Getting the full picture

Storyboarding our way to Stand Alone Moodle

Abstract

The process of storyboarding has long been used in the cinematic industry for scoping out, through sketches and illustrations, the sequence of narrative activities for film production. More recently, storyboarding has been used for user experience design, multimedia prototyping and mobile app development. This paper describes how researchers in a project team used storyboarding as part of a User-Centred Software Engineering (UCSE) approach to determine stakeholders' needs when designing an internet-independent version of Moodle. Storyboarding proved to be an effective way to capture a wide range of functionality requirements and align project outcome perspectives for the 'ideal product'. Most importantly, the storyboarding process enabled early detection of knowledge gaps and skillsets so that strategies could be devised to bridge the gaps. This paper will outline the storyboarding process, the gaps unearthed and the strategies employed to overcome identified skills and knowledge shortages.