Communicating using StoryBoards

In the fast changing world of communication tools, wars between iPhone and Google nexus, Twitter versus Facebook versus LinkedIn, communication tools have lost their old world charm. Gone are the days when we picked up a pen to leave post-it notes. Today we twit and SMS the note directly in the person's hand and we share our moods via messenger status and Facebook one liners.

However, in our struggle to lead a normal life, to complete work 18 hours work in 12 hours and rush back to family and friends - we get caught up with the communication tools and forget to pay attention to our communication itself – often we don’t even realize when we are communicating. Nor do we realize with whom and how we are communicating.

Today, we take pride in saying that we storyboard using MS PowerPoint, MS Word, MS Excel or Captivate and so on and so forth.

But in all this wheeling and dealings, how many of us remember that our SB is also a communication tool.

The bows and whistles of the tool used to communicate are unimportant. What is important for us is to know and understand that the storyboard we create is the communication we are having. And that it is not one-to-one but one-to-many communication that we are having.

Each storyboard essentially has the following elements:

Placeholder for images: For reference images

GD instruction box: To provide instruction about the visuals to the GDs

Placeholder for SME/Client/ID/GD queries: To get our doubt cleared, to get the content validated, to ask for enhancements

Placeholder for VO script: To provide script

With every storyboard we are communicating with the following departments:

Clients: To show them how we will treat their content

Graphic designers: To inform them what visuals need to be created and how they will be built upon screen by screen, animation steps, reference images for visuals to be created. Visual style of the storyboard and visual impact we are trying to create.

Programmers: To inform them how the slides will interact with each other, whether the flow of content is linear or branched, whether a learner can skip a question or do we force them to answer before moving ahead.

Audio artist: By giving them the script to be narrated and how they need to narrate it.

Instructional designers (lead/reviewers): To show them what treatment is selected and how it will be built upon.

Project manager: By adding version control we inform them how much time it took us to close our communication on a particular storyboard.

And last but not the least…

With yourself: When you go through your old storyboard you realize how much you have learned. You come to know of the many different treatments you have successfully developed. This will give you the confidence to take more risk and have more fun in your daily life.

So go ahead open your old storyboards - see how you communicated in the past, see how far you have come, see what you still need to improve upon, laugh at yourself and learn about yourself in the process.

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