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Storyboards as a Lingua Franca in Multidisciplinary Design Teams

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Collaboration in Creative Design

Abstract

Design, and in particular user-centered design processes for interactive systems, typically involve multidisciplinary teams. The different and complementary perspectives of the team members enrich the design ideas and decisions, and the involvement of all team members is needed to achieve a user interface for a system that carefully considers all aspects, ranging from user needs to technical requirements. The difficulty is getting all team members involved in the early stages of design and communicating design ideas and decisions in a way that all team members can understand them and use them in an appropriate way in later stages of the process. This chapter describes the COMuICSer storyboarding technique, which presents the scenario of use of a future system in a way that is understandable for each team member, regardless of their background. Based on an observational study in which multidisciplinary teams collaboratively created storyboards during a co-located session, we present recommendations for the facilitation of co-located collaborative storyboarding sessions for multidisciplinary teams and digital tool support for this type of group work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.comiclife.com – Comic Life, digital tool for the creation of comics.

  2. 2.

    https://www.celtx.com – Celtx, digital tool for the creation of screenplay storyboards.

  3. 3.

    http://www.toondoo.com – ToonDoo, digital tool for the creation of comics.

  4. 4.

    http://www.storyboardthat.com – Storyboard That, digital tool for the creation of storyboards.

  5. 5.

    http://www.infragistics.com/products/indigo-studio/storyboards – Indigo Studio, tool for UI prototyping and storyboarding.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the participants of our observational study. The work presented in this chapter is supported by the IWT project AMASS++ (SBO-060051) and the EU FP7 project COnCEPT (610725).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hasselt University – tUL – iMinds, Expertise Centre for Digital Media, Wetenschapspark 2, 3590, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Mieke Haesen, Davy Vanacken, Kris Luyten & Karin Coninx

Authors
  1. Mieke Haesen
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  2. Davy Vanacken
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  3. Kris Luyten
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  4. Karin Coninx
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mieke Haesen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Panos Markopoulos

  2. Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Jean-Bernard Martens

  3. Norwich University of the Arts, Norwich, United Kingdom

    Julian Malins

  4. Expertise Centre for DigitalMedia, Hasselt University - tUL - iMinds, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Karin Coninx

  5. Markopoulou-Peania Avenue, Intrasoft International, Athens, Greece

    Aggelos Liapis

Further Reading

Further Reading

The following sources are recommended for further reading on the topics presented in this chapter.

How talented do you have to be in drawing or sketching in order to create your own storyboards? The following literature explains how you can easily sketch and draw anything you want in a storyboard:

  • Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud (1993)

  • The Back of the Napkin, Dan Roam (2008)

  • See What I Mean: How to Use Comics to Communicate Ideas, Kevin Cheng (2012)

In order to obtain tips and tricks to create storyboards that clarify certain aspects of future systems in User Experience design or UCD processes, you can read the following literature:

  • Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, Bill Buxton (2007)

  • Draw Me a Storyboard: Incorporating Principles and Techniques of Comics to Ease Communication and Artefact Creation in User-Centred Design, Mieke Haesen, Jan Meskens, Kris Luyten, Karin Coninx (2010)

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Haesen, M., Vanacken, D., Luyten, K., Coninx, K. (2016). Storyboards as a Lingua Franca in Multidisciplinary Design Teams. In: Markopoulos, P., Martens, JB., Malins, J., Coninx, K., Liapis, A. (eds) Collaboration in Creative Design. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29155-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29155-0_10

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