Lay good foundations.
Thorough storyboarding is an essential element to any digital content creation. It can be likened to laying the foundations of a house. Yes, it does take a little longer upfront and you might uncover a few issues you didn’t expect – but you’ll iron them out sooner rather later. Trust me, later means more expensive. Only when the foundations are laid properly, can you start to add the bricks, or in the case of digital training content – the media.
Remember – this isn’t their day job.
So why is this critical process very often overlooked? The answers to this will certainly divide opinion. Here’s a few key reasons. The first reason is that we can’t expect a client to thoroughly understand our digital creation process. It’s therefore unrealistic to expect a client to deliver a good storyboard without any, or very limited support. Sending a template with a brief explanation of where to add content doesn’t cut it I’m afraid.
Another reason is a willingness from the production team to develop the content, maintain a happy client and not push back too hard for fear of frustrating an already busy client, after all – this isn’t their day job.
Finally, (and we’re speaking from experience) often the detail and extent of the storyboarding process is overlooked during the scoping stage. Simply put, the client didn’t expect to invest this much time and the development team haven’t allocated a cost and resource for it. Now we have ourselves a good old fashioned stand off…what entails after this is a delayed project and some awkward conversations.
