In Plain English
I've long been a fan of the couple at Common Craft. They make a series of videos called "In Plain English". In their own words:
"Our videos are short, simple and focused on making complex ideas easy to understand. We use a whiteboard-and-paper format we call Paperworks that is designed to cut out the noise and stick to what matters. "
I'm a frequent user of Twitter (you can add me @k) and found myself explaining the service to my dad recently. Instead of trying to explain the intricacies with a detailed email, I realized that "Twitter In Plain English" was the perfect solution:
I find it slightly ironic that their series is called "In Plain English" because it's the animations, the simple diagrams and the medium that does the bulk of the work of explaining concepts for them.
Common Craft has found a market for people who need complex ideas distilled to very digestible and understandable formats. Whether it's videos like theirs or creating a 6-panel comic strip, the hard part isn't even creating the document itself — it's in the rigor and skill needed to simplify the complex.
In See What I Mean, I will not only explain how to create the art for comics but also how to cut down to the essence of a message.
Comments
Thanks for the link to Common Craft - very nice. It reminds me of Ladybird books in the UK. I think that the non-fiction ones were written by someone who was not an expert in the field, who had to learn about it themselves to write the book. I hadn't realised that they helped the UK win the Falklands War (follow the link)!
As well as its simplicity, the video works because it is from the user's perspective, and not the technology's. Why should I use it? How do I use it? And so on.
I remember when I was at college the head of the department said that if you're doing a PhD or masters it was really important that you can always explain what you're doing to your grandmother. It's a bit sexist and ageist, but it's still true. If you lose sight of why you're doing what you are, and how to explain to non-experts what you're doing you lose part of the whole i.e. it matters to you and not just baffled relatives. Also, it may be that baffled relatives are helping to fund you either directly or through their taxes!
So, for instance, on a project a couple of years ago, I realised that I was helping people in Indonesia tell each other "I love you" (and other things too). You could also say that I was working on a prepaid mobile billing system, but that was like only saying that water was H2O and not that it was wet. It helped me, by giving me a better motivation to meet deadlines and do all the other normal project stuff.
Sorry - is it bad form to have more words in your comment than in the original post ;-)?
Posted by: Bob | January 18, 2009 3:01 PM