Rapid brand development

Start by finding information online, which is the easiest way to gather data quickly. Write down a number of places where you customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data. Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, Google reviews, and Amazon reviews. Comments on these sites are excellent places to observe the way your customers really feel. Place special emphasis on posts where customers define their fears, needs, habits, and personal dreams. Add all the information to the board.

After everybody is done in the previous step, review and discuss all findings. Takedown individual customer ‘attributes’ onto sticky notes. Add one attribute per sticky note. This will be your Persona board. You may choose to group notes on the board into similar sections such as: 1 Background 2 Demographic 3 Goals 4 Motivations 5 Frustrations/Fears 6 Skills You may choose to change those sections. You will know when you have enough information when you feel like you know this person. You should be able to imagine their beliefs, passions, aspirations, fears, hobbies, etc. Continue finding information until you feel like the personality of your persona is fully-formed and feels as real as a close friend. Write down a name for this Persona or use the most common name that comes up in your customer files. This will help your team to have empathy for the customer as if it were a real person. You may also choose to have more in-depth interviews to flesh out your Persona, and to choose a stock photo for your Persona.

In this step, brainstorm elements for the life narrative of your persona and add it to the board. If you have interviewed customers for this Persona, it is ideal to use a life story that is a composite of those of your real customers. Note: Add additional Persona templates to the board if you have more than one different customer segments. Alternatively, start a new session using the "Persona" tool or use the "Persona with card decks" tools for multiple personas.

By now the board should be complete. You and your team should know how your customer looks, what they say, what they think, how they feel. If the picture is not yet clear, go back and add more details to complete the board. In this step, discuss the completed board with all participants and highlight important points.

Brief User / client Information Style: If it is a design project, think about your style. Are you putting together a masculine or feminine board? Futuristic, modern, vintage? Is it edgy, bold, or peaceful? Color palette: Dominant colors and secondary colors Source: Where are the best places to look for information and inspiration?

Find a mish-mash of images, illustrations, colors, words, fonts, and textures that define the direction of a project. Use board stickers to mark and highlight the images and information that are important to you.

Send an email to your client or stakeholders and share your moodboard/inspiration board with them. Your session"guests" will only be able to see the next step. Options: You can schedule a meeting with them or you can ask them to leave sticky notes with some feedback.

What does the company do? Keep it short.

Describe your service and products and include a positioning statement - how are you different from your competitors?

What is your competitive advantage? And how does the customer perceive it?

Why do you exist?

Tip: A vision statement is a declaration of an organization’s overarching objective. What are your hopes and dreams? If everything goes the way you want, what is the problem you would be solving for the greater good? The vision statement dictates the mission and is meant to be inspiring, big and exciting! The vision will provide the company with a direction.

Tip: A mission statement is a formal summary of the values of an organization. What problems does it solve? For who? How? It describes how you act and it proclaims for who you are doing whatever you do, what you provide and how you do it every day. The mission drives the company.

Who is on the management / executive team? Who is on the advisory board? Do you have any partners?

Include a link to all your logo documentation. Include the illustration file and the logo for white and black backgrounds, if applicable.

Provide Guidelines or a link to those guidelines.

What styles do you use for the following areas: What font style and size do you use for titles? How do you highlight text? Do you use bold? Do you use a different color? What background colors do you use? What type of illustrations do you recommend? Can you provide a package? Add as much information as you think would be necessary and will reduce the number of mistakes and design reviews.

Use this board to discuss and evaluate your color, design, illustration, and product usability before defining it in the next steps.

Be specific. Email campaigns, Facebook, Instagram, etc

Create a list of words that are vital for your communication strategy. For example, at Nova, we tend to use the following words: Creative, visionary, alternatives, innovative, open, communicative, visual, original, testing, revolutionary, friendly, reveling, impactful, successful, development, launching, team, disrupting, explorers, visualize, feel, possible, opportunity, challenges, investigate, accelerate, different, playful, fun, discussion, open conversation, technology-oriented, future, flexible, experiential, competitive edge, to uncover, dynamic, in-depth discussion, engaging, connecting, synchronicity, new thinking, powerful, customer’s desires, insights, full potential.

Review and add additional information about this session in the Session Goals / Instructions. Add any additional constraints or ideas that come to mind, or include additional links for the team / stakeholders. For example, you may be designing a logo, a piece of furniture, or a piece of software etc. If you have details about product requirements or constraints, make note of them in the Session Goals so that the team can keep them in mind during the session.

Find the Portrait Card deck and pick a card. Tips: You can add one or more cards creating different brainstorming columns. You can prepare the board and add the cards beforehand or use the "random" button to add cards while your brainstorming session is active.

Finish the following phrase based on the topic you chose in the previous step: If [SUBJECT] was [CARD TOPIC] the [SUBJECT] would be [X] because of [Y]. For example, if you were trying to design a new type of chair, and the card topic was ‘color’, the phrase might be: “If this chair we are designing was a color, it would be white because you should feel like you’re sitting on a cloud.” Or if you receive the card topic ‘emotion’: “If this chair we are designing was an emotion, it would be pride because when you sit in it you should feel like a king.” You may already see how the evolution of ideas could take place using this tool. Respond with at least one answer, but should come up with as many ideas as possible within the time limit. Remember that giving [X] reasons is important because it helps generate valuable ideas to build from, and the team can play off one another's ideas.

In this step, discuss each other's answers from the previous step.