Crackerjack Visual Thinking

Tag: visualisation

  • Visualising complex product ecosystems

    Visualising complex product ecosystems

    Organisations like SAP, Siemens, and PTC offer comprehensive solution ecosystems that span multiple domains—PLM, simulation, digital twins, IoT, and more. While these solutions are powerful, they are also complex. As a result, many customers struggle to understand how the various tools relate to one another and, more importantly, how they align with their own operational challenges and transformation goals.

    The Communication Gap

    • Customers often focus on immediate problems and can’t always see how a broader platform approach addresses their needs.
    • Sales and product teams may describe capabilities from different angles, leading to inconsistent messaging.
    • Internal stakeholders may lack a shared view of how the offer is positioned for different markets or maturity levels.

    A Visual Thinking Approach

    Using a facilitated visual method—such as the creation of a rich picture—can help bridge the gap between technical solutions and customer understanding. A rich picture is a large, illustrative diagram that captures:

    • The customer’s operational environment and key challenges.
    • How different products or tools contribute to solving those challenges.
    • The broader transformation journey and how solutions align to that trajectory.
    • Dependencies, touchpoints, and contextual factors that are difficult to convey in text or slide decks.

    Benefits of this Approach

    • Customer Understanding: Provides a visual narrative that helps customers see where they fit and how the solution supports their goals.
    • Sales and Marketing Alignment: Offers a consistent, reusable asset that can guide strategic conversations and value positioning.
    • Internal Clarity: Acts as a reference point across teams—helping product, sales, and delivery functions align on message and intent.
    • Adaptability: Can be tailored by sector, persona, or maturity level to suit different engagement scenarios.

    Common Use Cases

    • Industry-specific product overviews.
    • Executive briefings and stakeholder workshops.
    • Onboarding tools for new clients or internal teams.
    • Strategic planning, partner enablement, or bid development.

     If you would like to explore how visual thinking can help you engage clients with your product, please contact us.

    #VisualThinking #CustomerEngagement #ComplexitySimplified #SolutionSelling #DigitalTransformation #TechMarketing #EnterpriseSoftware #StrategicAlignment #IndustrialSoftware #SystemsThinking #EngineeringDesign #CustomerSuccess #InnovationConsulting #VisualConsulting

  • Great feedback from Domestic & General

    Great feedback from Domestic & General

    Really pleased to receive the following feedback from Mathew Scoines, Programme Director at Domestic & General, about a rich picture project recently completed for him:

    Crackerjack was brought into Domestic and General to help us visually represent an extremely complex new platform via an easily consumable and readable ‘rich picture’.  The process was led by John from Crackerjack who achieved this remit and delivered a service and outcome beyond our expectations.  The method by which Crackerjack engaged with us and elicited the information required to shape this visual output was extremely well crafted and fascinating to be part of.  

    John guided us patiently and professionally throughout the process and helped us articulate and break down the key aspects of our new platform solution supporting stakeholder and subject matter expert discussions to elicit the right information at the right level of detail.  John listened carefully and focussed on genuinely understanding our business and the context for this task.  This resulted in a rich picture which skilfully encapsulates a very complex solution and presents it in a format which is easily consumable by and useful to both seasoned experts in our business as well as the layperson.   

     I would recommend both the use of a rich picture to convey complexity in a form which is easy to read and understand and most certainly recommend Crackerjack as the organisation to help achieve this.

     We have commissioned Crackerjack now to take the rich picture and build a story based animation and narration around it – this is going extremely well and I have no doubt will turn out great with John’s guidance and expertise.

     Mathew Scoines

    Programme Director

    Domestic and General

  • #Visualising Interflora’s #strategy, developing an aerospace #explainer #animation and #graphicrecording an NHS event: all in a weeks work for www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com

    Using visual thinking approaches to share complex information is increasingly recognised as an really effective element of organisational engagement initiatives across many sectors. The last week has proved this!

    I’ve been working at an event to visualise Interflora’s strategy, created a whiteboard style explainer video for a major aerospace organisation and graphic recorded at an NHS Neuro-Rehabilitation workshop (take a look at my Twitter feed @johnashtonuk to read some of the feedback about this).

    Neuro Rehab Graphic Recording
    Graphic recording created live at NHS Neuro-Rehabilition event

    In all cases, visual thinking approaches have helped to turn ideas and thoughts into tangible visual reality across this broad range of organisations.

    To find more about how Crackerjack can help you engage your people through visual thinking approaches, please Contact Us.

    All the best,

    John

    John Ashton – Director

  • We’ll soon be ‘revealing all’ about our busy summer here at Crackerjack! #visualthinking #communication #engagement

    We’ll soon be ‘revealing all’ about our busy summer here at Crackerjack! #visualthinking #communication #engagement

    Hope you all had a great summer!

    Whilst we’ve been able to fit a few holidays in over the summer, we’ve also been busy supporting clients  in a number of different ways. Whilst we can’t yet reveal everything we’ve been doing (client confidentiality, hence the blurred images below!), we can tell that we’ve doing lots including:

    • Creating a new interactive toolkit to help managers improve quality and care at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. The toolkit is due to be launched in the next few days.

      screen-shot-2016-09-15-at-10-39-33

    • Graphic recording for number of clients including Northumbrian Water, National Trust and Oxford University Hospitals.

    • Delivering our first 1:1 Scribble Lab coaching programme for a client at EVHR Consulting.

    • Creating a rich picture detailing Solent NHS Trusts new strategic direction.

      Screen Shot 2016-09-15 at 10.26.13.png

    We’ll be revealing more details on this work over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, why not visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com to find out more about our work. Alternatively, feel free to contact us to discuss your requirements in more detail.

     

  • Sneaky Peak! #visualthinking

    Sneaky Peak! #visualthinking

    Just thought I’d share a few small elements of a much larger rich picture I’m creating for a client to help them communicate their new vision and engage their target audience in their work.

    Sneaky Peak-01 copy

    The staring point for the rich picture was a powerpoint presentation containing outline bullet points for each element of the new vision. I then worked with the client to really understand and explore the vision and identify the real-life impact this would have on their target audience.

    From this exploration I’ve been able to create a rich picture that visually shows how their vision will enable their target audience to make a real impact to the lives of the general public.

    I’m hoping to be able to share the whole graphic with you in June once it’s been launched at the organisations annual conference (where I’m also creating a live graphic recording of the key themes, thoughts and ideas emerging from the event).

    To find out more about our work, please visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or contact us.

  • House of Fraser chooses Crackerjack Visual Thinking’s Scribble Lab™ 1 to help develop its #visualthinking skills!

    Crackerjack Visual Thinking is very pleased to have been asked to deliver a bespoke version of our Scribble Lab™ 1 visual thinking training workshop to House of Fraser’s learning and development team later this month.

    Scribble Lab™ 1 enables participants to draw great graphics and use simple visual tools in the meetings and events they lead (ideal for learning and development teams).

    To find out more about Scribble Labs™ click here or visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com

    Include Visual Thinking

  • Now that’s a novel use for black insulation tape and a whiteboard! #visualthinking

    Just spotted this advert for a new TVR sports car which uses just black electrical insulation tape and a whiteboard to visualise a teaser image of the new car.

    Just shows that you don’t have to stick to pens and paper to communicate your ideas visually!

    For more ideas on how to visualise your ideas and drive communication in your organisation visit www.crackerjackvisualthinking.com or contact us.

  • 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

  • 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