Create and enhance your innovation focused qualitative practices.

April 23 – 26, 2013

This course is a “how to” course and will cover, in depth, the components of developing and facilitating a creative consumer panel. During this course, participants will gain an understanding of creative behaviors and the creative problem solving process necessary to recruit and select creatively articulate participants, design and facilitate sessions and harvest the insight from sessions. In addition, participants will have an opportunity to practice facilitating creative qualitative tools and build their toolbox.

Who Should Attend

This course is for practicing sensory professionals who have experience conducting qualitative research and are interested in:

•     Building their qualitative research toolbox

•     Uncovering consumer insights

•     Designing and executing consumer qualitative research

About the Course

Covered in this course are tools and techniques for:

•     Recruiting and selecting creative consumers

•     Divergence beyond top of mind

•     Convergence for innovation

•     Co-creating with consumers

•     Mining creative qualitative information for insight

•     Telling the story to others

4 Day Course

Course Fee: $2,750

Course Director: Clare Dus

Location: New Jersey

About Clare Dus :  With over 20 years of experience consulting to the consumer products industry, Clare has an understanding of the concerns unique to sensory evaluation. She has tasted, smelled, felt and looked at a wide range of products including foods, beverages, personal care products, paper products, fabrics and pharmaceuticals. She believes that the data holds the story, especially in the linking of product knowledge with consumer understanding. Her strength is to apply creative problem solving techniques to improve panel communication, design VOC approaches and derive key insights.

To register call 908-376-7000

How do you ensure robust descriptive study results? —Through a well-trained and experienced panel leader.

Joanne Seltsam of Sensory Spectrum, Inc. likens it to working with tennis pro:  the leader assesses each panelist’s level. He then brings out their strengths, finds their weaknesses, and works to improve both.  

In consensus evaluations, group dynamics and negotiation are key skills that don’t often initially come to mind.  A great leader asks the right questions to engage panelists in vigorous discussions then makes connections to broker consensus.  Joanne is energized when panelists “gel” and come to consensus naturally without abandoning individual opinions, turning their personal frame of reference into shared descriptive language. “To find that nuance collectively is a cool feeling,” she says, “like when the orchestra finally plays in tune.” 

Lee Christie Stapleton, also from Sensory Spectrum, notes that an experienced panel leader digs deeper and uncovers distinctions to provide robust data, leading to detailed and actionable information for clients.  Lee compares panel leadership to teaching:  you need to prepare the lesson plan (or protocol), orient the panel in the study parameters, provide references to facilitate understanding, and guide panelists in skills development.  A panel leader’s job isn’t to give answers; it’s to help panelists find the answers.

When training panelists, Lee loves the “a-ha” moments: “When people are struggling with something and you find the right combination of an example, a story…when I make that connection and you see it come together for them…”.  She is also excited to see panelists explain concepts to each other, which not only facilitates learning but also creates a shared experience that bonds the group. A great panel leader is “facilitating the conversation so that you’re not leading it, you’re guiding it so they [the panelists] are actually creating the community together, having a shared experience.”

Joanne Seltsam points out that the benefit of panel leadership training is the focus is on leadership. “It’s one of the most powerful things to be able to do in the sensory field and the skills you learn transfer to many other aspects of your career.”
 

 Check this out for more information about becoming a great panel leader!

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."    — Albert Einstein

I am starting the New Year still inspired by our SSP conference. One of the objectives of the Society of Sensory Professionals is to foster leadership and strategy in the entire field of sensory science.  Jon McIntyre, Senior VP of R&D at Pepsico, closed our most recent conference with a great leadership challenge – Move beyond the current notion to support, guide, help, and advise to a leadership role that influences by integrating  Nutrition, Genetics, Metabolomics, Receptor Biology, Behavioral Science, and Neurobiology & Human Physiology with Sensory Science.

Traditionally sensory scientists have worked hard to influence by leading within academia and industry.  However, much of the effort has been in getting the science of sensory right and by managing the clients and projects.  Can we move beyond managing and supporting to true leadership?  

The challenge is to know the difference between leadership versus management within spheres of responsibility.  In what ways can we lead first and then find the managers to implement?  Jon’s challenge prods us to think and act across an array of disciplines when thinking of products, consumers, the marketplace, and the possibilities for them. 

Starting with the broadest view and focus on what is critical to your research program, the possibility of leadership is vastly refocused and boosted.  What are the skills we need to expand and grow? What are the other sciences we need to understand to get a better picture of the consumer and product nexus? How does what we learn in other domains change our thinking about sensory science?  Ask yourself – how might I take a long view and lead?

Happy Holidays from all of us at Sensory Spectrum.  Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2013.

Click here to view this years card  
(scroll down to view our holiday message)

Blinc’s Tube Mascara

Gail Vance Civille was recently interviewed by NJBIZ magazine on the uniqueness of Sensory Spectrum and its influence on product development.  Read the article here:

http://www.njbiz.com/article/20120806/NJBIZ01/120809948/0/SEARCH

Two minds can merge and fill in the gaps. Chefs think in terms of creating and selling masterpieces. Sensory professionals think in terms of describing the sensory attributes and understanding what consumers want from a product. 

