Storyboards are great when you’re working through a new problem or challenge with your data. In a storyboard, we sketch out what questions we have for our data, how we’ll use what we’ve got and what data we need next.

Because they’re a rough sketch rather than high fidelity, they focus the conversation on what really matters, the why of the work. Comparatively, once we’re working with an actual visualization, we’ll be focusing on design elements like color or once we’re dealing in actual data, we’ll be focusing on that.

As a simple visual tool, they get everyone on the same page to make sure what we’re doing is useful and valuable. They also help flesh out roadblocks early – for example, where we might need more data.

Here’s an example of what that looks like for a common visitor attraction concern – is retail performance effected by crowding or capacity?