Persona core poster – now translated into spanish

Since I designed the persona core poster some years ago, a lot of people from all over the world have downloaded the poster and are using it to create personas. This is by far the most downloaded file on my blog. Just got the question to have this also in an spanish version. Here it is with the help of  Carolina Flores-Hine.

Download the high resolution version of the Persona Core Poster:
Persona-core-poster_CREATIVE-COMPANION_spanish_PDF

Download the english version of the persona core poster via the Persona-Workshop.com website with loads of information.

If you are using the poster in workshops I would be happy to receive some pictures. Must be awesome to see all the personas from all over the world.
Please drop a mail to christof [at] creative-companion.com

Empathy poster for focus group, interview and research

Inspired by the d.school’s empathy map I designed a poster that can be used in focus group meetings or any other research or interview situation.

While asking questions and observing behaviour like body language, tone of voice or choice of words it is important to note everything that  occurs in the session. In a second step, or during the session you will encounter contradictions (maybe already in saying), between what people say and what they do. Any contradiction or paradox can lead to a (latent) need or desire. If you ask yourself (or the participant) ‘why the things are as they are’ you may come to remarkable realizations or even an epiphany. This will be your most valuable insights.

Empathy Poster by CREATIVE COMPANION

Download the PDF version of the  Empathy-Poster by CREATIVE COMPANION.
You can print the poster in A4, A3 up to A2 and use it in different situations and workshop or research settings.

More posters:

The Persona Core Poster 

If you have collected a lot of insights you may want to go a step further an build personas for your company or project. There is another nice poster for this:

The Persona Core Poster by CREATIVE COMPANION

 

The Company Real Score Framework – Die Firmenpartitur

If you want to map your whole brand input and compare it with the reality persona you could also use The Company Real Score a strategic framework for brand innovation. You can also download the original poster.
Deutsch: Die Firmenpartitur (www.firmenpartitur.de)
English: The Company Real Score

Have fun!

PS: yes you can use the posters free of charge and yes I would be happy if you give me some feedback, credits or just spread the word!
Christof

www.creative-companion.com
www.creative-companion.com/deutsch/

 

The link between music taste and personality

To learn from music is one of the aspects of Music Thinking. Here are some learnings that could be used as input for some methods I am using for Brand development and Service Design like Persona Creation, or working with The Company Real Score. So with your next persona creation or service design project you maybe would like to ask your audience what kind (or maybe a combination) of music they prefer. This could help to understand your target group better.

Knowing whether a person prefers John Coltrane to Madonna, Dolly Parton to DJ Avicii, or Wagner to Prince allows for remarkably accurate personality predictions. 

Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

According to a study with 36.000 participants all over the world (conducted by Professor Adrin North of Heriot -Watt University, Edinburgh) there is a clear correlation between the musical taste of a person and their personality.

People could make accurate judgments about an individual’s levels of extraversion, creativity and open-mindedness after listening to ten of their favorite songs. Extraverts tend to seek out songs with heavy bass lines, while those who enjoy more complex styles such as jazz and classical music tend to be more creative and have higher IQ-scores.

Blues fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Jazz fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, and at ease

Classical music fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, introverts, and at ease

Rap fans
have high self-esteem and are outgoing

Opera fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, and gentle

Country and western fans
are hardworking and outgoing

Reggae fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Dance fans
are creative and outgoing but not gentle

Indie fans
have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle

Bollywood fans
are creative and outgoing

Rock/heavy metal fans
have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Chart pop fans
have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing, and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease

Soul fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

 

References
North, A. C. and Hargreaves, D. J. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collingwood, J. (2008). Preferred Music Style Is Tied to Personality. Psych Central. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/preferred-music-style-is-tied-to-personality/
North, A. C., Desborough, L., and Skarstein, L. (2005). Musical preference, deviance, and attitudes towards celebrities. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1903-1914. 

 

More of this:
see the comments or go to www.musicthinking.com

 

The Company Real Score a music thinking approach to business innovation

The Company Real Score – a music thinking approach to business innovation

I am working with many tools and methods. There are some I like more. Now I have compiled the, in my opinion, most important tools and instruments to start with for brand minded & people centered innovations, I call it ‘The Company Real Score’, have a look!

What is it?
The company real score is a collection of business tools and instruments to map and visualize your brand. It is a collection of core elements for orchestrating and conducting ‘brand minded & people centered’ innovations.

Why should you use it?
1. To visualize and communicate what is most important for your brand.
2. To identify strategic paradoxes that can be used in innovation projects.
3. To use it as a ‘brand minded & people centered’ starting point.

