FOR CUSTOMERCENT
RICITY
90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual,
so isn’t it time you opted for a simpler and quicker
way to tell a compelling customer story in a way that
will stick? The written word alone can create a level of
uncertainty and ambiguity. This is where the power of
visualisation can play a fundamental role.
Visual thinking is becoming ever so popular yet there
is still so much untapped potential when it comes to
talking about customers, communicating about the
customer experience, and designing improvements.
In this article I want to make the case to bring a visual
angle to your view of the customer, and how you can
enhance communication with your colleagues.
12 Customer Insight Winter 2019/20 | www.tlfresearch.com
FOR CUSTOMERCENT
RICITY
Visual Thinking can play a
significant role in accelerating
learning, solving problems and
generating ideas.
A shared language
If I asked you to draw a house right now
the chances are you would draw 2 windows
either side of a door and a smoking chimney
regardless of whether you actually have a
house with a chimney or windows. This is
because you are conditioned to draw using
a universal language, a language that you
have used since you were a child. This
universal language enables working groups
to collaborate effectively. You can imagine
how powerful this is when visualising such
things as a customer journey, moving away
from abstractions that can be created with
the written word and finding a level of
alignment.
Blending Visual Thinking and Design Thinking
It’s no surprise that the best products,
services and customer experiences can
only be designed around the basic needs,
aspirations, emotions and motivations of
your end users. Far too often an organisation
focuses on maximising delivery with
Why visualisation?
As a design graduate, well versed in
methods of Design Thinking and Agile ways
of working, I make use of visualisation
techniques to support working groups to
cultivate group learning through pictures
whilst encouraging others to take to the flip
chart and draw.
That’s right — you don’t need to have
a design degree to visualise. When we talk
about visualisation what we are really talking
about is visual literacy.
As children we are often introduced
to literature in the form of picture books
and learn how to associate the pictures
with meaning by navigating the pictures
on a page way before we learn to read and
write. So when we refer to visual thinking
we are describing our ability to interpret,
comprehend, and express ideas by using or
creating visuals.
www.tlfresearch.com | Winter 2019/20 Customer Insight 13
G U E S T F E A T U R E
technical enhancements that are both feasible
and viable from a business perspective yet
fail to tick the desirability box. In certain
situations Agile teams might also be guilty of
maximising delivery and building the ‘thing
right’ yet failing to build the ‘right thing’?
binding what a group is thinking about
without influencing what is presented by each
individual.
It will be no surprise for you to hear that
visual thinking techniques can be explored at
every stage of the Design Thinking Cycle and
embedded as a common practice within Agile
teams. From the creation of rough low fidelity
sketches and prototypes to test and validate
design ideas, to the use of graphic metaphors
and templates during team retrospectives.
Whatever the method the key motivations
for visual thinking remain to generate ideas
and solve problems, offering fast effective
feedback and learning.
their birth at the Walt Disney Studio in the
1930s, they still remain an essential tool for
story sequencing and elaborating ideas before
investing in producing physical products and
services.
The beauty of a storyboard is the way
a reader will naturally follow the flow of
information from left to right and top to
bottom, narrating a process or journey from
beginning to end. You must ask yourself
what are the most salient points you wish to
communicate with an audience, and what the
key milestones are that you need to identify
along the journey. Having a limited number
of frames at your disposal is a helpful control
measure and a powerful way to emphasise
vital information.
“You’ve got to start with
the customer experience and work backward to technology.”
-Steve Jobs“Your story’s
moments should be like a dot to dot
puzzle. Remove one dot and you
change the shape
of the story.”-Scott McCloud
The first stage of Design Thinking focuses
on discovering a sense of understanding
towards the people that will use your
products and services. This discovery
phase requires an element of ethnographic
research which can take the form of dreary
documentation or engaging visuals that
paint a clear picture of customer needs.
Fortunately, there is a range of visual
thinking tools at your fingertips.
Dave Gray’s Empathy Mapping and
Strategizer’s Value Proposition canvas help
teams to collectively delve deeper into the
behaviours and motivations of end users.
The beauty of templates such as these is that
they embrace both divergent and convergent
thinking, offering individuals the opportunity
to share unique ideas whilst aligning a group
on a specific theme. Much like a framework
Storyboarding for communication
An increasingly popular Visual thinking
business tool is creative storyboarding,
which can be used to aid team alignment,
gain stakeholder engagement and keep
the customer at the heart of product and
service creation. Most commonly linked
to comics, storyboards expand on the use
of visual narration, where pictures trump
words as a more favoured method for
conveying information. Whilst comic art and
storyboarding have evolved somewhat since
So if you are faced with a user experience
problem or a potential issue with a current
process, introduce storyboarding within your
teams for a clear and captivating way to
present a business need and solve a customer
problem.
G U E S T F E A T U R E
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G U E S T F E A T U R E
Storyboarding a Customer Journey
You guessed it, what better way to visualise
a customer journey than a visual storyboard?
In the fields of user experience, service
design and design thinking, storyboarding
is applied as a way of recognising the needs
of an end user. By building a picture of
your customers' experiences you can walk
through current customer journeys frame
by frame, and identify key pain points
which can become levers for change leading
to desirable products and services. This
approach can be explored throughout the
fruition of a product lifecycle from gaining
customer insight, to testing the experience of
a new feature. Inspecting, adapting, pivoting
and persevering based on the needs and
motivations of your customers.
Useful Tips
Hopefully I’ve convinced you of the
power of visual thinking to improve
your understanding of customers, and
communicate persuasively with your
colleagues.
If you want to get started here are my top 3
tips:
• Communication over decoration - it’s not
about creating a masterpiece
• Simplicity is key - keep things simple, you
just need to communicate an idea
• Process over art - remember it’s about
collaboration and group learning
Stuart Young describes himself as a
Business Visualiser, Agile Enthusiast,
Design-Thinker and Empathy driven
storyteller. When Stuart is not assisting
businesses to simplify complexity through
live illustration he is facilitating a suite of
Design Thinking and Visual Thinking Skills
workshops that catalyse customer centric
creativity and innovation.
You can find him on:
LinkedIn, Twitter @Stuartliveart,
Stuart Young
Innovation Practice Lead
Radtac
www.tlfresearch.com | Winter 2019/20 Customer Insight 15
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