Two professionals, one a trained chef and the other a trained Sensory Scientist decided to do an experiment. The experiment took two different brands of apple pies, one a bake and serve and the other an in store bakery product. They decided to write a product description using their own language.  

Please click here to view Sensory Spectrum's holiday card

We contrasted two pasteurized cow’s milk cheeses: Swiss cave-aged Gruyere and Spanish Mahon.  

Click here to read the Wikipedia biography of founder and CEO of Sensory Spectrum, Gail Vance Civille.

New Jersey is known as “The Garden State,” but few people outside of the area know why.  The answer can be seen in the pictures below – NJ overflows with farms, growing some of the world’s best produce. 

The word “corn” as such was an English term used to describe small particles. What we now call corn, the early American colonists called Indian corn. In this day and age ”Indian Corn” refers to the ornamental corn of Halloween and Thanksgiving traditions. Several New England tribes from the Mohegan in Connecticut to the Iroquois in the Great Lakes region had rituals and ceremonies of thanksgiving for the planting and harvesting of corn. One ceremony, the Green Corn ceremony of New England tribes, accompanies the fall harvest.

Please click here for our special holiday message.

Gail Vance Civille presents "Influence of Sensory Perception" at the ACS Fall 2010 National Meeting & Exposition.

August 22 – 26, 2010
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Conscious awareness of the environment and people around you fosters deeper understanding and enables more productive responses. Hear how sensory awareness contributes to this ability.  

Lemongrass Viet-Tai Restaurant
1729 State Route 10 East Morris Plains, New Jersey Phone (973) 998-6303

Hidden within a store front location on Route 10 East in Morris Plains, New Jersey, Lemongrass is an interesting Vietnamese-Thai restaurant. 

Celebrate one of Mother Nature's finest summer gifts, the blueberry, with this delicious recipe. 

Summertime in New Jersey and North Carolina (where Sensory Spectrum has its offices) is reliably hot and humid. However, we can all ‘beat the heat’ by wearing fabrics whose properties are great for keeping the body cool even on the hottest of days.  In this blog post, we will share some great choices for summer fabrics. 

Sensory Spectrum President, Gail Vance Civille, was interviewed by NBC Senior Investigative Correspondent, Lisa Myers, on her views of David Kessler's book The End of Overeating.

Changing the way -- and what -- we eat
Gail Vance Civille, President of Sensory Spectrum, explains how consumer demands are forcing food companies to change the way they engineer food.

Not so long ago, I was having dinner in San Antonio after a day of working with a client.  I say not so long ago for 2 reasons: 1) I can’t quickly recall a date – March/April/Easterish?  and 2) I need you to know that it was definitely not Tomato season.  Regardless, the description was too good to pass up – something about tomato hearts with feta and capers and a citrus balsamic dressing. It sounded light; it sounded different from the flotilla of Caesar salads that routinely pass before my eyes on menus across the country; it sounded GOOD.

So I asked my waiter, a friendly if overworked guy, about the tomato salad.  “Was it good?”  I asked. “Tomatoes aren’t in season yet.  Will it taste like tomatoes?”  “Yes”, he assured me, “It’s really good.” So I took a chance and ordered the tomato salad, a shrimp appetizer, and a nice glass of pinot gris.

What’s more quintessentially summer than fresh, sweet tomatoes mixed with fragrant leaves of basil?  This pasta recipe combines these two elements into a simple, yet flavorful dish, perfect for a warm evening on the porch with friends and a glass of wine.

Vicksburg, Mississippi , referred to as the “Red Carpet City of the South”, is a wonderful and culturally rich city with a deep history.   Each year, thousands of tourists visit the city and enjoy all that this southern bell has to offer.  When I had the opportunity to visit my daughter who was working there, I jumped at the chance.  First, I wanted to know more information about the city. Here are a few facts I found.  The area was originally part of the Natchez Native Americans’ territory and was later conquered by the Choctaw Nation.  In 1801, under pressure from the U.S. government, the Choctaw Nation ceded its territory to the U.S. which led to the removal of the Choctaw to Indian Territories west of the Mississippi.  During the Civil War, Vicksburg proved to be a pivotal part of the battle between the North and the South.  In 1863, the city finally had to surrender during the siege of Vicksburg giving the Union Army control of the entire Mississippi River.  This was a turning point in the Civil War. 

Sensory Spectrum President, Gail Vance Civille, talks on National Public Radio (NPR) about the most alluring flavors and textures of food.  She is highlighted in an interview with former FDA Commissioner, Dr. David Kessler, who speaks about his book, The End of Overeating and how certain foods train the brain to overeat.

View our posters from the 8th Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium which took place in Florence, Italy in July 2009.  This symposium is an international meeting of sensory scientists to honor the work and contribution of Rose Marie Pangborn to the field of sensory science.  It continues the tradition based on the previous seven symposia and encourages young sensory scientists to present their research on a global platform. The Pangborn meeting has continued to grow and is recognized as the most important scientific symposium for the disciplines of sensory and consumer science.