Comic Relief

As part of a project I'm working on, we are going to develop a comic-style collection of user scenarios to help communicate best practices around a security service we are offering. This is just experimental at this stage, mainly doing a concept piece to see 1) will it work and 2) will stakeholders buy into it. The model I am using is Google's Chrome's Googlebook for web app developers.

There can be a number of advantages to using a comic-style treatment:

• Overcome traditional disinterest in "User Guides"
• Allow a friendlier, instructive tone
• Use line illustrations of screen areas to focus user attention on critical details
• Use "illogical" shifts, such as going from a "white board" type overview to the narrator standing in front of a large UI pointing to an area of interest
• More easily translated than screen cam tutorials
• Can be randomly accessed for review purposes (something hard to do with video-based training)

The coolest part, though, is this gives me a legitimate reason to be playing with comic styles while at work and on the clock. How cool is that? Actually, I have a real by-gawd graphic designer assigned to the team, but I need to get more familiar with the genre...yeah, that's the ticket; I'm doing comics at work to get more familiar with the genre. Actually, my next column in UXmatters does deal with how I use comics in an internal Wiki-based status report.

So for a while, Fridays will be "Comic Day" in this blog. Just trying to get immersed in the genre--all work and profession related. I'll try hard not to enjoy myself :-)