If you’re a scientist, researcher, or someone who works with technical ideas, this one’s for you.
My wheelhouse is working with scientific and technical teams working with complex ideas and systems. And almost every single amazing, brilliant, technical client I’ve ever worked with have all struggled with the same thing:
How to tell their story.
And why would we expect someone who excels in their technical field to ALSO excel at communicating it to non-experts? I have faith that anyone can become a good storyteller, it just takes practice. And most researchers I’ve met want to work on their research, not figuring out how to tell a compelling story.
However, the point of much of this research IS to help people make decisions, and those folks often aren’t experts in the technical stuff.
So what’s a scientist to do?
In July, I had the honor of presenting a workshop to other visual practitioners at our annual (virtual) conference. The title? Talk Nerdy to Me. And it was all about how to best support and work with scientific and technical clients.
Although we covered all sorts of things, and the participants also shared their experiences generously, I wanted to share one clear, simple strategy to help anyone practice telling their story.
It’s called the Feynman Technique, and it goes a little something like this:
Identify a subject
Teach it to a child
Speak in plain terms
Be brief (Quick like a bunny)
Identify your knowledge gaps (yes, yes, more research is needed…)
Organize + simplify + tell a story
Practice reading your story out loud. Pretend to tell the story to a classroom of students. That way, you’ll hear where language stops being simple. Stumbles could indicate incomplete thoughts, or cumbersome language.
Use analogies and simple sentences to strengthen your understanding of the story, like this example from F-diggity himself:
“All things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”
How do YOU tell good stories? Share your strategies and ideas!
Once again, thank you from my heart and soul for your support, great senses of humor, brilliant minds, collaboration and what you're each doing to make the world a better place.
Cheers,
Where in the Virtual World is ConverSketch?
CSU Vet Medicine Research: Capturing the first framing class for the renowned researcher Sue VandeWoude for her Vet Med Research course. What a way to launch the semester!
Children with Medical Complexity: Continuing in the 7th virtual site visit reflecting on accomplishments, challenges, and where teams want to take their work serving these children and their families.
Strategic Planning: With a consortium of financial folks as they began planning for the future and how to better work together - but I can’t share any of the drawings.