I was recently turned on to Edward Tufte by my colleague Danielle and was struck by how much wisdom he has to offer to the technology community. We all know about Guy Kawasaki’s guide to minimizing the agony that is PowerPoint, but Tufte’s passionate hatred of the scourge of Redmond is far more articulate and witty.
And it’s really not just about PowerPoint. Instead it’s about minimalism and efficiency in communication. That is, saying what you mean, letting important data speak for itself, and always, always avoiding over-explanation. There is, I suppose, a law of diminishing returns here that applies in so many scenarios. That is, the more you say a thing the less effective it becomes, and the more you attempt to enforce and control meaning from data, the less credible you appear.
What does all of this have to do with the technology community? Well we’re chronically awful at explaining ourselves, leaning on the crutches of jargon and unnecessary exposition because we’re insecure about the real value of our creations. We’re also dismissive of elegance and thought in our language and written communication. If we paid more attention to scrutinizing the inherent value of our ideas, and less to the sort of “next big thing” hyperbole that dominates the big tech blogs, we’d likely do a far better job of getting real people to buy what we’re selling.
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