Storyboarding
From ElateWiki
Storyboarding is a planning and drafting tool used in multimedia building and instructional design for e-learning. Storyboards come in various forms depending on the type of project it is. For example, a website's storyboard will likely be different than one for an interactive web-based case scenario. A storyboard for a short science lab-based video sequence will be different than one for a fictionalized dramatization.
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Storyboarding as a Design and Planning Tool
Basically, a storyboard is a draft sequence of imagery and text, with implied action / transitions / movement in between the slides. A storyboard provides a scaffolding of the action to help development team visualize the plan and to improve it. Storyboards may involve functionality to show how the various action sequences interact.
An Information Rich Approach
A storyboard may highlight the user interface. This would be the screen through which people interact with a particular socio-technical or automated (purely) technical system.
A storyboard may show the navigational structure of an interactive site. Or they may show how the parts of a site interact. The contents of a storyboard and how that storyboard piece (slide) is placed in relation to other elements convey a lot of information about the design and how the site / story / case / video "works."
A storyboard will capture design features, such as the proposed look-and-feel of a digital build. A storyboard conveys style, often with placeholder images or other mockups.
For digital storytelling, a storyboard defines each frame along with any narration. It may also consist of the digital assets that will be used in the particular frame. This helps eliminate shooting unnecessary video; on the flip side, it helps project managers realize if there's missing footage. There may also be information about the art in each frame.
Other Supplementary Planning Documents
Storyboards are usually enhanced with other planning documents. Curriculum design plans define the learning objectives and pedagogical strategies. There may be decision trees (flowcharts) that show how a learner may progress through a branched curriculum. There may be back stories for the characters, and photo renderings of avatars or digital characters. There may be mock-ups for the designs of various aspects of the design--such as for logos or symbols or costuming.
Approaching Storyboards
Storyboards should be considered very "drafty." The development team should be very open to making changes in this design phase with this design tool. Just because something has been drafted and put into a pseudo-fixed form does not mean that there should be any kind of automatic commitment.
They have content builders save time by heading off bad design and ensuring that there's an instructional logic to a build. Storyboards are not the be-all, end-all of planning documentation, but they are a critical, information-rich piece for e-learning and instructional design.
Storyboards may result in design templates to use on a project, particularly for those working on distributed or virtual global teams.
The best designed storyboards lead to a successful project build that is coherent and effective for learning. To achieve these ends, it's suggested that all elements have to contribute to the purpose of the video or other media. There should be no redundancy (Newman, 2009).
See Also
References
Newman, T. (2009, July 31). "Digital Storytelling: How to Bring your Stories to Life." SIDLIT. Overland Park, KS.