As anyone who has taken one of our creativity workshops or read any of our blogs probably knows, we love the method of design thinking here at Now Go Create to help with problem solving. IDEO are the best known exponents of this practice, which has empathy at its heart. Here’s one of our favourite tools – a point of view ad – a simple but effective to help you get under the skin of your target audience.
What is it? A playful tool from the at Stanford D:school, the spiritual home of design thinking, as a way to tackle problems, starting with the end user or target audience.
How to use it: Use this format – USER + NEED + INSIGHT to create your ‘wanted’ ad.
Embed your user (a specific description of your target audience), his or her need or requirement, and any insights you may have gleaned into the ad. Use the word ‘seeks’ to link it together, just like a wanted ad.
So a hypothetical baby formula brand wants to target mums about its follow on milk.
A point of view ad could look like this:
“Anxious new mum of twins (6 months), struggling to cope with feeding on demand seeks advice on weaning and nutrition. Looking for a local parent’s group or forum to meet other mums in the same situation. No preaching please!”
This tool is great for trying to think about your product or service from the user’s point of view and leverage a particular insight, rather than thinking about what you want to tell or sell to them.
If you’re interested in learning more simple and effective ways to crack your creative challenges check out our next open creativity training in October.