Here is example of an experience diagram. This is a day in a life that focused around sustainability. I did it and it’s about my Monday through Friday daily cycle. I did it at a workshop last year put on by Uday of Sonic Rim.
Things to notice:
The use of pictures and words. Hand rendered and preproduced images. Preproduced images allow for easier comparison between different people’s day in life. A line goes across the page showing begining to end of day.
Here is a photo of a whiteboard storyboard sketch I worked on with Michael Blakesley and Haya Gaviola. We needed to show what the experience would be for someone as they planned and traveled to and from Baltimore. It has various modes of transportation. We needed to show real life, on-line, mobile, and even different actors. From this I suggest 3 things for making better Experience Storyboards
1. More People
This has people in it. I feel more comfortable building experience diagrams that have people in them. We are most often building these experiences for people, so why not put them in there.
2. Feelings in Thought Bubbles
And I don’t mean just goals. People (and personas) should have both Goals andFEELINGS. Too often we reduce people down to their utilitarian goals. In order to make sure you are having feelings, don’t focus so much on what people are saying, but what they are thinking – so there should be many “thought-bubbles” around people’s heads and not so many word bubbles.
3. Very Few Screnshots
Also notice, this has no screen shots in it of any interface. It is focused on the the person, not the interface.
I have a message out to Haya to see if she has a copy of the final version which is pretty sweet looking. If I get it I will post it here.
References
Example of Experience Storyboard by Geoff Alday
Example from Sun.com Customer Experience
Example Nate Ball’s Tunnel Experience
Last week I was up in Toronto and participated in an Innovation Parkour invented and hosted by Michael Dila and Matthew Milan. This is my group’s poster board from the innovation parkour exercise. We were constrained by time and decided to go hand-drawn.
Interesting things about it.
-You can see more than one perspective (like some architecture drawings) One perspective is birds eye view, from the top down, the other perspective is a side view giving elevation.
-We were “pitching” the idea so the poster even included some crib notes for us to hit on during the presentation.
-This was an attempt at an experience diagram to explain to other people what kind of experience we were trying to plan.
Group Members
Peter Flaschner
Dennis Schleicher
Patrick Keenan
John Worren