In the early stages of software development, establishing a common vision among stakeholders is a challenge, especially with unclear requirements. Especially in agile environments, requirements are elaborated highly iterative and change throughout the agile process. This paper presents Cartooneering, a graphical scenario-building technique based on proto-personas and comics. It is a lightweight approach to visualize different user journeys. It enables collaborative stakeholder discussions about their ideas and goals without the need for detailed and complex use cases on a visual level that everyone can understand, thereby enhancing their understanding of the overall product. The adaptability of comics enables iterative refinement of scenarios during the design process. Digital or paperbased elements like figures, objects, or speech bubbles enable gradual adaptations to the vision design without starting over. They also facilitate feedback integration from different stakeholder perspectives. The approach demonstrates agility in refining scenarios, fostering clear communication, and promoting a shared understanding among stakeholders. We share our experience and best practices in the form of design guidelines regarding the use of vision comics for requirement identification, validation, and the integration of multiple perspectives on a vision.
At the start of software development projects, the challenge to establish a common and shared
vision among stakeholders must be solved [
We will address the following questions:
RQ1: How can we encourage discussions among stakeholders to facilitate scenario discussions among heterogeneous stakeholders for visioning?
RQ2: How can storytelling with comics be successfully applied in practice?
RQ3: What guidelines for visual representation support the use of comics among stakeholders?
This paper is structured as follows, Section 2 gives an overview on the related work and Section 3 gives an introduction into Cartooneering and an overview of our applications. The results are presented in Section 4 and discussed in Section 5. The paper concludes with Section 6, the conclusion and drawing directions for future work.
Visions for software projects can be created using different approaches. Some methods, such as
SAP Scenes, involve compiling narratives using paper figures to construct a cohesive story [
In software development and data visualization, the use of cartoons as a storytelling
technique has been the focus of several studies, specifically, the application of cartoons to improve
communication and understanding of complex concepts. In the context of data visualization
and business processes Dospan and Khrykova [
The landscape of research through design, texture mapping, and network dynamics in Software Engineering (SE) is enriched by Dylan et al. [16], who introduce comics as a creative medium for representing research through design processes. Additionally, Sýkora et al. [17] explore practical texture mapping techniques for hand-drawn cartoon animations. Sumi [18] investigates hyper-comic representation as a contextual navigation aid to enhance user interaction and understanding. In the realm of user research and dynamic network narratives, Haughney [19] focuses on using comics as a means to communicate qualitative insights.
The existing literature contributes to the growing body of research on the effective use of comics as an impactful storytelling technique. The integration of visual elements and storytelling through cartoons proves to be a multifaceted and engaging approach for communicating complex information.
To collaboratively define a clear and understandable vision, a flexible approach that allows open discussion among stakeholders is required, one that includes communication of the vision to the development team. Various creativity and user journey methods, as well as story-building practices, were evaluated. We have identified the use of proto-personas2 and visually presented stories of the customer journey in the form of comics as a good method for discussing scenarios. Since personas can appear in multiple comics and interact with other personas along their journeys, a network of comics is created. These comics can easily be updated in the iterative agile process. We identified several guidelines and best practices that form “Cartooneering”.
Proto-personas are assumed to be the basis for starting with Cartooneering. Each of them has at least one goal to achieve during their customer journey. Other personas may be involved in this journey, if they interact somehow, to achieve a positive outcome. This means that the solution scenario of the goal will be depicted from at least two different perspectives respectively customer journeys. Figure 1 shows the mentioned key elements (proto-personas, customer journey and the network of comics/stories) of Cartooneering.
Several of our own challenges were solved. For example, personas and empathy maps, lack compact visualizations for stakeholder discussions. Scribble-based methods are fast, but too abstract, and mockups, while accurate at the design level, were challenging for less experienced 2 More information about proto-personas: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona-types/ participants. Cartooneering emerged as a method for representing the protagonist's vision. It differs from storyboarding in that it supports heterogeneous stakeholder groups and focuses on the joint development of a vision across the project. In contrast to storyboards, Cartooneering provides rules to create comics efficiently, offers a clear structure, and a representation of emotional changes. Cartooneering focuses on an efficient vision creation process, addressing the limitations of storyboards that overwhelm stakeholders with disjointed information. Figure 2 shows the mentioned characteristics and their relevance to the examined methods. The goal of Cartooneering is to share a common understanding of users and problems when developing products by using proto-personas within comics to fully embody the product vision. Stakeholders can then recognize their own ideas without the need to see detailed use cases and have a better understanding of the product. To support this, we present an overview of our identified usage suggestions to structure the layout and visual design of these comics.
A good composition of the comics and a good structure of each individual comic are essential. To this end, we identified six best practices for Cartooneering in terms of storytelling.
