In 2020 Atlassian announced its acquisition of Mindville, an asset and configuration management software. For those unfamiliar with asset management, the terminology and product model can feel too abstract to grasp. This was true for many Atlassian employees.

Our go-to expert, and humble content designer Jeff, wrote a children’s storybook that explained the basic concepts of asset management by using an analogy of rock collecting. I was asked to accompany the story with illustrations. Below is my process.

Goals

• Introduce users to basic concepts, such as assets, objects, linking and schemas.

• Allow self-paced learning by linking out to relevant and detailed documentation.

• Make the topic feel more approachable and easy by looking like a children’s book.

  
  

Milestone 1

The first milestone was focused on developing the visual style and editing the story flow. We would test these with the JSM product teams to ensure all concepts were explained clearly.

Moodboard

We want the book to have a strong childlike novelty. We were inspired by illustration styles and storytelling flows from books and movies shown below.

Ideation

Was "Jack" the main character, a boy or object himself? What kind of world does Jack live in? We explored spaces that sit in-between realism and abstractionism (i.e a box with unlimited storage).

First storyboards

Milestone 2

The second milestone was about iterating on feedback, simplifying the illustrations, applying colour, and prototyping.

Sample of storyboards with simplified illustrations

Impact

The JSM design team were inspired to craft stories with illustrations that help explain complex and technical concepts.

Lessons learned

Creating a children’s storybook is a lot of work. Every ‘page’ is an illustration piece. There were 24 for the Story of Assets. While it was a fun side project, in the end, I don’t think the effort was worth the impact. I still believe in the delights of storytelling. If there was a next time, I would simplify the style of the illustration to reduce the workload.