Capturing Customer Context

Now that the world's turned upside down, the need for a rich and renewed understanding of our customers is greater than ever. And as our devices become more complicated - voice, touch, haptics, gesture - this need will remain with us. Personas don't capture the whole picture; they focus on the surface and not on the surroundings. Where is your customer? Who is with them? How do they feel? In this workshop, you'll learn to employ the same framework professional actors do to explore the full complexity of your customers and their context, while laying out a strategy for partner engagement.

Improv actors cope with this infinite canvas every time we walk onstage, and at my theater we use a particular storytelling shorthand called CROW to remind us of the elements needed to tell a full story. In this workshop, you'll learn how to apply that same framework to ensure you're getting a complete picture of your customer's context.

We'll also explore the all-important kickoff to the process: if you can't get partner buy-in for your research, what good is the technique? You'll learn strategies for bringing the team together to explore what you know to jump-start this process, allowing you to focus on answering the open questions of greatest value.