Dynamic Storyboards: How They Work

Dynamic Storyboards consist of two parts, a web site with rich graphics and a user interface that invites exploration, and an underlying simulation model.

The Storyboard Web Site

Each Dynamic Storyboard is accessed using a web browser, running either off your internal network, or over the Internet (with secure restricted access if required). The web site works by presenting the various elements of the business or issue as "big picture" diagrams, that can be clicked to explore the various components depending on the viewer's interest. Early on in the creation of a Dynamic Storyboard, we work with you to create these important diagrams, which serve to clarify the issues as well as help viewers navigate around the Storyboard.

The Simulation Model

The uses the System Dynamics methodology, which allows you to describe the chains of cause-and-effect in your business, and represents these as stocks and flows which interact over time. For example, you do marketing to attract new customers (a flow), which increases your base of customers (a stock), which might lower your average cost to serve each customer, allowing you to lower prices and thus further increase the flow of new customers. These stocks and flows can be modeled to tell a rich and understandable story, with the important benefit that you can change assumptions and re-run the model to see how the outcome is different. Which is exactly what a Dynamic Storyboard lets you do.

The Process and Technology

We create Dynamic Storyboards by working with you to discuss and understand the issues. We then create high-level diagrams, and build a simple simulation model. After a first-cut site is up, we work with you to refine the model to make it more detailed and realistic. All this takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months, depending on complexity and detail.

Soundience has developed the innovative software that allows all this to happen. The web site is built up using standardized modules that take care of interacting with the model and updating results. The models themselves are created by inputting the relationships and equations, using a simple high level language. As you interact with the web site, the model is repeatedly run by a very high speed simulation engine, which creates the attractive graphs you see.