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Communicating ideas 02. Notes, references and reflections

Session 1:

In general terms and having reviewed our final works, we are encouraged to find a greater definition of the projects and to use appropriate language to communicate with others and not only with ourselves.

Everyone knows different things and comes from different backgrounds for this reason, when communicating our project it is essential to adapt the speech to the level of each listener or the person with whom we are having a conversation.

It has been pointed out to us that in our environment we are using quite technical and specific language that we have to take into account when transferring it to all situations because not everyone is familiar with it.

How to explain anything to anyone, 4 tips from Dominic Walliman
  1. Start off in the right place. Ask a question to ensure understanding: Do you understand? Try to guess if the auditorium is going well, come back if necessary.
  2. Don’t go too far down the rabbit hole. People can take in a certain amount of information. Don’t give them so much that they don’t remember.
  3. Go for clarity over accuracy. Better to go with a simple explanation than a precise one.
  4. Explain why you think your subject is so cool. Explain what is exciting and generate curiosity.

Exercices

We did some interesting exercises trying to create a text explaining the purpose of our project. The purpose began with a paragraph that we later reduced to a 16-word sentence and finally to an 8-word sentence. A good exercise to see which are the fundamental terms that best explain our project. Another of the exercises led us to use chatGPT to help us refine our purpose.

References

General reflexions:

  • Talking about the future is easy for people, the capacity for abstraction defines us as humans, it is in our DNA. I think that at MDEF we deal with topics that people like, are interested in or concerned about because most of us want a different future and to change the things that are not going well. In my opinion, the focus of interest is already on our side and we just have to be careful in using the language, tone, words or images appropriate to the listeners.