Communicating Concepts Through Comics
[Live Blogged Notes from UX Week 2006]
[With Kevin Chang of OK/Cancel and Yahoo!]
So what do you think of when you hear community? They thought about this when they redesigned Yahoo! Local. But what community meant when they asked developers and managers and designers and everyone else was a million different things.
Concept > Discover > Definition > Refinement > Development
There are different methods to think about what your users are thinking.
- User Profile
- Use Case
- Wireframe - but what are you doing building wireframes if you don't even have concept!
- Video
- Animation
- Interactive Prototype
- Comics
Think about the skills and resources needed for each option.
So comics. What do we mean by this? Use them to tell a story about how people will use your product or service.
Start with chickenscratches on the white board.
Then build basic use cases, very basic. And then build the comic.
So this is a good way to communicate internally but you can also so it to users.
Ask users to mark it up as useful, confusing, complicated, or appealing with different colored markers.
[Video of users going through this]
This gets people thinking about if they would use it, or their friends would use it, etc.
[intermission with an activity. Pass your name badge to the right and draw the person whose name page you have in a minute.]
Anyone read Orbiting the Giant Hairball?
Who is an artist?
If you ask starting in first grade you see a logarithmic drop. Everyone can draw!
Comics communicate concepts
Why are comic so great? Why use this medium? USPS has been sending comics to people to tell them information. Comics are a very accessible medium that quickly reaches an audience. They beg to be read.
Think how storyboards are used in movies. They are also used in product design.
They are approachable and fun like we want our products to be.
If you've read Understanding Comics you'll get this, if not, you need to!
Communication
Comics are a universal language above language or text. Think of a drawing of a dog with a speech bubble at its butt. You know that it is farting, so does a little kid who can't read and who has never seen a comic.
Think about how abstract you are being. Maybe show a screen that a person is using. Maybe show just enough and leave the rest to the imagination. What matters is what the user is doing, what they want to do.
Comics are also a great means of expression. Think of words in speech bubbles. Then add art with facial expressions. This gives emotion and context.
The expression can come from body language. Think Will Eisner's book Comics and Sequential Art.
Divide things between panels, use a panel to communicate change. Look at small changes to convey emotion.
- Communication
- Imagination
- Expression
- Motion
- Iteration
Remember, you can draw comics. You can draw comics to communicate comics.
Think Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work.
To draw people you can trace over photos. You can use standard avatars but this is mostly good as a starting point for tracing.
Tools:
- Tarquin Engine
- Storyboard Artist
- Comic Life
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