Creating a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit

Creating a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit

Creating a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit

Creating a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit

The brief

I led a project to create a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit for the Anaplan Product team. This kit aimed to give designers and product managers the ability to tell compelling user stories that would ensure that the products meet the needs of their users and create shared understanding amongst the team’s stakeholders.

The kit was created in figma and lucidchart, and was quickly and easily customisable. This gave the team a quick tool to turn their lo-fidelity storyboards into shareable high-fidelity designs, with existing internal personas.

The brief

I led a project to create a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit for the Anaplan Product team. This kit aimed to give designers and product managers the ability to tell compelling user stories that would ensure that the products meet the needs of their users and create shared understanding amongst the team’s stakeholders.

The kit was created in figma and lucidchart, and was quickly and easily customisable. This gave the team a quick tool to turn their lo-fidelity storyboards into shareable high-fidelity designs, with existing internal personas.

The brief

I led a project to create a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit for the Anaplan Product team. This kit aimed to give designers and product managers the ability to tell compelling user stories that would ensure that the products meet the needs of their users and create shared understanding amongst the team’s stakeholders.

The kit was created in figma and lucidchart, and was quickly and easily customisable. This gave the team a quick tool to turn their lo-fidelity storyboards into shareable high-fidelity designs, with existing internal personas.

The brief

I led a project to create a bespoke UX Storyboarding kit for the Anaplan Product team. This kit aimed to give designers and product managers the ability to tell compelling user stories that would ensure that the products meet the needs of their users and create shared understanding amongst the team’s stakeholders.

The kit was created in figma and lucidchart, and was quickly and easily customisable. This gave the team a quick tool to turn their lo-fidelity storyboards into shareable high-fidelity designs, with existing internal personas.

Why

Storyboards help visualize UX ideas, problems, and solutions. With the user as the protagonist, a storyboard can be a compelling tool to use to increase empathy, understanding and motivation.

Context

UX Designers use storyboards to provide additional context to our teams and stakeholders. Using images makes the story memorable and quick to understand.

Figma footage

Figma footage

Process

I began with research: exploring competitor software for storyboard creation, evaluating the needs of the product managers and the designers who'd use the kit, and exploring the asset creation within our tight timeframe.

Low fi vs High fi

I explored a few design styles for the kit - low fi sketches, which were interpreted well from rough doodles on sticky notes, but were more time sensitive to create

Figma kit

I chose figma for software to host the kit. As it offers reusable components and variant options, this was the best choice for our team who would collaborate a-synchronously.

Feedback

From Product Management:

  • PMs initially emphasised concerns about storyboards (specifically “we can’t draw”), but felt positive with the addition of the illustration library.

  • "We get lost in the details sometimes and forget that there’s a different audience that needs to understand what we’re building"

  • "The stakeholders that are not involved in the day-to-day need an up-level that is clear, and I think this delivers on that"

  • "I think our engineers would like this. I spend so much time repeating myself, but I think this could reduce the amount of time I spend articulating problem, value prop, etc. I think this is extremely valuable"

Results

The product team were asked to deliver storyboards to provide leadership context when developing a yearly roadmap.

My storyboarding kit provided each feature team a simple and quick to use process for telling user stories.


With the help of this kit, 30 Product Managers created unique storyboards that were delivered in two weeks. These were subsequently presented at the global conference in 2023.

© 2023 Sophie Powell-Hall

© 2023 Sophie Powell-Hall

© 2023 Sophie Powell-Hall

© 2023 Sophie Powell-Hall