One of the my favourite tools as a designer is a perceptual map. Perceptual maps also know as bartle diagrams are a clear visual way of understanding core attributes or markets and understanding any points of differentiation. IDEO defined innovation models using a perceptual maps to identify whether you products were incremental, evolutionary, or revolutionary.
Source IDEO HCD Toolkit
Games uses perceptual maps to understand player types to design game mechanics.
Also Canon recently used one to explain it’s new product road map. Being a Canon geek I had to include it:
Image Source (NL)
“the arrow to the right reads “Motion Picture” while the arrow to the left reads “Still Photography”. It seems like the C EOS DSLR in development is mostly aimed at Video instead of Still. BTW, the arrow up is “Professional” while the arrow down is “Consumer”. “
