Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Idea stage, Élise and Karim tell Léa's day in four frames to test whether owners even want the offline promise before writing code.
What the team took away
Shown to 6 owners: 5 reacted to frame 4, not frame 3. The value is the owner's Sunday, not the technician's basement. The pitch changed before a line of code.
How to run it
Preparation
Invite the product team, four to six people. Drawing skill is not required and saying so at the invite removes half the anxiety.
Send the persona and the problem statement the day before. The storyboard tells one person's story, not a feature's.
Prepare the board with two rows of four empty frames, a caption line under each. Put a stock of stick figures and speech bubbles on the side for people who freeze in front of a blank frame.
Agenda
10 min
Set the scene Read the persona aloud. Agree on frame 1 (where is the person, what just happened) and frame 8 (what does their life look like once the problem is solved). Write both captions first.
25 min
Fill the middle In pairs, sketch frames 2 to 7: the moment they notice the problem, the moment they meet the product, the moment it works. Stick figures and arrows. Caption in the person's words, first person.
20 min
Present Each pair reads their storyboard aloud in under two minutes without pointing at the drawings. If the story does not hold without the pictures, the captions are missing.
20 min
Merge Pick the strongest frame for each position across the pairs. Rewrite the captions so the eight frames read as one story. Cut any frame that shows a feature instead of a moment.
10 min
Read as a user One person who did not draw reads the final storyboard cold. Note every question they ask: those are the gaps in the concept.
5 min
Close Export the eight frames as one image. Decide who shows it to three users this week and what question they ask after frame 8.
Pitfalls
Do not draw screens. If a frame shows a UI, replace it with the person's face and what they are doing.
Do not let good drawers dominate. Set a rule: stick figures only, and give the pen to the person who least wants it.
Do not end at 'they use the product'. Frame 8 is what is different in their life, or the story has no point.
Afterwards
The storyboard goes in front of three to five users as a desirability test before anything is built: 'is this you, would you want this?' Their answers feed the assumption map. If the story holds, it becomes the brief for the Crazy 8's or the design sprint.