Images, especially visual metaphor, can be used to explain difficult concepts
Technology + Sketching = Clarity
When the message you’re trying to communicate is heavily technical, visual depictions of the concepts are absolutely essential to ensure the audience understands the concepts being discussed.
The Challenges of Technical Communication
Our years of experience working with clients in the technology space has taught us that there are a number of challenges when creating imagery that actually works. These include:
- Explaining technical concepts to a non-technical audience
- Making assumptions about the audience’s knowledge and understanding of the basics of the topic being discussed
- Relying too heavily on jargon and acronyms that are specific to the organisation or the industry, but mean nothing to those outside the field
- Relying on data, numbers, or charts, rather than relating how the data impacts people in a way that the audience can relate
- Cramming too much detail into a presentation, when the audience realistically only has an appetite (and attention span) for a short summary of the topic
- Communicating advice that contains a large number of steps, and is therefore potentially difficult to absorb or remember
- Assuming that because the information is so ground-breaking, important, or fascinating to those who created it, others will be equally interested. Unfortunately build it and they will come is a disastrous marketing strategy.
How Visuals can Help
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Data and numbers can be made relatable and easier to understand
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Jargon can be more easily identified by an outsider, then it can be explained (or substituted for a more easily understood phrase)
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Information can be summarised, grouped, and presented as a visual story that piques the interest of the audience—at the end of the video, they can be directed to a website or other resource to find out more
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Key steps can be grouped, folded into a mnemonic device, or arranged spatially on the page in a way that is easier to remember
