explainist

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

This Scientific American article describes their elegant experiment to see how people react when something “feels” difficult. They presented two different groups of college students with printed instructions for a regular exercise routine. While the wording was the same in both sets of instructions, one group received instructions printed in a hard-to-read Brush font (a font that looks like brush strokes) while the other group received instructions printed in good ol’ fashioned Arial.

The results were crystal clear. People who received Arial instructions were more enthusiastic about the exercise routine than the Brush font folks, and predicted it would be much easier. The psychologists tried the experiment again using a sushi roll recipe and saw similar results.

We've had a number of discussions about our paperworks format and how it's perceived by viewers. When talking to people, they often mention accessibility - that the format gives them a feeling like "Oh, I can get this, it's not going over my head." Could it be that one reason people like our videos is that their perception of difficulty, based on the simple drawings, makes them more likely to keep watching and act on the ideas?

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

The Impact of Appearing Difficult

leelefever — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:56:14 +0000

Via Explainst:

Good Explanations Are Not About You

leelefever — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:25:01 +0000

Explainist (yay! they're back) has a new post about Explanatory Filenames and how to think about the person on the other end. Quote:

But think about the guy on the other end who receives proposals from 10
different candidates on the deadline day, all with the same filename.
The first thing he has to do is rename each of them. If you’re thinking
about your audience, you’d save the proposal with your company’s name
in the filename — e.g. TomCo-Annihilatrix_Proposal.pdf.

I think the key point is about the perspective of the explainer. As I wrote in a comment, it’s this awareness of the other person and their needs that helps so
much with explanation - being able to put the idea in the other
person’s context.

Another example is giving driving directions (before Google Maps anyway). I bet that good explainers are also good at giving directions. When I've been lost in the past, I could see that the person giving directions had a hard time understanding what it was like to drive from A to B for the first time. Good directions account for the driver's perspective and context just like good explanations account for the learner's perspective and context.

Good Explanations Are Not About You

leelefever — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:25:01 +0000

Explainist (yay! they're back) has a new post about Explanatory Filenames and how to think about the person on the other end. Quote: