Oh what a year – Thank you 2014!

This was a year with many faces and to summarize these 12 months in one sentence would be something like this: a Year of Empathy, Collaboration, Music Thinking and Brand Development from a Service Design point of view.

For the fashion brand Olsen in Hamburg (Germany) I developed and designed the reality persona’s, based on research in Canada and Germany. We also worked with my brand strategy framework The Company Real Score to map the most essential brand assets as input for the brand deck.

The Übersee-Museum in Bremen (Germany) asked me to do a persona workshop with information on a one year visitors research to make strategic decisions.

Together with Design Thinkers Academy I developed a one day course of Service Design Thinking Fundamentals, a crash course with the basic instruments like stakeholder mapping, value network mapping, persona and customer journey. The next course will be in march 2015.

A sonic branding project: Massive Music in Amsterdam (Netherlands) asked me to help the team with my expertise in musicology and brand strategy. A nice combination of skills.

But there were more music and brand related activities: this year I started in Nijmegen (Netherlands) with a 20×20 (pecha kucha) presentation about Music Thinking and the platform MusicThinking.com, followed by a presentation in Cologne (Germany) about the same subject.
Together with Lutz Hempel from ICG, I did a short Music Thinking exercise during the ICG Change Management Seminar in Düsseldorf (Germany) and a full Music Thinking / Jazz it! workshop presentation in Copenhagen (Denmark) during the Art of Management in Organization conference.

For Bovemij I did the keynote presentation on their connect event in Utrecht. I showed the development of the last 30 years in the music business and how this connects with the challenges of the world we are living in today. The event was organized by my network partner Gerard Scheenstra of Innovatie Vitamine.

With my friend and network partner from the Witten School of Management Stefan Günther I did a workshop based on agile project management for Heraeus in Hanau (Germany); we also advised the board in taking steps towards a scrum framework. For Simon Weber and Friends, Berlin (Germany) I facilitated the alumni meeting with 150 people in Berlin with 10 iPads for the workshop presentations and created the Systemiker-Map  to visualize the region they work and their expertise.

The Efteling – the Dutch love brand number one – asked me to help them translate their massive research activities in a decision making instrument for a better way of collaboration between marketing and design. We worked with reality personas based on a big amount of research data and also worked with the design team on aspirational personas to strengthen the brand perspective in daily decisions. I did the design of the reality personas and all workshops and work sessions with the creative team and strategic marketing.

For De Rechtspraak in Utrecht (the Dutch Judiciary / Council for the Judiciary) I worked as UX Lead on a quality and innovation project about digital accessibility with a user-centered design approach to let different parties work together in building a user interface with a great user experience. Here are some steps we took: defining ux principles, persona development, customer journey mapping, facilitating creatives and management, usability testing.

Thanks a lot to everyone who made this year a fantastic and pleasurable time. I enjoyed to work with you together and I am looking forward to a very nice next encounter.

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/

 

Thank you 2013

Last year I had the pleasure to work on interesting projects with nice people.

• As Creative Companion I worked for Vlisco on several projects with the focus on ‘Vlisco Stories‘, prototyping ‘iPad in the flagship store’ and a personas / brand related intranet platform.
• For the fashion brand DEPT I worked on the development of aspirational and reality persona to sharpen their customer centered and brand related strategy.
• We could present our new product ‘Pfitz – wall object and baking dish‘ at Fuori Salone during Milan Design Week and we found a new manufacturer in Germany. So it will be ‘Dutch Design – handmade in Germany’ very soon. And Pfitz is available in the heart of Amsterdam at Dutch Design Year.
• Finally the Executive App of NIBE-SVV was launched together with the top of the dutch financial world.
• The 1PLACE.ME iPhone and Android App was launched and I did the initial social media activation.
• Working together with Design Thinkers at Bosch in Germany on a Service Design project.
• During Dutch Design Week I teamed up with FRD and gave a lecture on ‘Persona in the HR field’. I also launched  The Company Real Score – a Music Thinking approach to Business Innovation. My daughter and I designed a prototype of a lamp inspired by Mart van Schijndel’s ‘Delta Vase’. The exhibition was shown at Design Perron during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven and in the Amersfoort Rietveld Pavilion in December and January.
• Became Member of the Faculty at Witten School of Management in Witten Germany.
• Started a persona development project for ‘the dutch love brand’ de Efteling.
• End of the year I developed the online strategy based on The Company Real Score for Hekwerk Theaterprodukties, the management (impressariaat) of dutch cabaret stars like Youp van ’t Hek, Jochem Myjer, Droog Brood and more.

Thank you all for working together and the nice time we spent. Curious what 2014 will bring.

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