Storyboarding Sucks

There’s a lot of debate in the eLearning field about storyboarding.  Is it valuable?  Problematic?  Unnecessary?  While there are benefits, it seems that for every person who swears by detailed storyboarding, there is someone who is against it.  It seems that much of the charge against storyboarding surrounds the ideas posed by Michael Allen and the team at Allen Interactions.  Critical of storyboarding because of it’s tendency to inspire linear eLearning as well as the fact that it is too much unnecessary work, they view rapid development as more beneficial. 

So, which is right for you: storyboarding or rapid development?  Of course, there’s always the option of none (or both) of the above.

Why Storyboard

Taking a step back, both proponents and opponents of storyboarding can likely agree on the benefits of a storyboard.  Storyboarding helps to get your ideas on paper.  Once recorded, you can communicate these ideas with others involved in the project in order to hone the best product possible.  SMEs, reviewers, peers, and leaders can all benefit from this form of communication and alignment that can happen early in a project, rather than waiting until a finished product is available before reviewing.

Is this a storyboard?

Is what you are doing considered storyboarding or rapid development?  Frankly, it doesn’t matter.  As long as what you are doing meets your communication, collaboration, and approval needs, then it doesn’t matter what you call it.  Some sort of document that allows people to understand what the finished product is going to look like without the investment of time into full development will suffice.

Just because you aren’t using a multi-segmented document that is outside the development scope of your module doesn’t mean that you aren’t storyboarding (or rapid prototyping).  If you have a PowerPoint deck with images similar to what your finished product will be with your narration in the slide notes, and it meets your communication and collaboration needs, that’s all that matters.  Honestly, this is the sort of storyboarding (or probably more accurately: rapid prototyping) I leverage because it allows me to create the documents while staying within my typical workflow for rapid development.  Initially working in PowerPoint allows me to refine there and easily transition to Captivate when the time comes.

Getting Interactive

The Allen Interactions critique that storyboarding naturally fits linear thinking is evident.  Effort has to be made to design interactions as a subset of the storyboard.  This works fairly easily for branching modules, but fully interactive, game-like modules require a different type of design documentation and rapid prototyping that help the others involved to understand what each component of the module will do.  One possible way around this is to design interactive elements prior to storyboarding the full module.  When thinking of the best way to present the information for learner retention, interactive elements should be identified in order to ensure that their content doesn’t get dumped into a linear knowledge dump.  Rather, taking the key material and creating interactive elements around it will allow the learner to work with, process, and focus on this key information, leading to retention.

Is storyboarding or rapid prototyping better?  It depends on your situation.  As long as you have the ability to understand, communicate, collaborate, and seek approval for the content in some form before you are fully invested (heart, time, and money) in the module, you are poised for success within your development process.