What:
Bodystorming is a participatory method for demonstrating or developing ideas in a physical setting. Team members explore ideas and interactions physically, often using props such as maps or photos to give a sense of place.

Why:
Bodystorming goes beyond brainstorming by giving an idea a physical form and acting it out in different contexts. The process is designed to uncover how the relationships between people, locations and things affect ideas in ways that written scenarios cannot. It enables rapid iteration of ideas and relationships through a dynamic process of acting and evaluating. The process reveals how people interact with services, products and each other on a physical, emotional and intuitive level.

When:
Bodystorming is a method to help build and test ideas, so it is best carried out early in a project lifecycle. It works best after research has been carried out to understand better the issues surrounding a problem or specific needs of service users.

It can be used with clients as a way of making touch points in a service more tangible or revealing assumptions about ideas, users and technologies.

Example:
We used bodystorming to test alternative narrative journeys for the BBC Coast audio walks. Early story ideas were tried out and routes plotted on large scale maps.

Bodystorming gave us the opportunity to interact with each other whilst engaging with the story in its journey context. The method helped highlight interaction challenges as well as logistical issues which could be solved before taking working prototypes out on location.