Made with by Daniela in San Francisco Bay Area, Califronia.
Storytelling is not the only way to engage people with your ideas, but it's certainly a critical part of the recipe.
In UX design we’re familiar with user research techniques like workshops and interviews. We designers synthesis our research into app user flow design. We typically communicate design thinking and solutions to team-members with personas and wireframes. But I think it is important to understand what’s going on in customer’s world and how would our product make their lives better.
The design team did a lot of white board brainstorm thing for customer journey. Unfortunately I found most of analysis and reports were silently stayed in the google drive with a format of line charts or bar charts. I want to make the Design’s voice bigger and louder. I hope everybody in the company can see the customer journey. And that’s where the storyboards come in.
All Verdigris team members
I identified stages where customers had interactions with Verdigris, from Check-in, On-boarding, Engaging, to Off-boarding. I met different teams to brainstorm, finally we built this whiteboard.
Storyboards are illustrations that represent shots and ultimately represent a story. Basically it’s a sequential art, where images are arrayed together to visualize the story.
I tried to illustrate all significant moments when customers would have interactions with Verdigris, and at the end I would like to hang these pictures on the office wall. So everybody could understand the customer’s living environment. Our former prototypes were limited in the design for screen, we usually ignored the customer’s world beyond the screens. I thought the storyboards could help us to understand customer’s needs and motivations beyond the screen.
This is a human-centered design approach. A picture is worth a thousand words. The storyboards could help everybody in the company to build empathy with customers. In my mind each moment should be treated equally in this customer journey, of course we won’t do everything at one time, but in my opinion the storyboards could be helpful to prioritize our work.