Bodystorming is the New Personas.
Why Bodystorming Works? Need states. It focuses on need states.
Bodystorming is a kind of research (testing) that helps identify “need states.” Most of the time you sit around and talk about classifying your customers by demographics like age or gender, or psychographics like lifestyle or even behaviors like purchasing patterns. If you are lucky you bring in research or go out and do research on these different segments. Instead, or in addition to do that, bodystorming through projective role playing forces you to focus on the need states. (Need states = And for a single product there can be multiple need states. And a product can’t be all things for all needs. FOCUS.
Understand the need state and you bodystorm if it is done well will SATISFY. A good bodystorm is one that captures the need state and shows how it is satisfied.
A good bodystorm is one that in it’s immediacy and intemacy shows a customer at a level of how they are experiencing at that very moment your brand.
We need to focus more on the different usage occasions with the product and service and the needs that define them. That is exactly what bodystorming does. It goes even further because it allows both us as designers and business owners to see and understand what is working and what’s not working so that we can interpret design opportunities.
References
The needs of a segment should drive design
Some work that calls for going beyond need states to cultural occasions
