Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Category: Graphic Facilitation

  • NEW Scribble Lab™ Visual Thinking Skills Workshops

    Crackerjack’s Scribble Labs™ are designed to help you explore and develop the skills you need to use the power of Visual Thinking in your work.

    Power of Visual Thinking.png

    We currently offer three different Scribble Labs™ and all are facilitated by John Ashton (owner of Crackerjack Visual Thinking). Available as both open and in-house workshops, we ensure that:

    • All of our workshops are run using best practise visual thinking and graphic facilitation principles.
    • No more than 8 people attend each workshop, so you can be sure you will receive plenty of direct coaching and support from John during your chosen Scribble Lab™.

    To find about each of our Scribble Labs™ and decide which one is right for your needs, please read the overview of each workshop below and then click on the heading for more information:

    Scribble Lab™ 1: Get Scribbling!

    Get Scribbling.png

    Enabling you to draw great graphics and simple visual tools that you can use in the meetings and events you lead.

    Scribble Lab™ 2: Listen, Think, Scribble!

    Listen Think Scribble.png

    Introducing you to the art of creating real-time visual records of meetings and events (often referred to as Live Scribing or Graphic Recording) as they happen.

    Scribble Lab™ 3: Including Scribbling In Your Event Design!

    Include Visual Thinking.png

    Helping you unleash the power of Visual Thinking in your meeting, workshop and event designs!

     

    If you have any questions about our Scribble Labs™ then please do contact us or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com

  • Visual thinking: a key element of the people engagement and change process

    It’s been a busy few months for Crackerjack Visual Thinking since the start of 2016!

    Crackerjack’s work has included:

    • Designing and developing hand-drawn animations
    • Designing rich pictures for clients including Westmill Foods
    • Live scribing (graphic recording) for the NHS and Google UK
    • Creating an interactive PDF improvement guide for one of Crackerjack’s key clients

    The common theme amongst all this work has been that clients are wanting to really engage people (whether it’s their own team members, their own client’s or their customer’s) and see visualising all or some elements of what they are trying to communicate as key to this engagement.

    I see visual thinking as way to enhance people engagement and change initiatives by shortcutting the time it takes people to take in and process important and sometimes complex information. Looking at the ‘Resistance to Change Model’ below, it can been seen that ‘understanding the change’ is a vital part of people being able to move towards ‘new beginnings’:

    Resistance to Change.png

    So, if you are wanting to engage people or introduce a change in your organisation, think about how you can visualise the important information you need your people to understand. And don’t forget, you can also encourage your people to visualise how they feel and what they do and don’t understand about the change.

    Things you could do include:

    • Creating a one page image of what the future will look like…
    • Create an ideas and thoughts wall where people can draw or write their feedback, thinking and ideas about the change…
    • Create a board game that helps people understand the journey they will be going on…
    • Capture the conversations as they happen in meetings about the change as visual notes and encourage people to photograph them with their smartphones as an immediate easy to understand record of the event…

    For more ideas and support with using visual thinking approaches in your organisation, feel free to contact us, call us on 0775 282 6227 or visit our website at www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com.

    John Ashton
    Crackerjack Visual Thinking

  • Crackerjack ‘Scribble Labs™’ coming soon! #visualthinking #communication #creativity

    Crackerjack’s ‘Scribble Labs™‘ are designed to help you explore and develop the skills you need to use the power of Visual Thinking in your work (and outside of work too)!

    Scribble Labs™ Logo

     

    So if you would like to:

    • Develop your drawing skills…
    • Capture ideas, conversations and concepts visually as they happen (often referred to as scribing or graphic recording)…
    • Use visual thinking approaches to increase creativity and collaboration in your meetings and events…

    …then do contact us or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com

    More information to follow shortly…

  • Small details = Big Conversations #visualthinking #engagement

    I’ve just completed a rich picture for a client to help them communicate some important ideas to one of their key customers. As with all of our visual thinking work, the images we create are there to facilitate the right conversations between people.

    To do this we ensure each element of the image serves a purpose and communicates a key message. It’s often the small details included in the images that can create the biggest conversations!

    The example below shows just a few small elements of a much larger image we created for the client:

    To find out how Crackerjack Visual Thinking can help you visualise the small details you need to facilitate the ‘big conversations’ in your organisation, visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or email info@crackerjackvisualthinking.com

  • Seeing the ‘big picture’ #visualthinking #engagement

    One of Crackerjack’s clients sent through a picture of the rich picture we created of their organisations past and future journey. It was great to see it in pride of place in their office!

    A Crackerjack rich picture
    A Crackerjack rich picture visualising an organisations journey in one of our clients offices

    We created the rich picture using a collaborative approach with the organisations team members, using their initial thoughts and ideas as the basis for the final image.

    The rich picture is used to by existing team members to keep the organisations mission and objectives at the front of their minds in the work they are doing. The rich picture is also used as part of the induction process for new team members and as an introduction for visitors to the organisation and its work.

    To find our more about our work visit http://www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or email info@crackerjackvisualthinking.com

  • These organisations have one thing in common: #visual #thinking

    What do Macmillan Cancer Support, the NHS and Westmill Foods all have in common?

    The answer is that they all want to use visual thinking tools to help communicate information to people (including in these cases staff, patients and strategic business partners) and start or continue important conversations in their organisations.

    They have recognised how incorporating visual approaches increases the understanding and engagement their target audiences have with their work.

    Crackerjack Visual Thinking will be creating solutions including rich pictures and an interactive improvement guide to support the above organisations in their work.

    Find out more about how we can help you by phoning us on +44 (0)775 282 6227, emailing us or completing our contact form.

    John Ashton
    Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    #visualthinking #collaboration #communication #engagement

  • Getting ready for the Cancer: Join The Dots event in Durham for #Macmillan and Durham County Council

    Crackerjack will be producing a rich picture visual following today’s Cancer: Join the Dots event. The picture is of some initial notes taken before the event begins. Lot’s more info to capture during this mornings session! 

  • Great photo’s of Crackerjack’s latest #graphicrecording

    Thanks to Dan Lord at Forecast Design (visit their Facebook page here) for these great photo’s of my work from the #IQ2105 Conference earlier this week.

    John Ashton of Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    John Ashton of Crackerjack Visual Thinking

    Visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com to find out more about how we can help start a conversation in your organisation.

  • Is Visual Thinking all about pictures? #visualthinking #communication #engagement #e4s

    I often get asked “Is visual thinking is exclusively about the use of pictures?” and “Can I not use words in my pictures”?

    My answer is that visual thinking can be just about the way you position words in relation to each other.

    For example, the following template is used to help people share their thinking about an organisations values:

    Values Health Check Template

    People are simply asked to write their thoughts directly onto the large template. When the activity is completed, the relative density and positioning of their responses can immediately and visually provide valuable feedback about the organisations values:

    Values Health Check Template 2

    In the example above, before we even look at the detailed content of the responses, we can immediately see that:

    • People see Value 2 being lived in the organisation more than Value 1 and Value 3.
    • People have plenty of ideas about how colleagues could better live Value 1 in the organisation.
    • Value 3 has the least responses (is this because it is the least understood or relevant?).

    All the above insights are obtained without the use of any pictures – simply from being able to see the positioning and density of the words on the template.

    So the answer to the question is “No”, visual thinking is NOT all about pictures. It is all about helping people see information more clearly – whether this involves words, pictures or any combination of these.

    John Ashton

    www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com