closely linked with that of "experience." At the reflection level, the readers are able to withdraw their own knowledge of the event, and develop it into their own ideas. From both levels, the designer is able to obtain an outsiders perspective on the context and aesthetic value of the presentation.

Drawing upon ten years of previous research on the storyboard process, Van der Lelie breaks down the development into a series of five different phases: analysis, synthesis, simulation, evaluation, and decision. According to Lelie, "each phase has its own style of exploring, developing, discussing, or presenting the product-user interaction in storyboards."  These phases are used to find problems in the scenes before they occur in the presentation.

During the analysis phase, she describes the processes as "getting a grip" on what you are going to present. This implies the questions of who, what, when, where, why, for how long, and with who. With these answered the designer can start creating atmosphere and interaction within the scenes.

The synthesis phase is where the group comes together to collaborate on ideas. During this process members of the group may start providing rough sketches of their ideas. These sketches do not necessarily pay attention to detail but are more so used to create useful brainstorm activity and interaction within the group.

The simulation phase is designed to give an in depth interpretation on the specific scenes which the group decided to work with. Lelie explains that this is where the "storyboard evolves into a coherent narrative." Therefore, the idea of the story plot and narrative within the scenes are gaining more importance. This is because during the evaluation phase the designers must look at all aspects of the storyboard. This mainly includes aesthetic value since the board must also be appealing to the eye.

Next in the evaluation phase, the visualization process must be designed for a presentation style. Each design is open for judgment and critique by an outside pilot group that evaluates the project before further implementation.

Finally, the group comes together to present their project in the decision phase. All aspects are finished, detailed oriented and ready for presentation. Van der lelie explains that the presentation should convincing like a sales pitch, rather than evoking questions and comments.

Storyboard design processing can lead into bigger and worldier markets for all sorts of different products and ideas. It forces the designers to take into account diverse aspects of context while still providing abstract notions of meaning.

Commentary:

Overall, Van der Lelie provides our group with a strong basis of information which will help us begin our storyboard project for Hemingway's "Indian Camp." However, not only for our project, but for others as well, he design process analysis can branch into fields of all disciplines. In other words, with her ideas on the visualization process, all textual narrative and non-narrative interpretations can be designed into a series of different abstract scenes. This opens up communication to all people of different ethnicities. Like she explained in her article, this could eventually be useful for the expanding world market of advertising, cinema, and hopefully, literature.

One downfall of Van der Lelie's article is that it merely focuses on the basics of the design process and not enough about the presentation. In my opinion, the presentation of the storyboard is just as important as the project itself because otherwise the scenes at first appearance would look simple like arbitrary photos. According to Van der Lelie, the presentation should be evaluated during the evaluation phase, and presented during the decision phase. However, the length of detail provided for the presentation is not as clarified as the detail provided for the storyboard process. Nonetheless, even though detail isn't necessarily provided, I feel that if the phases are followed correctly within the group, the presentation will develop along the way.

As with Van der Lelie, reaching out to a variety of people for our project is one of our main goals as a team; however, with a storyboard we are only left with abstract visions which the reader has to interpret themselves. This is why our presentation and analysis, as Van der Lelie explained in the decision phase, is so crucial. It provides the readers with an in-depth textual analysis while still giving them the opportunity to interpret the scene on their own. In the end, with our storyboard and Van der Lelie's guidance, people from all disciplines will be able to understand Hemingway's "Indian Camp" on another level of interpretation and understanding by visual processing.

Resources For Further Study:

Wikipedia Link

Storyboard Tutorial

Designing Storyboarads

Examples of Storyboard Artist and Representations