100 PART II CHAPTER 3 The human-centred branding stage < Skills for human-centred branding: an overview of tools and methods 3.5 Skills for human-centred branding: an overview of tools and methods As we discussed earlier in chapter 2 (pages 40­67), design research is very effective for building brands. Design research is an immensely interesting field with many truly inspiring techniques and a rich set of cases. What follows is only the tip of the iceberg, but it will give you some insight into why design research is relevant to brand-driven innovation. A small design research toolbox What follows are some basic design research tools that you will frequently encounter in projects. There are many, many more (Laurel, 2003), but this will provide you with a good first overview. Consumer journeys Purpose: to create an understanding of the experience a user of a product or service has over time. Consumer journeys are a visual map of a user's experience over time. Typically, it shows time on a horizontal axis, while on the vertical axis it may map different users or different levels of experience (e.g. functional or emotional). The consumer journey includes the timeframes before and after actually using the product or service. Personas often serve as input for the consumer journey, demonstrating that the journey is different for each consumer. CONSUMER JOURNEY EXAMPLE An example of a consumer journey map, by service designer Lauren Currie, for the service `say women', a voluntary organisation that offers accommodation for young women who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and who are threatened with homelessness. Personas Purpose: to create empathy for the stakeholders in a project by prototyping archetypical stakeholders. Personas are visual and anecdotal profiles of people, based on `real people' from research or `made-up' in brainstorming sessions. Personas are constructed from elements that are relevant to the project at hand, but usually contain some demographic information; something about their social lives and something about their work lives. Usually, several personas are created, each representing one group of stakeholders. The form of the persona depends on who will work with them, but in general it can be said that the more visual and richly detailed they are, the better they will work. PERSONA EXAMPLE An example of a persona that was created based on research into the lifestyles of the users of a fashion brand.