C1 - Internal use

Visualisation

Challenge & Selection

When I was finishing my master degree and working with a beauty company as an Intern, one  of the challenges I came across was to organize a workshop within the company to create new  ideas around scientific communication for beauty products. I had to create tools for this  workshop for the stakeholders to understand the problem and the key aspects which we  needed to work on to build better scientific communication. Based on facts and myths that  most consumers have in mind I wanted to create with them new mean of communication for  the consumers to understand better those myths (myths such as hair coloration is damaging my  hair or hair conditioner is causing hair fall). In order to make sure that the stakeholders of the  workshops quickly understand the overall picture of the challenge and the different myths we  needed to cover and tackle, I used the visualization tool from design thinking. It is a tool really  important for the process of design and in my case relevant for this challenge. Indeed, creating  visuals as a starting point for the discussion will allow stakeholder to think in a nonverbal way,  access part of brain and creativity that we might not be using verbally. Images created to  explain myths, with colors and symbols were tools to feed their thoughts and create a more  visual understanding of the problem.

Application

I started using the visualization tool by clubbing different myths together and creating visuals  around it so that those myths were understandable from a consumer point of view and visually  possible to be represented. To do so, I would start to research online, from internal consumer  studies or from colleague’s inputs to identify what are the big myths that consumers have in  mind regarding beauty products.

Once I had gathered all information, I started thinking how to represent this visually so that I  could make more sense and be quickly understood by someone else. I created visuals for this  workshop where on the headline I would give the header of the myths such as “hair coloration”  or “caring for colored hair” to give a heads up of the topic to be discussed. Then I would create  visual or add images founded online which represent that myths in the head of the customer (a  drawing of a hair fiber with cuticles damaged by hair color, a picture of a women with very dry  hair and hair fall due to conditioner). In between 2 images that I had selected I would write with  one or 2 words what I came across in my research to show what is already available from other  beauty companies and how they are dealing with it. At the bottom of the visual I would keep a  big arrow coming from the images and words and would write key words describing need  gaps/opportunities that I had identified from above and that we will need to work on during

C1 - Internal use

the workshop. The visuals were simple, with images, arrow, key words to automatically be able  to understand the need gaps for each myth.

During the workshop, I created groups of 4/5 people on one table where I had kept the visuals  printed on paper. I had made the groups with people coming from different backgrounds,  people from the laboratories, from the consumer evaluation, from the marketing and consumer  insights teams to enhance their thoughts and discussions. I would go through one visual with  them and explain that we need to think on how we could fill the need gaps giving them no  borders on the way to do it (through video channels, Instagram stories, communication through  hair dressers in the salons…). I had given them blank paper as well for them to expand the  visuals to create new idea for the needs gaps. After 20 minutes, each team proposed solutions  on one or more myths and we gathered together in a second visual what could be the solutions  for us to communicate better with our consumers regarding their fear and myths around  beauty products.

Insight & Approach

What I have learned from organizing and leading this workshop is that visual representation can  make things go very differently than just verbal communication. The teams used my visuals as a  starting point for their discussion, it helped them understand the problem better and faster  where a verbal communication might not have been so detailed and easy to understand. These  were a real feed for their thoughts and enabled them to create and discuss using visualization  as well. Indeed, I could see that at the end of the workshop, a lot of ideas were actually  translated visually with symbols, drawing, arrows, etc. on their blank papers and it lead to  amazing propositions for new ways of communicating with our customers. This experience  really enlightened me on the power of a tool such as design thinking and visualization and the  way we can use this tools to create stronger, better ideas.

During this workshop I also understood that the consumer insights were really important and  should be the starting point for our thoughts. Hence, what could have been great for this  workshop would have been to use the story telling tool where I would have invited some  consumers at the beginning of the workshop where they could have talked about their  doubts/fears regarding beauty products and we would have transform this in beautiful story  telling. It would have been really impactful for the rest of the session and really helped to put  the consumer in the center of everything and be complementary with the visuals I had created.

