During a recent call, I was reminded about the power of a picture or sketch to convey a complex idea or concept so people can ‘see’ it with their own eyes.
Conveying complex ideas in words or metaphors to a group of people is difficult, especially when you’re trying to do that over Teams or Zoom.
Trying to explain concepts in words is also hard because everyone’s interpretation of those words may be different and they form a different mental image of your idea.
A colleague of mine, who was an exceptional software engineer, always kept a neat stack of plain A4 paper and a pen on his desk for sketching out complex ideas.
During one project, I asked him to explain Elliptic Curve Cryptography which he did using a sheet of paper and a series of simple diagrams, sketching as he talked.
His sketches allowed me to quickly grasp and literally see or picture the core elements of a complex subject area that I knew nothing about.
It never ceases to amaze me how any complex subject can be distilled down to the core principles in a few sketches when you ask the right person for help.
Some examples of these sketches can include:
- Block diagrams showing how the main elements of a product or software code are made up and how they are connected to form a finished product
- Hand-sketched graphs or charts showing the relationships between certain variables or laying out strategic options using matrices
- Stick-men drawings to explain customer use cases and how people use or interact with your product or service to help them solve a particular problem
Sometimes it can take a few iterations to find the diagram that works best for your concept which you can then fine-tune for your audience or media.
The next time you need to explain a complex idea to a group of people, help them ‘see’ the picture clearly in their mind with simple sketches or diagrams.
