By Scott Burns
When our product team originally conceived Launch Pathway, the benefits stemming from the feature now known as Storyboards was at the forefront. As we have learned in our 6 years at Stratasan, often times product design is improved when starting with the end in mind. Our basic goals for Storyboards were to be able to save snapshots of data and visualizations, edit your story or presentation, and have each storyboard presentation automatically refresh with each new data release.
More specifically, the main model of Storyboards is an ordered collections of snapshots, each of which can exist in multiple storyboards at a time (referred to as a many-to-many relationship). As we worked through a variety of design and functionality ideas, we came to the point where we knew if the end user could not save a snapshot quickly and efficiently all other functions would be moot. A breakthrough occurred when our Product Captain, Morgan Atkins, suggested Pinterest as a place for inspiration for this functionality.