For today’s interview, let’s uncover Bukhari’s point of view on how mood boards and storyboards drive the art direction in e-learning content development.
Hi, Bukhari. Thanks for taking the time to share some insights with us on how you lead the team’s art direction for our customers. Firstly, can you tell us what is an e-learning mood board?
Hi, Sal. Let’s get this started! Well, you know how we usually kick-start projects by asking our customers to decide on a visual design for their e-learning project. This is the challenging point as we work together to confirm elements such as font styles, logos, corporate identity, images, colors, icon styles, button styles, and many more.
We use a mood board to pull together these key elements so our customers can clearly understand their e-learning’s art direction. In short, an e-learning mood board is a type of collage comprising font styles, colour schemes, and sample images or sample avatar illustrations to showcase the visual design or look and feel of the e-learning module for customers.
That’s a very clear explanation! So, care to share some examples of how an e-learning mood board looks like?
Sure, here is one of our mood board for the diversity demo.
Page 1 of a Mood Board
What is the difference between a mood board and a storyboard?
Mood boards are visual deliverables used in the e-learning content development process. Let me explain in more detail.
Mood Board
Alright, so picture this: a mood board is like setting the vibe for your project, capturing all those feelings and aesthetics you’re aiming for. It’s basically the emotional roadmap. Using an e-learning mood board ensures our customers are on the same page aesthetically, so we all have a feel for the design of the course up-front. Based on this “feeling”, we can invest design effort in storyboarding phase.
Here, let me show you this example of a mood board – a collage of images, text, materials, color palettes, typography, and other design elements that communicate a design’s intended mood or vibe. It captures and clusters creative ideas quickly which may include actual screenshots and wireframes, color palettes, creative inspiration (photographs, videos, etc.), emotional inputs and outputs, comparable and competitive applications, and others.
Page 2 of a Mood Board
Storyboard
On the other hand, a storyboard is a sequence of slides in Microsoft PowerPoint that illustrate the step-by-step journey through a user experience. It is like a comic strip for your design so customers can have a visually guided tour of how an e-learning content behaves in the hands of its learners. Storyboards showcase user actions, reactions, and emotions at each touchpoint. Once the customers are satisfied with the storyboard, they are required to sign it off before we can work on the production/animation.
Overall, storyboards map out the user journey of an e-learning content, focusing on instructional of the content, while mood boards present the design’s emotional and visual ambiance.
Examples Showing the Storyboard
Since we are going to do storyboarding for our customers, why do we need a mood board?
For projects that we have aligned with customers about the “feels” or “vibe” of the project, we can prepare a storyboard without needing a mood board. So, we use this workflow for existing customers:
Content Development Workflow for Existing Customers
But for projects that are either a pilot or first-time development for the customers, we will introduce the “Prepare Mood Board” process for them like this workflow.
Content Development Workflow for Potential/New Customers
As you can see in the storyboard sample, it is filled with artwork illustrations. If the “feel” of artwork is not correct at the beginning, it can cause inconvenience from both our side and customers. A huge amount of design effort is going to be wasted at this stage. We hope to reduce or avoid this risk by introducing a mood board to close the design gap.
Before we end this interview, what is your last say on why are mood board and storyboard essential in e-learning development?
For better collaboration and convenience for our customers, especially for pilot projects, I believe that mood boards are crucial in guiding the art direction of our e-learning projects. Simply put, mood boards set the vibe, creating an emotional connection, while storyboards provide the roadmap for a visually engaging e-learning experience. Both have their importance to make the content not just understandable but also memorable. In essence, mood boards and storyboards are the dynamic duo that ensures effective and captivating e-learning development! We believe that this workflow is beneficial for ease of collaboration besides working efficiently at the early stages of e-learning content development.