Chapter 13: Storyboarding

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Chapter 13Storyboarding
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Objectives

• To introduce and understand storyboarding
  technique for requirements elicitation.

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Storyboard

• A Storyboard is a logical and conceptual
  description of system functionality for a
  specific scenario, including the interaction
  required between the system users and the system.
  
• A Storyboard "tells a specific story". 

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Benefits of Storyboards

• A storyboard serves multiple purposes
• helps understand how requirements impact
  implementation and test
• describes how a system or part of a system is
  intended to work before the fact
• documents system functionality
• Communicate and verify functionality with
  relevant stakeholders
• often not technical or programming savvy

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Benefits of Storyboards (cont.)

• Conversely, storyboards can be used to document
  legacy code
• convey how a system actually works after the
  fact (at a higher level than code)
• GUI storyboards help business users to identify
  issues and gaps early, minimizing the cost of
  rework.
• Generating UI specs, functional specs and
  detailed test scripts saves hundreds of man
  hours.

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Benefits of Storyboards (cont.)

• Because storyboards exist independently of the
  software system they describe, they have many
  advantages over regular prototypes.
• They cannot crash,
• very easy to share with large groups,
• do not give the false impression that the system
  is already developed.
• feedback is easier to accommodate.
• Storyboards, like HCIs and GUIs, communicate
  design notions more clearly to users than use
  cases alone can

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Limitations

• one of the biggest problems with storyboards is
  that they can become outdated very quickly. User
  interfaces originally defined often change over
  time, and that creates a maintenance burden.

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Storyboarding

• Storyboarding describes highlevel system
  functionality
• Provides a logical model that is common to
  implementation and test models
• Typically expressed in the form of activity
  diagrams
• to show workflow or performed actions
• may be partitioned to show control flow between
  different classes
• Usually tied to use cases
• activity partitions correspond to actors

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Storyboarding

• The purpose of storyboarding is to gain an early
  reaction from the users on the concepts proposed
  for the application.
• Storyboards offer an effective technique for
  addressing the "Yes, But" syndrome.
• Storyboarding
• Is extremely inexpensive
• Is user friendly, informal, and interactive
• Provides an early review of the user interfaces
  of the system
• Is easy to create and easy to modify

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Types of Storyboards

• Passive storyboards
• Tell a story to the user.
• Consist of sketches, pictures, screen shots,
  PowerPoint presentations, or sample application
  outputs.
• Walks the user through the storyboard, with a
  "When you do this, this happens" explanation.
• Active storyboards
• Try to make the user see "a movie that hasn't
  actually been produced yet.
• Provide an automated description of the way the
  system behaves in a typical usage or operational
  scenario.
• Interactive storyboards
• Let the user experience the system in as
  realistic a manner as practical.
• Require participation by the user.

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Storyboarding Continuum
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What Storyboards Do

• In software, storyboards are used most often to
  work through the details of the human-to-machine
  interface.
• In this area, generally one of high volatility,
  each user is likely to have a different opinion
  of how the interface should work.
• Storyboards for user-based systems deal with the
  three essential elements of any activity
• Who the players are
• What happens to them
• How it happens

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Tools for Storyboarding

• Passive-storyboarding constructs have been made
  out of tools as simple as paper and pencil or
  Post-it notes.
• More advanced storyboards can be built with
  presentation managers such as PowerPoint.
• Passive, active, and user-interactive storyboards
  have been built with various packages that allow
  fast development of user screens and output
  reports.

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Tips for Storyboarding

• Don't invest too much in a storyboard.
• If you don't change anything, you don't learn
  anything..
• Don't make the storyboard too functional.
• Whenever possible, make the storyboard
  interactive.

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Who uses storyboards?

• The following people use the Storyboards
• system analysts, to explore, clarify, and capture
  the behavioral interaction envisioned by the user
  as part of requirements elicitation.
• user-interface designers, to design the user
  interface and to build a prototype of the user
  interface
• designers of the classes that provide the user
  interface functionality. They use this
  information to understand the system's
  interactions with the user, so they can properly
  design the classes that will implement the user
  interface.
• those who test to test the system's features.
• the manager to plan and follow up the analysis
  design work.

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A Sample Storyboard
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Animating a Storyboard
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Example

• Imagine that in reviewing this visual storyboard,
  our end-user accountant says, "Well, actually,
  billing numbers are divided into two parts, the
  year and a unique number. This drawing shows only
  one field for the account number." Then he adds
  "And by the way, I don't want to enter the year
  all the time, so please initialize this value
  with the current year, which I can overwrite if
  necessary."

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Example (cont.)

• Two things have happened in the scenario just
  described.
• We received feedback about the HCI,
• We also learned about the business logic and
  functionality i.e., in this business,
  accountants archive bills by year.
• With this little mock-up of a screen, we actually
  gained new functional requirements.
• We now see how storyboards not only serve to
  create the presentation layer, but also the
  business layer.
• Storyboards provide the means for validating the
  HCI and can serve as a valuable requirements
  elicitation technique. Therefore, storyboards can
  target two distinct layers in a software
  architecture, the presentation layer and a middle
  layer that represents the object model

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Key Points

• The purpose of storyboarding is to elicit early
  "Yes, But" reactions.
• Storyboards can be passive, active, or
  interactive.
• Storyboards identify the players, explain what
  happens to them, and describe how it happens.
• Make the storyboard sketchy, easy to modify, and
  not shippable.
• Storyboard early and often on each project with
  new or innovative content.