Making great concept boards is at least as much an art as much as it is a science. The way to do it can’t easily be prescribed but here are KSBR’s 8 rules for getting it right:

Having at least three distinctive concepts is often crucial, because qualitative testing is not a beauty parade in which you’re looking for a ‘winner’ — it’s a way of triangulating the opportunity and revealing what the customer ideal actually looks like.

When writing concepts, making each feel as distinct from the others as possible is crucial as the more different the ideas feel, the more territory they collectively cover, and the more precisely the moderator can use them to pin down what the real opportunity is.

There’s a temptation to write concepts that sound safe and sensible — but bland concepts produce bland reactions and make it hard to understand opportunities, whereas strong reactions produce strong data.

Concept boards need to be designed in a way that signals these differences clearly and keeps respondent energy up – which is less about sophisticated graphic design and more about using colour, formatting, and imagery to emphasise exactly what makes each concept different.

Knowing how much detail to include is one of the hardest judgement calls in concept development  – too much and respondents disengage; too little and the idea stays too vague for them to react to meaningfully.

Rougher, more sketch-like concepts invite people to think and build, whereas polished, worked-through executions are better suited to validation.  Matching the finish to the question you’re actually trying to answer is key.

Writing in consumer-facing language is essential – particularly for positioning boards – as a great idea can fall flat if articulated the wrong way. This means more than avoiding jargon: it means starting where the customer is, and not assuming more interest, familiarity, or emotional investment than they actually have.

Words and phrases that appeal to the client team can land very differently with the public.  If your concepts aren’t born from a customer-driven process (such as KSBR Live) then a quick sense-check of the language can help to ensure that the concepts land as intended.