Visual communication

Hi! :)

Earlier this fall when we were in Merimasku for the camp we came up with a few different "user personas" and we have now got feedback from the CEO of the department store, who explained the ranking in the following way: the 40+ as most important, the working man as the second and the youth as third. This is a really good starting point for ur. Since the 40+ woman already serves as the biggest customer group our target of young adults seems like the perfect target group to try and reach out to. 

The last week I've been discussing with both young females and males and the main interestpoints at the moment for this target group is health, fitness, visual appeal, ecology and trends. 

The last week I've read a book called "Effektiv visuell kommunikation" by Bo Bergström (in English "Effective visual communication"). The book talks about the huge role of communication but mostly about the role of visually communicating with the customers. The main focus in the book is about visual appeal in commercials and advertisement, but in my opinion this can also be adapted to a store. By making a great combination of colour, shape, sound, text and picture you can make a store more appealing and profile the store. There is a saying that you "eat with your eyes" and the same could be adapted to a store -> "you shop with your eyes". As we have figured out from interviews and discussions with young adults visual appearanc and appeal makes a great deal, concerning both place and product. The existing customers that we have talked with on the other hand has said that the layout in the department store is very confusing and cluttered, so absolutely there is one important thing to develop further!

We had a small task for this Thursday, which was to do a fast experiment by using the Minimum Viable Product. We had thought about maybe developing a great idea for the 2nd floor café in the department store, and as a minimum viable product we desided to show the target group picures of these lovely fruit bowls and ideas of this kind, to ask if the café would be more appealing to them if they served this and if they would be eager to try it instead of another café if they had that sort of interesting stuff. The answers for my part is, that it looks interesting and is visually a really great idea as it looks beautiful, healthy. They would definitely want to try it, but this idea could maybe be developed further...?

ALso what came out from the last meeting with the CEO is how we can make a longterm solution, some kind of a vision of a future department store.... So this last idea might not be quite enough.

/Sarina