Dell Technologies
Storyboard Design Toolkit
A self-initiated toolkit that nobody asked for — until everyone needed it.
My role
Product Designer
Scope
Design tooling · Self-initiated · Workflow improvement
Adopted by
5 teams · 938 total insertions
Overview
My first project at Dell was supporting North Star APEX storyboarding. I was drawing characters and scenes on my iPad, moving assets into Figma, and assembling storyboards manually. The work got done — but it was slow, and I knew it didn't have to be.
I pitched the idea of a reusable storyboard library to my manager. He wanted my time on higher-priority work, so it didn't happen.
A while later, teammates started reaching out asking for storyboard templates. When I looked into it, I realized they were already using my old iPad drawings as makeshift assets — passing them around informally because nothing better existed. I also found storyboards in Figma files outside the design team — non-designers were creating their own, with inconsistent and often low-quality results.
That confirmed the need. I built the toolkit.
Problem
Storyboarding at Dell had no shared foundation. Every storyboard started from scratch — different visual styles, different quality levels, different layouts depending on who made it.
Most UX designers aren't confident drawing, so creating storyboard visuals from scratch was a barrier. Non-designers who tried to make their own storyboards ended up with inconsistent outputs that weren't presentation-ready. The informal solution — reusing my old iPad drawings — was held together by nothing more than people knowing to ask me.
👉 The real signal was this: people were already working around the problem on their own. That meant the need was real, even if nobody had formally named it.
How I confirmed the need
Before building anything, I did three things:
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Searched Figma files across the org and found storyboards being created by multiple teams outside design
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Interviewed a few of the non-designers who were making storyboards to understand what they were trying to communicate and what was making it hard
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Mapped what existed informally — my old iPad assets being reused, templates being passed around — to understand what people had already figured out on their own
This told me exactly what to build: not a complex design system, but a simple, modular library that gave everyone a shared visual language for storyboarding.
The technical insight
I had drawn the original characters and scenes on my iPad. I knew exactly how to translate those hand-drawn assets into Figma components with variables — expressions, gestures, outfits, colors all controllable from a single component.
That technical fluency was what made the toolkit fast to build and flexible to use. I shipped an MVP in about 2 weeks, then refined it over time as teams adopted it.
What I built
A modular, component-based Figma library designed to be fast for designers and approachable for everyone else.
Characters
Six unique avatars help to represent multiple personas within a single story.
Expression
Easily customize the character's facial expression by selecting from a variety of predefined options.
Gestures
Select a gestures to convey the character's actions and mood.
Outfit
Easily customize the outfit by adjusting elements like sleeve length, collar style, and logos to fit the character’s look.
Add colors
Adjust colors easily with this feature to fit the tone of your project.
Put everything together
Use all the features to put together a scene for the storyboard.
Scene components
Environments, UI frames, and layout structures. Pre-built scenes for the most common storyboard scenarios — product vision, user journeys, internal presentations.
Templates
Adjust colors easily with this feature to fit the tone of your project.
Adoption
Nobody asked for this toolkit. I built it because I saw the need before anyone articulated it.
Sales Vision & Strategy became the heaviest adopter — 935 of 938 total insertions came from that team alone, using it as their primary tool for sales presentations and vision storyboards. That adoption happened entirely outside my immediate design team.
The toolkit was eventually adopted by 5 teams with 938 total component insertions.
Impact
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Designers stopped building storyboards from scratch — shared components and templates replaced the blank canvas
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Non-designers produced presentation-ready storyboards independently — the quality gap between designer and non-designer output closed significantly
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The informal workaround — passing around my old iPad drawings — was replaced by a proper shared system
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Improved consistency of storyboard outputs across teams
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Used across multiple teams to standardize storytelling and improve early-stage product communication.
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Sales Vision & Strategy adopted it as their primary storyboarding tool — 935 of 938 insertions came from outside the design team, organically
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Released in both Figma and PowerPoint to cover the full range of users on the team
Key Insights
The strongest signal that something needs to be built isn't a feature request — it's people working around the problem on their own.
I didn't build this because someone asked me to. I built it because I saw my old iPad drawings being passed around as informal templates and recognized that as evidence of unmet need. The toolkit didn't create demand — it gave structure to demand that already existed.
Storyboarding isn't something designers do every day. But when you need to tell a story visually, the blank canvas is the biggest obstacle. This library removed that obstacle for everyone — designers and non-designers alike.