Liberating Structures
Design Storyboards
Define step-by-step elements for bringing meetings to productive endpoints. Design Storyboards help you map out the full journey from vision to implementation, breaking down ambitious goals into concrete, actionable steps. This structure transforms abstract ideas into clear visual narratives that everyone can follow and contribute to, making even the most complex initiatives feel achievable and exciting.
Design Storyboards
What is made possible - What it unlocks
Design Storyboards unlock the ability to bridge the gap between strategic vision and operational reality. Participants gain clarity on what needs to happen, when, and how — turning fuzzy aspirations into tangible action plans. By visualizing the entire journey together, teams develop shared understanding, spot potential obstacles early, and build genuine ownership of both the destination and the path forward.
When to use it
- When launching a new initiative or project that requires coordination across multiple teams or departments
- When you need to translate a strategic vision into concrete, executable steps
- When implementing organizational change and people need to see the full transformation journey
- When planning complex events, campaigns, or programs with many moving parts
- When stakeholders have different perspectives on what needs to happen and alignment is crucial
- When you want to identify dependencies, risks, and resource needs before diving into execution
- When creating a shared understanding of how individual actions contribute to the bigger picture
- When designing service experiences or customer journeys that span multiple touchpoints
🛠️ The five design elements of Design Storyboards
Each Liberating Structure consists of five simple design elements to make participation possible for everyone. By shaping these elements with care, you move beyond rigid control or chaos and create space for people to contribute, listen, and co-create.
- 1. The Invitation
- 2. Setup & Materials
- 3. Participation Flow
- 4. Group Configuration
- 5. Sequence & Timing
How you frame the purpose or question that sets the focus and energy of the group.
Invite a design team (a representative subset of the group) to create a detailed plan, including visual cues, for how participants will interact to achieve their purpose
“Let’s map out the complete journey from where we are now to where we want to be. What are all the steps, big and small, that will get us there? What does success look like at each stage, and who needs to do what?”
The arrangement of space and which tools or resources are needed to support interaction.
- An open wall with tapestry paper or flip-chart pages
- Post-its and/or Liberating Structures Design Cards
- Markers for writing and drawing
- A blank storyboard (download free worksheet below)
- Space for participants to move around and collaborate
- Timer to keep phases moving
- Clear definition of the desired outcome or goal posted where everyone can see it
- Online: whiteboard or digital canvas (Miro, Mural, etc.)
Who gets a voice and how everyone is actively included in the process.
- Speaking happens in structured rounds using a talking object
- Everyone gets equal time without interruption in Rounds 1 and 2
- Open dialogue follows in Round 3
- Final individual reflection completes the cycle
How people are arranged (alone, small groups, or all together) and how this shifts during the activity.
- 1-2-All or 1-All in rapid cycles for each of the steps
- Everyone participates in generating ideas and steps individually first
- Small groups cluster and sequence ideas together
- Whole group reviews, refines, and builds the complete storyboard collectively
The step-by-step flow of the activity and the time given to each step to keep energy and focus.
- Clarify the purpose of your work together (use Nine Whys if needed). (2–5 min)
- Describe your usual approach for this type of session, including who typically attends. Assess how well it achieves your stated purpose and where it falls short. (5–10 min)
- Revisit and strengthen your purpose statement if needed. (2–5 min)
- Review who needs to participate or be involved. (2–5 min)
- Brainstorm alternative approaches (both conventional and Liberating Structures) that could achieve your purpose. Can you accomplish it in one step? If not, what must the first step achieve? Focus on that first step only. (5–10 min)
- Choose which approach best fits your purpose, plus a backup option. (2–10 min)
- Decide who to invite and who will facilitate. Record all decisions in your blank storyboard. (2–10 min)
- Determine how you’ll evaluate your design (e.g., Did it achieve the desired outcomes? Did the group work together productively? Does something new seem possible now? Consider using What, So What, Now What?). (2–5 min)
- If you need multiple steps, meet with the design team to create an Advanced Design StoryBoard. (5–10 min)
Total time: 25-70 minutes
Online version
Adapted for virtual use, with the same impact
Use a digital whiteboard or collaboration tool to document alle the answers. It can be helpful to use an empty template of the design storyboard (download free worksheet below).
If you want to work in small groups, use break out rooms.
The steps of Design Storyboards are the same as mentioned above at Sequence & Timing
Total time: 25-70 minutes
Solo version
Adapted for individual use and personal development
You can use Design Storyboards solo as well. The steps are the same.
Note: When designing gatherings for people that work together more often it’s always better to design together.
