Game Boards (Scenario Boards)

So I was recently reading an Iwata Asks, which is a series of interviews performed by Nintendo's president that involves designers, artists, and devs from different companies that produce different Nintendo titles.

I came upon this particular page (they interview the two other guys involved in the Mario series from day one) and it had a lot of interesting things to say!

Iwata Asks : Adjusting the Map In A Daily Cycle
http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol2_page4.jsp

I was shocked because they brought up the three things that I had brought together in my mind this week:

1) Knowing the duration of a "level" or sequence (Miyamoto estimated a level should be about 1 minute for SMB)
2) Designing to a number of "screens", or storyboards to match that duration (drawing on graph paper and laying out these scenarios into different "screens")
3) Using these layouts to create predictable player reactions (if I put this here, the player will go here, do this, ect.)

They also talked about shuffling levels that are sophisticated and deserve to be played when a player can handle them (later in the game) and creating easier levels later on in the production to unroll features slowly.

I'm not sure why I never brought together time with my scenario board idea, but I guess film class hit me in the back of the head this week and gave me a big package of awesome poop.