Supporting the comparison of alternative stories

In media production, a team typically works with multiple alternative storylines or variations before selecting the best one for production. However, current media production tools do not support decision making through the comparison of alternative storylines. Using the conventional form of storyboards found in animation, commercial, and movie studios as a basis, we propose a novel user interaction feature that facilitates effective comparison amongst alternative storylines or variations. We review existing storyboarding practices, and then present our interaction strategy, which was informed by interviews of people in the industry. The fully-implemented system went through a series of usability tests with both professional and non-professional users. We discuss how our design can help the users with diverse backgrounds at different stages of story development in comparing the alternatives. Such a tool may be useful in other domain areas where temporal comparison of alternative solutions is beneficial.