Scenes

Every great experience starts with a great story

Get it for free

Forget long documents

When creating products and services, long functional specifications get in the way. They are quickly filled with unnecessary features, they are easily misinterpreted, and they can’t be validated with users before the actual design and development starts. There is a better way to define how products and services should work.

Build a story with Scenes

Scenes is a tool and a method to create storyboards about products and services fast, collaboratively and iteratively. It empowers business leaders and professionals of all industries to shape their ideas and scenarios in the form of fun illustrative stories without the need of refined drawing skills.

A system for visual storytelling

Scenes includes a set of pre-defined illustrations that can be physically or digitally combined in scenes to create a visual story. These Scenes building blocks are grouped in the following categories:

When to use Scenes

To humanize your research insights
Create a storyboard to show your project team how users experience their world. The project team will experience it too!
To visualize scenarios
Map the user journey of your existing solution as a story. This will help you to identify problems and understand their impact.
To validate new ideas
Do you have a great idea for a future solution? Create a storyboard about how it will work to get early feedback.

Get Scenes!

Our professionally designed toolkit contains an ever growing library of illustrations for your stories. The Scenes Basic Set includes generic illustrations that can be easily adapted to a wide variety of use-cases. The Scenes add-ons are small sets with few additional illustrations focusing on a certain topic or industry. Choose the material that best suits your needs.

Scenes is a method and a toolkit created by SAP AppHaus and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://apphaus.sap.com/approach/scenes.

Creative Commons License

Documents for download

Concept and DIY Building Guide

Get started with Scenes! This illustrated guide explains how Scenes works and shows you how to create your own DIY Scenes kit to build your visual stories right away.
Download

Digital Storyboarding Guide

Do you prefer to create storyboards in a digital format? In this guide, you will find tips and templates for your digital presentations.
Download

Basic Set

The biggest package of the Scenes family includes more than 50 different illustrations designed for a wide variety of topics and scenarios. The material is set for high-resolution printing and for digital use.
Download

Add-On Healthcare

This package includes 21 different illustrations to visualize stories focusing on healthcare topics. It is optimized for high-resolution printing, as well as for use in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Download

Add-On Characters

This package includes 10 different characters to use in your stories. They are optimized for high-resolution printing, as well as for use in Microsoft PowerPoint.
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Add-On Retail

This package includes 7 different illustrations focusing on the retail industry. They are optimized for high-resolution printing, as well as for use in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Download

Add-On Logistics

This package includes 9 different illustrations focusing on logistics. They are optimized for high-resolution printing, as well as for use in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Download

Add-On Backgrounds

This package includes 5 different backgrounds for use in any story. They are optimized for high-resolution printing, as well as for use in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Download

Add-On Creative Spaces

This package includes 20 different illustrations to visualize stories about creative and collaborative spaces. It is optimized for high-resolution printing, as well as for use in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Download

Add-Ons Inspired by Scenes

Do you want to create your own add-on and share it with the world? We welcome your creations and support you with their publication. Contact us!

Add On Diversity and Inclusion
RTI International

Add-On Diversity and Inclusion by RTI International

In collaboration with the SAP AppHaus, RTI International has created this Scenes add-on focused on characters representing a diverse population.
Download
Add-On Diabetes

Add-On Diabetes by Roche Diabetes Care

In collaboration with the SAP AppHaus, Roche Diabetes Care has created this Scenes add-on focused on use-cases around diabetes.
Download

Scenes for virtual workshops in MURAL

To enable collaboration and innovation between remote teams, the SAP AppHaus has optimised the methods of the Innovation Culture Toolkit for a virtual environment. Now, you can use Scenes in MURAL.

Scenes Storyboard Exercise

Vision Storyboard

The Vision Storyboard exercise guides a team to create a future scenario showing how a new product or service could be used and what benefits it could have.
Go to MURAL template
Scenes Library in MURAL

Scenes Basic Set Library in MURAL

The MURAL version of the Scenes™ Basic Set lets you create your storyboards on the Scenes Storyboard template and on any MURAL board.
Go to MURAL template
Prototyping Virtually with Visual Stories

Training video: Prototyping Virtually with Visual Stories

A training video on how to create a storyline and a storyboard using the Mural templates.
Go to training video on Vimeo

Friends of Scenes

PLAYMOBIL pro

If you are interested in adding three-dimensional elements to your Scenes storyboards, we are happy to refer you to the brand new kit from Playmobil: PLAYMOBIL pro. It is an innovative modeling kit for professionals, which encourages problem-solving and creative thinking in the workplace. The system is based around the iconic PLAYMOBIL figure, which for generations has served as an educational toy encouraging imaginative play. Now it can also be used by adults in the frame of a professional context to aid in prototyping, project management, creative workshops and more.

Learn more about PLAYMOBIL Pro

Learn more about Scenes

RTI AddOn
RTI International

How RTI International Designs for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Using SAP Scenes.

RTI International is an independent nonprofit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. They have used Scenes in their design prototyping work to rapidly align and iterate on their concepts.
Read full article
Tobias Loerracher

How Roche Uses Scenes to Design Better Experiences for People with Diabetes

At Roche Diabetes Care, we’re providing innovative products and services that help people with diabetes to live their lives as active, healthy and unrestricted as possible. To support our design process, we make use of Scenes.
Read full article
SAP AppHaus

SAP Helps to Simplify Complex Academic Subjects at KSRI

In order to escape the obsolete forms of presentation, the young academics at KSRI are taking advantage of Scenes and are changing their way of work. With the help of different illustrated pieces, they recount research ideas in short videos
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SAP AppHaus

Engaging Employees with a Tangible Storytelling Tool

Hélice Experience is a Brazilian design start-up based in Porto Alegre They have applied Scenes in two very different projects.
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SAP AppHaus

Swiss Post’s Vision of Augmented Reality Powered By “Scenes”

Thanks to the visual and easy-to-understand 3D Scenes storyboards, the smart glass-enabled mail sorting process is one of the selected innovative AR/VR use cases being presented to the Swiss Post board.
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SAP AppHaus

Prototyping Better Service at Frankfurt Airport with “Scenes”

A team at Fraport AG used Scenes as part of an initiative to implement UX design and design thinking at the company.
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ScenesWorkshop
Madelyn Andree

Build Your Story — Scenes Workshop at the Service Design Global Conference

More than 20 participants mixed the various pre-defined illustrations to create storyboards based on real-world scenarios, together.
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SAP AppHaus

Scenes: A New Method and Tool to Create Storyboards

“Scenes” includes a set of pre-defined illustrations that can be combined physically or digitally to create a visual story. There are different types of graphical elements available....
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Core77 Design Awards

Scenes is honored as Runner Up in 2 categories at the Core77 Design Awards 2016

We created "Scenes" as a storyboarding method and tool to create visual stories quickly, collaboratively and iteratively. It includes a set of pre-defined illustrations that can be easily combined in scenes, empowering people from ...
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