BACKGROUND & MY ROLE
Project Overview: Storyboard for initial-stage concept
Background Intro.
Essilor International is the world's largest manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses. As the world's leading ophthalmic optics company, Essilor designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of lenses to improve and protect eyesight. Its mission is to improve lives by improving sight.
During my internship, I worked in Center for Innovation & Technology in China, Digital Solution Team as a User Experience Designer and collaboration with Innovation Manager, Product Manager, Ophthalmologist, Engineer and Marketing from R&D Department for several projects.
My Role & Impact for Storyboard Project
When I joined the team, the company was embarking on digital transformation and building a new concept for juvenile myopia digital service. And company’s internal team conducted the workshop for the concept discussion but still was ambiguity.
*Some information is removed or modified due to confidentiality. If you would like to know more about the project, please contact me at youqi9793@gmail.com.
DESIGN PROCESS
Storyboard sketch, not just sketch.
Storyboard is not just sketch and tell a story, also need to clearly convey information to different stakeholders through components in the storyboard like the scenario, user’s pain point and the tool. So, the research for the context and have a clear understanding for the concept is important, especially for the eyecare industry with many professional knowledge.
And I did the following steps to ensure the storyboard was clear for cross-functional team members and helped them stay on the same page regarding the concept.
Step 1 - Understand the context
For the concept of juvenile myopia, there is considerable professional knowledge I need to familiarize myself with.
So to visualize the idea in the right way and ensure the flow and tool detail of the storyboard are easy to understand for my audience, I conducted thorough research about juvenile myopia according to the workshop content. Also, I experienced the whole eye exam process to make me have empathy and understand the user flow.
Step 2 - Convert concept to Storyboard
Based on the understanding of professional knowledge about juvenile myopia, the user flow structure emerged in my mind. Still, some ambiguous content of the digital tools in the user flow should be refined.
So, I reached out to the ophthalmologist in the R&D department to discuss and explore how to express the eyecare content in digital tools for users.
Step 3 - Present Storyboard to cross-functional team
After completing the original version of the storyboard in my sketchbook, I digitized it and Initiated the workshop with different stakeholders. Presenting the intelligible storyboard help team align the comprehension and propose new thoughts for the concept based on the existing storyboard.
Step 4 - Iterate based on the feedback and then, deliver for testing
Through the workshop, I got and took the suggestion and iterated the storyboard be the final version to make it could be a good testing material for external partner in the next step.
Besides what has been shown in the project, I also worked on other side projects (NDA) 👇
💫 Competitive landscape surveys for the new concept.
💫 UX/UI design solution of measuring lens prescription online.
REFLECTION
From this internship, I learned…
Re-understanding Storyboard
As the design industry matures, there are more and more assistive tools to help designers complete artifacts, like the template for the storyboard. But these kinds of tools usually help designers express what’s the story rather than how the solution makes the story work, which is hard as a language to tell with the stakeholders from cross-discipline. So, put designers’ foot in other stakeholders’ shoes and create a storyboard easy-to-follow is crucial for product development in the future.