See a short presentation

 

The Company Real Score – a music thinking approach to business innovation from CREATIVE COMPANION

You can download the original score – 2,50 meters – via this link: http://goo.gl/IkwkTM

Personas and Female Mindstyles

This year I did one of my biggest projects on how to compile and communicate user insights from consumer research together with quantitative research on women. It was a challenging project with international, interdisciplinary teams and one goal: to bring it all together – aspirational personas (the brand point of view) and reality personas (based on quantitative and qualitative research).
To communicatie this inside the company to have a better understanding “for whom we work” there were 100 copies shared internally at my client Veldhoven Group with the brands Sandwich, Stills, Turnover and NoNo. I facilitated all the workshops (including the seasonal briefings), did consulting on personas and the overall design of the persona posters, the female mindstyle posters and this little booklet including tips and tricks why and how to use it. Here a short impression of the work (iPhone video).

The research on female mindsyles was done by Senta: www.senta.com
More info on VeldhovenGroup and their brands: www.veldhovengroup.com

Need help with your persona project?
From time to time I am organizing an open workshop: 
Data storytelling with personas (here the dutch info, but it can also be held in english or german)
 Storytelling mit Daten ganztägiger Zielgruppen Workshop mit Persona

The Persona Core Poster – a service design tool

Please note: this is my original blog from the year 2011.

I have developed more human-centred templates and a fresh approach called Music Thinking. You will also find the book The Power of Music Thinking with the explanation of aspirational Persona vs Reality Persona and Target Group vs Quick Profile.

Download The Persona Core Poster

 Because the Persona Core poster was downloaded more than 100.000 times on this blog, I also have included it on the NEW Persona-Workshop.com website, full of information.

---

For years I am working with personas from aspirational to reality.

Most of the time, I follow the same basic questions and approaches while developing the personas.

Finally, I found time to design a poster that you can use in workshops and I hope you like it. I post the A3 template here as a PDF under the creative commons licence, this means you can print it, use it and even change it, just name the source.
Tip: start with behaviour and end with the quote!

If you like it drop me a note and share it with your friends or client.

On a regular basis, I am also conducting workshops in the Netherlands or Germany.

Download The Persona Core Poster

Direct link to the … more information on persona page on The Persona Workshop website.
Check it out, there is a lot of information!

The Persona Workshop

More information on Data Storytelling with Personas via the Creative Companion websiteworkshop:

• in Dutch: Nederlands | Data storytelling met persona’s workshop
• in German: Deutsch | Storytelling mit Daten, ganztägiger Persona Zielgruppen Workshop

More posts on persona thinking:
Personas and female mindstyles
Persona Experience in the Museum – Playing with your Expectations
Persona Experience in the Museum – Playing with your Expectations

Business design tools

all contents by Roberta Tassi

There are a lot of possibilities, tools and methodologies while working on your business model, online strategy, service design or ideation project. Here are some nice tools and online platforms for inspiration or to help you get started:

• Business Design tools:  www.businessdesigntools.com The design of a business is divided in 6 Phases where Designers, Clients and Customers should collaborate together in order to develop product/services that really address customers needs. The 6 Phases are: frame, explore, ideate, strategy, co-design, delivery.
• The Company Real Score  is a collection of business tools and instruments to map and visualize your brand. It is a collection of core elements for orchestrating and conducting ‘brand minded and people centered’ innovations.
  Before you start with Customer journey mapping or Business Model Generation it is helpful to map your identity, the critical success factors and the paradoxes or wicked problems. This will give you more focus what best suits to your brand and inspires innovation and creativity. More info and the download of the poster: here!
• Business Model Generation:  www.businessmodelgeneration.com This is also a fantastic book and an iPad app is in development. In the meantime you can use the PDF download of the canvas and a nice presentation with the basic items to make a start.
• Service Design Tools:  www.servicedesigntools.org This website is the result of the research activity done by Roberta Tassi during her graduation thesis. Service Design Tools is conceived as an open platform of knowledge, to be shared with the design research community.
• Persona Core Poster Companies have a growing number of data and research material from different sources that gives detailed information about what a consumer thinks, does or wants. But teams need a simple instrument to make better, integrated and quicker decisions based on the valuable data.
  If you want to innovate and create viable and relevant value propositions, you should start to ‘look with your customers eyes’. More info and download of the poster: here!
  

Christof Zürn
CREATIVE COMPANION
www.creative-companion.com

Download:   CREATIVE COMPANION Fact sheet