Trudy WIlliams PhD The Company Crayon is no longer accepting new clients
The Company Crayon ™
Educational Arts for Community & Business
Creative Arts Consulting & Production Creative Arts Coaching Creative Communication Services & Workshops Concept Cartoons Award-winning concept visualizations: R&D, UX, Agile, BE. Storyboard & Animation Workshops
★★★★★
Process Management and Communication " The Company Crayon has been our partner in many projects and has surprised us again and again with their creative approach to problem solving and communicating. In preparation for the process cartoons, The Company Crayon reaches immediately to understanding the audience: what do they know, how do they feel, how do they see things? The visual messages they craft capture and fully engage the intended audience who are presented with what the need is, the goal, and the process to get there.The ConceptCartoons appear to be simple tools for facilitation and data gathering, but a great deal of thought and research goes into each one. What The Company Crayon cartoons create is interaction at a level that connects people to the problem, and engages them in the solution." C. K., Senior Vice President of Quality (former), Verizon★★★★★
Workplace Ethnography " Its not just the pictures, it's the process. The ConceptCartoons storyboards brought focus, form and insights to concepts in a way words by themselves could not fully capture or communicate. The Company Crayon is masterful in helping our research teams communicate the insights they glean from brainstorming, user observations and interviews. After working with The Company Crayon, no project goes without some form of storyboarding, we feel it's a key ingredient for project success." E.B., PhD, Workplace Anthropologist, Pitney Bowes★★★★★
Global Emerging Markets " We used The Company Crayon drawings in twelve focus groups in Pakistan. The research was conducted to understand customers' needs and wants for a new individual loan product that a micro finance institution is planning to introduce. As many of the focus group participants were illiterate women or semiliterate men, the drawings made it very easy for respondents to compare the various product attributes and guarantees of a loan, which gave us very useful research results for use in designing a final loan product that meets customers needs." I.M., Market Research Manager, Women's World Banking★★★★★
Market Research" We keep coming back to The Company Crayon for these reasons: Their costs are not prohibitive for early round development and testing like it would be if we tried using ad agencies at these critical stages. We can put in front of people many more ideas visually without the time and expense required for more 'finished-looking' agency art.The ConceptCartoons get our ideas across more clearly, and in a fraction of the time, than it takes verbally or with text alone. Ideas which are complex and difficult to describe verbally get related to by respondents in a way that is quick, easy and even fun to grasp.They give us a working partnership throughout the process to develop and strengthen the proposition. The Company Crayon offers a rare combinations of art, business savvy and strong understanding of customer behavior. 'Actionable insights', in this case, not a buzz word. It's actually what we get from people we test using the ConceptCartoons." M.P., Market Research Manager, Global Mailing Systems Planning and Analysis, Pitney Bowes★★★★★
Product Development/Market Research " ConceptCartoons™ storyboards convey and communicate a new concept in a very clear and succinct format. Without hurting our budget, we've been able to get a variety of ideas out in the field very early. The storyboards provide a visual talking point for people to react and give specific feedback. Our business potential customers have given us more specific, useful feedback because of these visual representations than we tend to get with the usual text or verbal descriptions.A more subtle value is that the process The Company Crayon uses to develop the storyboards forces us to focus on the essence of a concept from the users' perspective and their daily context. The Company Crayon has developed a skill of asking our teams the right probing questions to elicit key ideas and then applying psychological insight, business expertise and artistic talent to surround the story with relevant reminders of the problems and realities faced by potential customers in their current environment. [con't ....]★★★★★
...We also have found using the ConceptCartoons valuable when communicating a new idea, research result or value proposition internally or to skeptical business leaders." B.R., Innovation Tools and Concepts Manager; Advanced Concepts & Technologies, Pitney Bowes A final word "Hey, I'm the studio pup around here. I love the stories they tell. They do awesome stuff, not that cold spacey, line-y diagram stuff, or big bucks graphics ,but just plain drawings. And some words. It's real, one picture's worth a thousand words. You know, babies start looking around right from the start, everything else gets piled on that, and it sticks, never goes away. Hmm. Forget business for a min. If want to see some sweet pup storyboard drawings, or want one about your own pup, take a look at thepuppystale.com. I know, I'm shameless." Signed, Rocky the pup