Idea narratives

Ideas per se count for little. They need to be communicated. And the narrative is a powerful means of expressing ideas. One of the vehicles for this is story boarding which helps ideators envision their ideas, or bringing the idea to life. For 2D design ideas, the simple and effective way of telling a story is using words and images where the freehand sketch in particular is a quick and immediate tool to help articulate ideas. For 3D design ideas, the hand-drawn paper prototype, or sketch model, is equally a fast and direct way to communicating ideas. But whatever the ideation tool, it is important to communicate the story at the right level of fidelity. For example, the sketch mode is typically low fidelity: If the narrative is set at a too high fidelity level, say including details of finish, this might distract the audience from the core idea. After all, the idea is a proposal for what might be, not what is.