JAOO - The Art of Telling Your Design Story Part 1

I spent three days last week at JAOO, an IT developer conference.

On Wednesday I attended a tutorial on "The Art of Telling Your Design Story", given by Rebecca Wirf-Brocks [bio and summary].

There was a lot of good information on communication. Here are some of the points:

Five things to consider when preparing:

• Goal: What's the goal of your communication?
• Scope: How much material are you going to cover?
• Depth: How much detail are you going to go to?
• Tone: Formal, informal, diagrams, examples?
• Results: What's your concrete outcome?

Ways to Screw Up

• Inconsistency: example - a recent presentation on Krishna consciousness I attended contrasted material existence with "eternal life". The audience was left confused as the first part of the presentation was about reincarnation - isn't material life "eternal life" as well?
• Explaining too much: In answering questions on this point the presenter additionally introduced new concepts and points, further complicating understanding.
• Over precision: Too much detail about a minor issue

Remember that the audience comes from a "one life" understanding and to introduce reincarnation and then contrast it with spiritual life calling that "eternal life" is confusing. Let me just add that apart from that one small point the presentation was excellent. It used several media - video and whiteboard, and was very engaging.

Story Telling Basics

• Start from most fundamental and go to more detailed
• Things are more fundamental than relationships
• Large structures and shapes are more fundamental than details
• Order the elements of your story from the most to least fundamental
• Use multiple descriptions
• Is there a "natural order" to your story?
• Are there side stories that you are willing to take?
• What questions do you expect?

Speaking to a Diverse Crowd

• Cater to the majority
• Choose what to emphasize
• Defuse quacky ducks
• For impatient audiences: Park questions that will derail your story-telling
• For impatient audiences: Don't present fundamentals first
• For impatient audiences: Stick to the point

Communicating Complex Ideas

• Use progressive realization
• Give an overview
• Create views that move someone to where you want in gradual, interesting steps

Holding Attention

• Summarize important stuff
• Note important details
• Skip lightly over certain things
• Shift and illustrate different perspectives