Looking for Storyboard Software

Hi Lani. What kind of features would you be looking for?

The reason I ask - I've built and contributed to storyboard and integrated production management tools in the past. I've always thought this was a relatively small niche market but if there were enough demand I might throw my hat back into the ring. As far as I know there are a few options available. None of which are really built for our needs. Most folks fall back to Word document templates (what I use most of the time, but I can see the benefit of tool automation).

1. Tools that contribute to the planning process and produce artifacts that support the articulation and elaboration of instructional architecture. Diagramming tools like Visio, MindManager, and hyperlinked prototyping tools like Twine spring to mind.

2. Tools that are close but don't match up precisely to incremental storyboard development and reporting requirements as we see them. I've developed MS Access tools and online tools for this purpose but these were each for a focused set of requirements and were neat but less than ideal (10 years ago). I've also seen some really great tools for development of specific types of artifacts (video scripts)  like Celtx. CeltX is keen but I've never seen it as a perfect match.

3. Tools that enable some storyboard capture and reporting but are part of another learning content development system. There are plenty of these out there. RapidIntake Unison has some storyboard / planning features in their forms. I'm not sure how this reports.

Part of the problem is the lack of a consistent lexicon and priority for the fields associated with instructional planning artifacts. This extends to the definition and lexicon associated with interactivity (a pet peeve of mine). Without some common definitions of these elements it's difficult to communicate globally and consistently. If such a standard existed, it would surely not be able to cover all permutations of design. But a common lexicon could still have some value.

Do you envison an online tool that would have these features?

• Offline portability of data (data not stuck inside the tool)
• Flexible reporting (both in format and file type)
• Flexible forms input (tunable so you can adjust the order of entry and visibility of form elements)
• Attachment and association (easy to attach files and visuals generated using common tools)
• Narrative tenor tagging (an easy way to synchronize planning for narrative events with interactions)
• An optional offline client (Think Ipad)
• Increment state tracking (cooking, ready for review, reviewed with comments, approved)
• Voice annotation capture (a pretty good way to communicate)
• Map flow generation (a quick mapping of the experience flow)
• Threaded feedback (each screen / interaction references are all discussion threads)
• Nasty prototype mode (A quickgen of the storyboard elements into a navigable pseudo flow)
• Text to speech generation (Part of nasty prototype mode - good for ear tests)

Can you tell I've been thinking about this? :P