A Tool for Concept Validation: From Brand to Concepts

There is an increasing number of products in the market. Many of them get copied the second they launch. In the end, everything looks identical. Digitalization is the main reason behind, causing the commoditization of the products (van Erp, 2011). Eventually, a brand becomes the only thing creating difference among competitors. However, instead of blaming the digital revolution, it is possible to take a step back and find a way out by designing from the brand perspective. So, what is the brand experience? Brand experiences can be defined as the overall experiences that cover customers’ sensations, feelings, thoughts, and actions lived within a certain brand. These experiences cause customer responses through brand-related stimuli (Brakus et al., 2009). Designers play an important role in the creation of brand experiences by translating the brand into the design. A touchpoint is considered as the final version of a design that is made for a certain brand. It can be a website, mobile application, packaging or a tangible product. Therefore, the design of the manifestation is a quite similar process with the standard user-centric design processes. The only difference is that while the user-centric design processes have the focus of the user, in this design process the focus is the brand. During the brand experience design process, there are many difficulties that designers face. The main reason behind is that in the literature, there are no inductive or deductive methods for designing for brand experiences nor is there a process for making a product or a service ‘on brand’. Think the brand out loud is a tool designed for validating the concepts if they are ‘on brand’ or not. The tool consists of a manual, card set and two boards. The card set is a selection of brand values, personalities, and emotions, and boards (explained in the manual) help both to define the brand’s core elements and to select concepts according to those core elements. While the tool guides the design team to discuss and reach a consensus, at the same time, it reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each design concept and helps to define directions for the final design.Design for Interactio