10 Dimensions: Example of great visual communication
Via Collision Detection: This website for a book on string theory contains a visual guide to imagining the 10 dimensions of string theory .
Maybe I’ll blog another attempt at fighting my way through Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe? This could become a science blog. Or not.
Actually, my interest in this movie is what an excellent example it is of the simplicity and clarifying ability of visual communication. Numerous patient friends have tried to explain string theory to me in the past—but never have I understood it clearly enough to re-articulate.
Interested in science or not, try this one out as a case study in how to illustrate your thoughts well.
Ugly Design Wins? 6
Robert Scoble posted some thoughts on what he calls “anti-marketing design.” Scoble contends that ugly designs make better websites: more sticky, better brands, more fun, and more revenue. He cites Google, Craig’s List, and MySpace as ugly successes.
I disagree with Scoble that ugliness drives the success of these sites (which is an idea he reinforces more in the comments).
Two factors attribute heavily to the success of these sites. This clearer if you divide the sites into two categories: functional and community.
The Functional
The functional sites are Google/Gmail and Flickr (but Flickr is also a community!, you say. I know, but its a task-oriented community). These sites improve on a function. Searching. Emailing. Organizing and sharing photos.
It’s true that these sites have low ornamentation. Is that absence of ornamentation due to a lack of design, or evidence of it?
The design, as I see it, is in the simplicity and ease/speed they let me get things done.
The Community
The community sites are MySpace and Craig’s List.
Criag’s List is clean and easy (once you get past the over-stuffed homepage).
MySpace is “ornamented” with ads, and I think it only overcomes this through communal opportunities for vanity (in web lingo, we call that stickiness).
No, really. What holds these sites together isn’t necessarily their usability. And that’s okay, it’s an important factor but they’re not failing miserably. These two sites are successful because they build communities. You can overcome lots with that (see Metcalfe’s Law).
To argue that these sites are just created for the love of whatever is pushing it. Their goal is stakeholder value, and that’s okay.
To say that these sites succeed just because we perceive them as being “authentic” (in the sense that their built by only one person), and that appeals to us because nobody is real with us in our committee-design driven world, is pushing it. That’s not the only, or even primary reason we use these sites. It’s appreciated, but in the postmodern state, we don’t expect that.
To say they succeed because they make something a little faster, simpler, and easier, or because they connect us to people – that makes more sense.
And in doing so, they’ve acheived good design.
Communicating the Counterintuitive Good 6
Have you ever tried to sell an idea, product, or service that could be classified as a counterintuitive “good”, at least at first glance?
- 37signals encourages software companies to have “less features” to win more users (and less traffic signs !).
- Several marketing gurus suggest companies give away some expertise in order to make more money.
- In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell examines reducing information – even information you’d think is related to a problem – to increase the accuracy of your decision.
How each of these things worked was not immediately evident to me the first time I heard about them. They violated some intuitions I had picked up along the way. To be better, have more features. Don’t give away intellectual property, charge for it. To make an accurate decision, have as much background information as possible.
There’s some of this whenever you’re advocating a change from the status quo, be it change in action or in spending. Lets narrow our scope to ideas whose positive results aren’t immediately seen from the audience’s viewpoint.
I think there’s a unique challenge to communicating a counterintuitive good. I think its more difficult to shift a paradigm than to verify an option that someone already had in mind. What are some methods to communicate about counterintuitive goods? Read on for two that I use.
Contextualize It
It seems like a counterintuitive good is counterintuitive because of the number of steps in the effectual chain before you see positive results. As communicators, our goal is to zoom out from the prospects paradigm and incorporate the outcome/value in the frame.
I’m prone to over-wording such effectual thinking, so I find it very important to think visually here.
Sometimes, I use some imagery adapted from The Grove , such as this one that’s normally used for strategic visioning. I first saw these charts when my dad used them in his work. Good inspiration to add visual context in your own work.
Xplane creates some of the best “value in context” illustrations I’ve seen.
Sell an Outcome, Save the Process
I think this is a good practice in general sales, but for any of you who have worked with more than one branding firm, you know we’re bad about this. There’s often a slide, page, or discussion about process on the upfront sales end. The fact is that for most of us, process is not a differentiator, but critical up-front attention is often spent here (but we have clever names for the phases, you say!).
Why spend that time on the how, when your audience is interested in the what – what’s in it for them, to be exact.
For counterintuitive goods, this means working backwards. Your result -> the effect chain -> your counterintuitive sparking action. That momentum can get you through the contextualizing process.
Robert Middleton outlines this one well, and in a sales, branding, and marketing role I use it often.
What about you? What concepts have you worked with? What tricks do you use? Comments are open.