The Vidaview Life Story Board (LSB) is an innovative tool or interface by which spoken narrative is rendered into visual form through the interactive activity of co-construction using a magnet-receptive play board with cards, markers, and notation system. The LSB process opens ways to elicit, share and process the dialogical interaction and visualize the conversation matter. It is a versatile and open system, combining features of the genogram, eco-map, body map, and timeline, with which to visually depict salient narrative elements: external- people, places, occurrences, and internal- thoughts, feelings, beliefs. Surfaces are writable for notation; a customizable assortment of graphic and text markers are displayed on ‘palettes’ make the tool fit for purpose. LSB has diverse potential in counselling, psychotherapy practices and as interview tool in qualitative research.
Robert Chase MD, creator of Life Story Board
Robert Chase is Assistant Professor at the College of Community and Global Health, Rady Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
Life Story Board methods developed over exploratory research collaborations in Sri Lanka with a play-based arts program for war-affected children, and pilot tests with humanitarian NGOs in affected settings internationally, and with indigenous and newcomer communities in Winnipeg, Canada. In 2010 he started Vidaview Information Systems Ltd, for small-scale production of Life Story Board kits. for more, see The Story of the Life Story Board
At the University of Manitoba the Life Story Board Research Program formed about collaborations on graduate student teaching and research projects.
In 2025 web domain for Life Story Board reopened www.lifestoryboard.ca , with public pages and resources for the Life Story Board community of practice. see Life Story Board Practice Group
Life Story Board Research: Interview tool in qualitative and mixed methods
Since 2010 at the University of Manitoba, collaborators in LSB qualitative stories have six peer-reviewed publications including a review (2019). Internationally, adoption of LSB by research teams in New Zealand, Australia, Germany and Kyrgyzstan led to five further publications. The list of publications is posted here https://lifestoryboard.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LSB-Research-publications-list.pdf
Life Story Board fundamentally changes the interaction and experience of an interview, in ways that help overcome challenges of language, culture, stigma, difficult community settings, etc. The system is versatile and adapts to diverse modes of enquiry, application setting and study design.
LSB has demonstrated strengths in qualitative mixed methods research. Data elicitation typically generates audio transcript for content analysis. Several researchers took a ‘life, or health journey’ approach to the guided interview and storyboarding process, such as: Maori university students in New Zealand (Dunedin, 2023), the history of harm reduction in people who inject drugs (Ottawa, 2015); the impact of historic trauma on HIV treatment adherence and health promoting practices among Indigenous men (Vancouver, 2018); transnational identity of recent Philippino youth immigrants in Toronto (2018); the migration stories of newcomer food processing workers (2016) and HIV+ immigrant African women (2017) in Winnipeg. Examples from various research projects are highlighted in this PDF
Life Story Board in clinical applications
In the setting of counselling and psychotherapy, Life Story Board can map out salient elements external and internal, of a difficult issue or situation, and its context, to see what you are talking about, sharing and feeling. LSB opens visual, tactile and dialogical modes of engagement, interaction and cognition.
The Life Story Board integrates with psychotherapeutic approaches and skills of narrative therapy, play therapy, art therapy, cognitive processing, CBT, and mindfulness. Storyboarding one’s own life situations for a felt experience enhances the practitioner’s skill as therapist-guide.
In the practice setting, LSB offers an alternative approach when conventional talk therapy encounters limitations, due to e.g. literacy, trauma, culture, stigma. Users highlight its usefulness in client assessment, and how its use shifts locus of control, strengthens trust-building and therapeutic alliance.
For new practitioners, comfort and confidence with LSB develops with exploration and practice, adapting it to their approach and style, setting and client.