Total time: 35 minutes
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All Liberating Structures in 1 e-book
All Liberating Structures (44!) including explanations, visual step-by-step guide, and worksheets in a handy workbook for € 11,-
- Simple methods for big changes
- Have interactions that truly matter
- Build a culture of innovation step by step
- Involve and activate everyone in the group
Proven over decades
🧠 Why it works
Liberating Structures are not magic tricks—they work because they tap into how people naturally think, connect, and collaborate. Each structure is carefully designed to unlock participation, spark creativity, and build trust, using principles grounded in social science and human interaction.
Attribution: Liberating Structure developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless.
Visual Thinking
Making the journey visible transforms abstract plans into concrete reality, making complexity manageable and actionable.
Collective Intelligence
By pooling diverse perspectives, the group surfaces blind spots, dependencies, and insights that no individual would see alone.
Progressive Refinement
Moving from individual to small group to whole group allows ideas to be tested and improved at each stage, building both quality and buy-in.
Psychological Ownership
When people actively participate in designing the path forward, they develop genuine commitment to making it happen rather than just executing someone else's plan.
Riffs and Variations
Start with creative constraints to learn this structure and then... go liberate yourself and try some variations.
- Reverse storyboard: Start from the end goal and work backwards, asking “What had to happen right before this?” at each step.
- Multiple scenarios: Create parallel storyboards for best-case, worst-case, and most-likely scenarios to prepare for different futures.
- Sprint storyboards: Focus on just the next 2-4 weeks in detail, with longer-term phases sketched more roughly.
- User journey mapping: Frame the storyboard from the perspective of a customer, patient, or end-user experiencing your service.
- Digital iteration: Create living storyboards in shared tools that teams can update as they learn and adapt.
- Photo storyboards: Use actual photos or screenshots to make the journey more concrete and real.
- Resource mapping: Add layers showing budget, people, tools, or time required at each phase.
Tips
Lessons learned from other facilitators.
- Start with a clear, compelling vision of the desired outcome — ambiguity here creates confusion throughout
- Encourage wild ideas in early phases and seriously play with fast iterations; repeat and deepen your design
- Use different colored sticky notes, icons, and sketches to quickly develop shared understanding and actionable ideas
- At a minimum, work in pairs (a second set of eyes and ears really helps) or small groups to surface blind spots
- Build in check-in points where the team will review and adapt the storyboard based on what they learn
- Make sure the first few steps are crystal clear and immediately actionable — momentum matters
- Always include a design debrief (What, So What, Now What?) to capture learnings and improve future designs
Traps
Don't make the same mistakes.
- Creating a storyboard that’s too perfect or detailed — leave room for learning and adaptation
- Letting senior voices dominate — those closest to the work often have the most valuable insights
- Forgetting to assign clear ownership — beautiful storyboards that no one acts on are just wall art
- Skipping the reality check phase and creating plans that ignore actual constraints
- Treating the storyboard as a fixed plan rather than a living guide that evolves with experience
- Making it so complex that people can’t remember or explain it to others
- Skimping on the time necessary to generate a good design. A good design will reduce wasted meeting time by much more than it took to create it. A bad design will generate frustration.
Try it with…
The real power of Liberating Structures emerges when you combine them into "strings." Link different structures together to build on insights and create more powerful results. Here are some nice combinations:
- Start with Purpose-To-Practice (P2P): Use P2P first to clarify your purpose and principles, then use Design Storyboards to map the detailed path
- Follow with 15% Solutions: After creating the storyboard, identify immediate 15% Solutions that anyone can start right away
- Combine with Critical Uncertainties: Use Critical Uncertainties to explore different future scenarios, then storyboard paths for each
- Integrate WINFY (What I Need From You): After assigning ownership in your storyboard, use WINFY to clarify support needs
- Begin with Appreciative Interviews: Start by harvesting stories of past successes before storyboarding future ones
- Use with 25/10 Crowd Sourcing: Generate and prioritize bold ideas first, then storyboard the most promising ones
Field stories
To get to know Liberating Structures without having used them yourself, it helps to see familiar situations from real-life practice. Chances are that you or your team have faced one of these challenges before. Discover how to approach these kinds of situations in a fresh and engaging way.
free download
Download the PDF explanation incl. worksheets
Would you like a clear, well-designed visual explanation of Design Storyboards? It’s yours!
This download also includes 2 worksheets so you can run the structure fully by yourself: a poster with a filled Design Storyboard as example and a blank Design Storyboard template to fill in yourself.
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Design Storyboards
Define step-by-step elements for bringing meetings to productive endpoints.
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