Using Presentation Design to Simplify the Complicated

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Common Craft.

My friend Clay Hebert (pronounced "A-Bear") of Tribes Win turned me on to Common Craft - a company whose product is "explanation".  Of course this seemed right up my alley, so I checked out what it means to "produce an explanation".  Basically, Common Craft creates short, simple videos using paper cut outs and drawings to explain commonly complicated ideas.

One of their sample videos is 2 minutes long and explains what augmented reality is.  Now, if an average person stopped an augmented reality expert (is there such a thing?) on the street and asked them to explain what augmented reality is in under two minutes, I doubt the average person would be able to follow or retain much information.  It would be overwhelming and the expert would probably have a tough time using enough restraint to reduce their knowledge to a two-minute explanation.  As Made To Stick authors Chip and Dan Heath explain, "When we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators."

Seeing this video immediately reminded me of how effective presentation design can be used by anyone who has a story to tell.  I do realize it's a video and not presentation, but the effect can be nearly duplicated in PowerPoint or Keynote with the use of some animation.

Thanks to my awesome reader Pia Smith who gave me the heads up that the video was available on YouTube.

Often companies have complex products or services who tell me, "Your designs are great for marketing presentations, but we create complex widgets and we need to have bullet-points to explain our product."  I think that a video like this clearly shows that you definitely DON'T need bullet points or large amounts of text to tell a complex story (or any story for that matter).  As the cut-outs prove, you don't even need high-quality graphics.

The equation is simple:

Clearly Defined Story
+ Effective Graphics
+ Educated Presenter
= Effective Presentation

Though remember: while the equation is simple, executing it takes education and practice.

"Complicated" image courtesy of saturn on Flickr

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Comments

[Lee LeFever (Common Craft)]

Thanks for the great post Jon. As soon as you mentioned it being hard for experts to explain what they do, I thought of the Curse of Knowledge in Made to Stick. It's an idea that we talk about all the time - glad you included a link to the book - it was an inspiration in getting started with the videos. Cheers!

[Jonathan Thomas]

Lee,

You do some excellent work and I'm happy I got a chance to showcase it in the context of effective presentation design. I had actually written a bit about the Curse of Knowledge in this post but it was left on the cutting room floor.

Jon