(1) Create comics in five acts: The comics should follow the classic 5-act drama. In the first act, Exposition, the characters are introduced. The second act, Rising Action, is used to introduce the problem and how it affects the protagonist. In the Climax, the third act and division point between the first and second half of the story, the solution for the challenge is introduced. This is where it should be clear that the product will solve the problem. In the fourth act, Falling Action, the protagonist interacts with the product to solve the problem. In act five, Resolution, the solution to the problem as well as the story conclusion is depicted. Here we see how the use of the product results in a happy end.
(2) One protagonist and one task per comic: It is vital that the protagonist of the story is clearly recognizable. Even when other characters appear, the focus is on the protagonist and the challenge he must overcome. The solution to this challenge will be revealed as the story unfolds. If there are multiple challenges, it is best to show them in multiple storylines so that each storyline has a clear perspective. The comic’s setting should be within the solution space, so that the system to be implemented is shown to help the protagonist solve the challenge.
(3) Supporting characters are personas whenever possible: Interactions in a user journey mostly take place between different user groups. Therefore, the individuals with whom the protagonist interacts ("supporting characters") can be different personas if they have their own problems in the product context. However, the problem of these supporting characters would be depicted in a separate comic.
(4) Create scenario from multiple perspectives: Describe the scenario in multiple perspectives when the protagonist frequently interacts with another character. Create a second comic from the perspective of the side character since both characters have their own challenges to overcome. For example, if someone wants to sell an old table over the internet and another person is buying the table. Even though both characters interact with the website the table is listed on, their motivations are different. Therefore, each perspective deserves its own comic. This reduces the risk of overlooking use cases, or other aspects, and shows dependencies.
(5) Focus on the entire journey and not on the product: When creating the comic, the priority should be on solving the problem and the conditions that need to be solved. Therefore, focus on solving the problem, not the product itself and show the entire user journey, not just the product. This means that the product itself does not need to be shown in detail. The focus lies in the introduction of the characters with their requirements, needs and goals, the plot, and the basic idea behind the project. Through this, a rule of thumb was established. Present the product in less than half of the comic panels. This concept is shown in Figure 3, where only three of the eight panels show the product being used. The remaining five panels focus on the motivations and needs of the characters. (6) The plot must be recognizable immediately: The plot needs to be understood immediately. Keep panel detail to a minimum and use detail only when it is necessary to tell the story. The visual design guidelines help with this. We also identified good practices for the number of panels. Comics with fewer than six panels have been found to be insufficient to adequately depict the problem-solving process. Start with at least six panels to represent the problem-solving process. Expand to ten to twelve panels to refine the product vision. Avoid more than fourteen panels to maintain clarity. The guidelines for visual design aid in this manner. Make the story clear following visual design guidelines. Further details follow in the next chapter.
The design guidelines are intended to help people achieve the best possible results with Cartooning. Overall, the guidelines are divided into six categories relating to colors, level of detail, emotions, and the communication of the characters in the comic.
The guidelines emphasize the reduction of details and colors to strengthen understanding among stakeholders and developers regarding problems and collaborative product vision development. An excessive amount of detail in comics can distract from the problem-solving process, emphasizing the importance of clear context and avoiding unnecessary embellishments. As shown in Figure 4 using minimal colors, particularly black-and-white or grayscale palates, has proven to boost comprehension without negative effects on stakeholders. The focus is on efficiency in communication by reducing unnecessary elements in comics. Additionally, the use of colors as highlights for crucial plot elements, helps orient readers and emphasizes the path towards a solution. The color choice should contrast with the overall scheme, and minimal usage is recommended for maximum impact.
During early product development, the focus is on showcasing the plot rather than detailed systems. Stakeholders can better understand the product vision through focusing on the overarching vision and interactions of personas rather than detailed UIs. Our experience has shown us that designing UIs in too much detail has negative effects, such as stakeholders becoming focused on too many details and getting stuck on them in the early phases.
We recommend avoiding too much text and to rely on visual elements to convey the actions. Proven comic approaches (speech bubbles, thought circles, bullet points) are suggested. The use of symbols to represent mental states, e.g. question marks for confusion, is recommended. Figure 5 shows the possibilities of text visualization following classic comic principles.
Furthermore, it is important to show emotions in comics, using facial expressions and gestures to convey the journey of the protagonist through various emotional states. A positive resolution is recommended to engage participants and address points of frustration.
Lastly, continuous adjustments are important for the comics. Working with assumptions, learning from errors, and integrating new insights contribute to an efficient development process, aligning with the iterative nature of software development.
Cartooneering provides a creative and accessible approach by combining proto-personas and comics to create an easily understandable story that embodies the product vision. This allows the participants to familiarize themselves with the user's problem space and provides a solution concept as a big picture. To develop a common understanding of the different stakeholders and its requirements, the method considers different user perspectives. This enables the creation of a shared vision for the product to be developed.
