One section in Save The Cat is called “Chairman of the Board” and talks about a screenwriting tool called “The Board”.
Have a great piece of dialogue? Write it on a card and stick it on The Board where you think it might go. Have an idea for a chase sequence? Deal up them cards and take a looksee. And talk about creating a pressure-free zone! No more blank pages. It’s all just little bitty index card-sized pages. And who can’t fill up an index card?
Thinking about a collection of cards sounds pretty close to the cliche UX portfolio image except with index cards instead of post-its. There’s plenty of creativity in UX, but designers follow some kind of process to their work. Design sprints break the design process down into steps that a team can follow to select an idea and prototype the solution to a problem. Each step acts like a function, something goes in and something else comes out based on the input.
-
Understand: Existing knowledge goes in and is appended to everyone’s knowledge
-
Diverge: Knowledge goes in and many ideas come out
-
Decide: Many ideas come in and the best one comes out
-
Prototype: A storyboard goes in and a clickable flow comes out
-
Test: A clickable flow goes in with users and valuable feedback comes out
I’ve participated in design sprints and used it as a process to follow on solo projects. I’ll be thinking about structure and process as I go along. It’d be good to have ideas broken up by how much time I’ll have for the day.
Each post can have one thought. That might be how I need to break things down. I’m going to try creating a board for some posts I’m writing to see how it goes. First, I need to finish reading this chapter.