all posts tagged “explanationproblems”
How a Coin is Solving One of the World's Great Explanation Problems
Posted by: leelefever on January 9, 2012- 10:07am
Categories: coin, Explanation, explanationproblems, olympics
I grew up playing soccer and over the past few years, Sachi and I have become bigger fans than ever, especially for our hometown Seattle Sounders. The rules of soccer came pretty easily to Sachi who didn't play as a youngster - with one huge exception: the offsides rule. I tried to point it out at matches, explain the idea, etc. Eventually, visuals did the trick and now she's the one throwing her arms in the air.
Indeed, the offsides rule has a serious, worldwide explanation problem. It's adoption is limited by how the idea is being explained. And looking forward to The 2012 Olympics in London, this is an explanation problem that's ripe for a solution.
Enter Neil Wolfson, who won a competition to design a coin which was sport related for a series to celebrate the Olympics. According to Wolfson:
"I'm a football fan, I followed the Premier League since its inception and if I had 50p for every time someone had asked me to explain the offside rule I'd be a very rich man.""When the coin is in circulation I hope people like it and I hope people are able to use it to explain the offside rule."
So, the coin is a visual aid meant to be used in concert with a verbal explanation. Sounds familiar. The real magic of this explanation though, is that it also buys beer.
Discovering the RSS Explanation Problem
Posted by: leelefever on January 22, 2008- 4:00pm
Categories: conference, Explanation, explanationproblems, rss
I remember the exact moment when it first became apparent to me that there was such a thing as an explanation problem. I was at a small conference on Silicon Valley in early 2004. There was a CEO of a start up there and during his talk, he mentioned RSS. Someone raised their hand and asked the question "What is RSS?"
This CEO's responses to the question, and I'm not kidding, was "RSS is an XML-based content syndication format." As you might expect, this was met with a look of bewilderment.
I was in the audience and had an AHA! moment. It was clear to me that RSS had an explanation problem that was preventing it from being adopted. Every time someone went looking for information about RSS and found that it was "an XML-based content syndication format" an opportunity was lost.
Since then I've been thinking a lot about explanation problems I'm starting to define them and the problems they cause. Ultimately, I think it's about adoption - adoption of an idea, a product or service. Good explanations increase adoption and poor explanations limit adoption. Here's how I'd explain it in Plain English.
An explanation problem exists when there is a mismatch between what is heard and what matters to the target audience.
Looking back at the RSS example, the question was asked by someone curious about RSS and the answer, while correct, didn't matter to the asker. The CEOs explanation didn't help them to see why they should care.
An interesting way to look at this situation is by considering how questions are asked. Often, when someone asks "what is...", they really mean "Why does it matter to me?" By considering what matters to someone, the answer becomes different and more likely to give them information they can act on.
One of the things that we've learned is that explanation sometimes means answering a different question than was asked. It's not always "what is it?" as much as "why should I care about it?"
Of course, the example with the CEO is what led me to write this blog entry (a month after the conference) and eventually, this video with Sachi.
Recent Post Topics
Subscribe with RSS