Storyboarding 🎞️ Prompts

SUMMARY

Purpose: Storyboarding (also known as experience mapping) visualises a user's journey with a product or service by mapping their goals, emotions, actions, and touchpoints across time. 

Design Thinking Phase: Empathise and Define 
Time: 45–60 min session + 1–2 hours analysis 
Difficulty: ⭐⭐ 

When to use: When aligning stakeholders on the end-to-end user journey When identifying pain points in multi-step experiences  When exploring early product concepts or redesigning features

What it is

Storyboarding is a collaborative UX method used to visually represent a user's interaction with a product or service over time. It combines narrative thinking, visualisation, and journey mapping to reveal a complete experience — including emotions, context, goals, and touchpoints — at each step of the journey.

📺 Video by NNgroup. Embedded for educational reference.

Why it matters

Storyboarding helps UX teams and stakeholders understand the complete ecosystem of user interaction. It brings user research to life, aligns teams on shared narratives, uncovers CX gaps, and primes ideation with real behavioural context — beyond just static personas or analytics.

By grounding solutions in detailed emotional and behavioural journeys, teams stay user-centred instead of feature-driven.

When to use 

• During early discovery to clarify current-state experiences
• After usability testing to visualise pain point insights
• In cross-functional workshops to ideate around user flow improvements

Benefits

• Rich Insights: Helps uncover user needs that aren’t visible in metrics.
• Flexibility: Works across various project types and timelines.
• User Empathy: Deepens understanding of behaviours and motivations.

How to use it

1. Define your target user type and experience scope (e.g., onboarding, account recovery).
2. Collect data from interviews, analytics, usability tests, or prior mapping activities.
3. Create a horizontal map with steps/phases through the journey, such as “trigger”, “search”, “engage”, “complete”.
4. For each step, capture:     
   • User goals
   • Key actions/interactions
   • Emotions (e.g., confident, lost, frustrated)
   • Touchpoints or channels used (e.g., mobile, email, chatbot)
5. Use simple sketches, sticky notes, or digital tools to visualise the flow sequentially.
6.  Review with stakeholders and annotate problems or opportunity areas.

Example Output

Here’s a fictional storyboard output for a user retrieving a forgotten password:

• Step 1: Trigger — User tries to log in and realises they've forgotten their password. Emotion: Frustration.
• Step 2: Action — Clicks “Forgot Password”. Receives reset email. Emotion: Hopeful.
• Step 3: Barrier — Email goes to the spam folder and is missed. Emotion: Confused, annoyed.
• Step 4: Resolution — Finds the email, resets password successfully. Emotion: Relief.

Common Pitfalls

• Too generic: Avoid generic “happy paths” — highlight real friction points and emotions users feel.
• Tool over process: Don't focus on beautifying slides over gathering behavioural insight.
• No follow-through: Ensure learnings are translated into design actions, not just documentation.

10 Design-Ready AI Prompts for Storyboarding – UX/UI Edition

How These Prompts Work (C.S.I.R. Framework)

Each of the templates below follows the C.S.I.R. method — a proven structure for writing clear, effective prompts that get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any other LLM.

C.S.I.R. stands for:

• Context: Who you are and the UX situation you're working in
• Specific Info: Key design inputs, tasks, or constraints the AI should consider
• Intent: What you want the AI to help you achieve
• Response Format: The structure or format you want the AI to return (e.g. checklist, table, journey map)

Level up your career with smarter AI promptsGet templates used by UX leaders — no guesswork, just results.Design faster, research smarter, and ship with confidence.First one’s free. Unlock all 10 by becoming a member.

Prompt Template 1: “Map an End-to-End User Scenario for Storyboarding”

Map an End-to-End User Scenario for Storyboarding

Context: You are a Senior UX designer preparing a storyboard for a first-time buying flow on an e-commerce platform.
Specific Info: The flow includes product search, filtering, cart, checkout, and confirmation. Known frictions from past research include drop-off on filtering and frustration over shipping costs.
Intent: Generate a detailed experience map that outlines behaviours, emotions, and touchpoints per stage.
Response Format: Provide a table with five columns — Step, Goal, User Action, Emotion, and Touchpoint.

If anything about the user type, goals, or device context is unclear, ask clarifying questions before proceeding.
Then, suggest a follow-up workshop activity to validate or refine the map.