Confronting the Discursive–Material Power of Storyboards: Toward Participatory Storyboarding

Paper Title

Confronting the Discursive–Material Power of Storyboards: Toward Participatory Storyboarding

Publication Info

• Topic area: Participatory design and critical examination of storyboarding in HCI and UX practices.
• Keywords: Participatory storyboarding, HCI, UX design, community-based design, speculative design, storytelling, collaboration, learning, design justice, sociotechnical futures.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Storyboards, widely used in HCI and UX design, are often treated as neutral tools for visualizing user flows and interactions, but their discursive and material power in shaping design problems, solutions, and futures is underexamined. Current practices often exclude impacted communities from the storyboarding process.
• Significance: Addressing this gap is crucial for fostering more inclusive and socially just design practices that center the voices and lived experiences of those most affected by technological systems.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work in HCI has explored storyboards as tools for ideation and communication but has largely overlooked their epistemic and political dimensions. Participatory and critical design traditions highlight the need to decenter expert knowledge and include marginalized communities in design processes, but specific methodologies for participatory storyboarding remain underdeveloped.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Participatory storyboarding—a collaborative process where impacted communities co-create storyboards to visualize sociotechnical alternatives and articulate their lived experiences and visions for the future.
• Novelty:
  1. Reframes storyboarding as a relational, political, and situated practice rather than a neutral design tool.
  2. Demonstrates how participatory storyboarding can serve as a site for storytelling, collaboration, and learning.
  3. Proposes a methodological shift to redistribute the power of storyboarding to historically marginalized communities.
  4. Offers practical insights for scaffolding participation and rethinking storyboarding in HCI and UX education.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Conducted a participatory speculative design project with Black older adults and youth in Detroit.
  2. Organized workshops to introduce storyboarding techniques and facilitate collaborative creation of storyboards.
  3. Used tools like pre-segmented panels, sticky notes, and visual-narrative tutorials to lower barriers to participation.
  4. Analyzed the process and outcomes through situational analysis, focusing on storytelling, collaboration, and learning dynamics.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Participants co-created storyboards that visualized sociotechnical alternatives for community safety, centering themes like care, shared spaces, and reimagined surveillance technologies.
  • Storyboarding facilitated intergenerational storytelling, collaborative problem-solving, and personal growth among participants.
  • Participants gained new skills and perspectives, such as understanding the design process and envisioning their own creative futures.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Unlike traditional storyboarding practices, participatory storyboarding redistributed representational and epistemic authority, enabling collective self-representation and challenging dominant design narratives.
  • Fostered deeper engagement and mutual learning among community members, bridging generational and experiential divides.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Conducted two 2-hour workshops with 15 participants (7 seniors, 8 youth) and follow-up interviews to evaluate the process and outcomes.
  • Used qualitative analysis methods, including situational mapping and coding of transcripts, fieldnotes, and artifacts.
• Limitations and future work:
  • The approach requires significant facilitation and resources, which may limit scalability.
  • Future work could explore how participatory storyboarding can be adapted to other contexts and integrated into broader design workflows.

Summary

This paper critically examines the discursive and material power of storyboards in HCI and UX design and proposes participatory storyboarding as a method to redistribute this power to impacted communities. Through a case study with Black older adults and youth in Detroit, the study demonstrates how participatory storyboarding fosters storytelling, collaboration, and learning, enabling communities to articulate alternative sociotechnical futures. The findings highlight the potential of this approach to challenge dominant design narratives and inform more inclusive design practices. Practical implications include scaffolding participation and rethinking storyboarding pedagogy in HCI and UX education to center ethics, accountability, and relational practice.