Communicating Concepts through Comics

Friday, April 21, 2006
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
1950 University Avenue, Suite 200
Kevin Cheng and Jane Jao, Yahoo!

This talk, hosted by Yahoo! Research Berkeley, is open to the UC Berkeley community.

At Yahoo!, we've used a number of tools such as requirements documents, personas, user scenarios and storyboards to assist in answering questions like these. However, these tools have yielded mixed and often suboptimal results. For example, requirements and personas were rarely consumed or were interpreted differently between individuals. Traditional storyboards detailing screen by screen progressions created a focus on the interface, rather than the concept.

In one of our upcoming products, we explored a new method of testing and communicating product concepts through the use of comics. Comics are a unique medium between video and static sketches and provide versatility beyond either of the mediums if applied correctly.

During our presentation, we will provide an in depth walkthrough of our process and the advantages that we found comics to have over other methods. In particular, we will discuss how comics can be used to convey subtleties of timing and emphasis and at the same time abstract the details using iconography and art to help the reader relate to the characters and focus on the concepts instead of minute details. Example comics to illustrate each of these areas will be included in the presentation and proceedings.

The flexibility and portability of comics - how we used them to convey multiple paths in scenarios and used Flash to create a portable, distributable version which could be easily consumed online by remote stakeholders, will also be discussed.

To contrast, we will conclude with some of the limitations and challenges we found when using comics, such as the delicate balance of presenting sufficient interface elements to instill discussion but not so much as to distract from the overall concept.

By day, Kevin Cheng is a senior interaction designer with Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Local. By night, he is the co-creator of OK/Cancel, believed to be one of the top five web comics on usability and design. At Yahoo!, Kevin combined his experiences and introduced the use of comics for conveying new product ideas and concepts. Previous to Yahoo!, he worked as a senior human-computer interaction consultant at Trilogy for clients such as Sun Microsystems, British Airways, SGI, and Principal Financial Group and also contracted with Adaptive Path. Kevin holds a Masters degree from University College London in Human Computer Interaction and Ergonomics and has presented at SIGCHI, UXNet London, Hong Kong UPA and will also be speaking at this year’s South by Southwest (SxSW). His work in communicating interaction design issues through comics has appeared in numerous textbooks as well as the bimonthly Interactions magazine.

Jane Jao is an interaction designer at Yahoo! where she has worked on properties such as Yahoo! Mobile, Yahoo! Maps, and Yahoo! Local where she was instrumental in evolving the product from a search tool to a community oriented guide. Prior to Yahoo!, she worked with several web consultancies including frog design. Her clients included Adobe, Alias|Wavefront, and San Francisco International Airport. Through her decade of design experience, Jane has helped develop and employ a wide array of storytelling and prototyping techniques for projects which ranged from mobile applications to retail floor designs to museum kiosks. Currently, she is exploring alternative means of effectively conveying and testing product concepts including methods such as comics, video and photographic storyboards.

Last updated:

March 26, 2015