The adaptability of comics, as a medium, allows for effective and iterative refinement of scenarios during the design process. Information or new insights can be integrated into existing comics as paper-based elements in the form of figures, objects, or speech bubbles, allowing for gradual adaptation without having to recreate the entire design. This approach is agile and facilitates the integration of feedback from different stakeholder perspectives.
Cartooneering can be used at very early on in the RE-process. With a basic understanding of our user groups, from which proto-personas were created, we held intensive discussions with stakeholders to get a rough picture of the problem. This information was aggregated and refined and translated into the first comics. From this point onwards, the comics were continuously taken to the stakeholder meetings and served as a basis for discussion and further development of the idea. It was an iterative process that simplified communication with the stakeholders and constantly sharpened the product and its vision. This iterative approach is one of the basic principles of Cartooneering and fits very well with agile development concepts.
After initial testing of the approach, some lessons about working with stakeholder collaboratives became clear. These included what kind of content in comics was important for a good understanding of the designed vision, and which design features played a critical role. The structure of the comics should follow a classic 5-act drama, with each act presenting specific elements for the vision. A comic should focus on a protagonist and a challenge, while personas can be included as secondary characters. The presentation focuses on problem solving and framing, with less emphasis on interacting with the product. Design guidelines prioritize reducing detail and color, while emphasizing action with color. The depiction of emotions is important for the reader to identify with the protagonist. The method can be easily integrated into projects and used for onboarding new members to help them understand the software vision. The fact that more and more details of the product can be incorporated into the comics as development progresses is one of the most important aspects of the method.
In summary, Cartooneering is a novel method for promoting a common understanding and clear communication of software visions. The method facilitates the creation of comics and enables efficient discussion and iterative refinement of scenarios in the SE process.
In SE, approaches such as SAP scenes or story mapping are used to reflect the vision of a software project. Conceptual models are proven to be useful, but practitioners often find them difficult to use [20]. There are several reasons for this difficulty, and we are in agreement with Ionita et al. [21], that conceptualization is challenging; requiring significant effort and practitioners may not have the time to learn a modeling language. Storytelling with physical objects can make conceptualization tangible and can have a positive impact on collaboration [22]. Multiple stories that collectively represent the vision of the project in form of user journeys can enhance understanding. While text-based user journeys can capture emotions and processes textually, they lack the ability to make them tangible to stakeholders. Graphical storytelling is effective in visualizing a process in a way that stakeholders can easily understand.
The problem with storyboarding techniques for us is that there are not enough rules or guidelines to create the comics in an efficient and consistent way. We need these rules to build the comics in a lightweight way, to discuss them quickly with stakeholders, and to make changes to the scenarios based on the received feedback. The defined set of rules of Cartooneering optimize the efficiency of graphical story creation.
The refinement process of the comics is another important issue to focus on. SE uses mostly agile and iterative processes. This means, that changes to the artifacts change based on new insights. The guidelines for story composition as well as the visual design of the comics are made for iterative refinement and continuous transformation, since the comics are easily to change due to their visually simple design language. In addition, new details can be added to a comic by adding additional panels to the comic. If a complex new user journey is identified or a different perspective is required, an additional comic can be created.
Furthermore, as the set of comics provides a visual representation of the user journey as well as the emotional states of the personas, the comics aid in prioritizing elements in the backlog as stakeholders can easily identify which items provide the most value to the product.
This work introduces Cartooneering as graphical method for scenarios in the context of the definition of a shared vision. Especially in agile software engineering, requirements are rather loose and undefined in the beginning. Furthermore, they change and get detailed throughout the development process. Therefore, it is crucial to have a clearly defined and current vision on what the product aims to accomplish. The process of defining the product vision must allow everyone to easily participate in its creation for the vision to be widely accepted. To have a lightweight and easy method to start the discussion on scenarios, Cartooneering uses comics side by side with personas (RQ1). We have identified several best practices and guidelines for structuring the comics (RQ2) as well as their visual representation (RQ3), to make the method as easy to use and understand for every stakeholder. Beneficial for applying it in an agile context is especially that the cartoons are refined iteratively in terms of details as the vision of the product to be build is understood in a better way. Furthermore, the way the comics are built allows for an easy change as it is not of huge effort to alter a comic or create additional ones. The Cartooneering approach presented in this paper, can be built upon as there are opportunities for further development and expansion. A key area for future exploration is the incorporation of a morphological box [23], envisioned as a comprehensive toolkit, designed to aid in the methodical crafting of vision cartoons. This toolkit would offer a spectrum of design dimensions and a variety of selectable elements, serving as a roadmap for comic creation. Integrating the morphological box into the Cartooneering method provides a systematic and structured approach for navigating the complexity of vision development in software design.
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