Storytelling can counteract hidden influencers

This is a snarky view of the truth about who really influences clients about their decision-making process. In particular, I often hear from clients of smaller businesses new to the web, “My son took a look at the site and said…,” or “Let me see what so-and-so thinks” about the navigation of a site. the mid-sized and enterprise client version is “the marketing department says”, or “the IT department thinks”. This is not to say that every client is unsophisticated, or mistrustful. Some of them hide their doubts by saying, “let me review this”, while they run to Google the terms “wireframe,” “user experience” and “below the fold.” New terminology, and an unknown way of doing business is, naturally, frightening to any normally-confident professional.

There are the clients who are ready to pull the trigger and have the site launch, until someone has asked them about adding more text, another button, another navigation tab. Who is this someone? Perhaps it’s a colleague, a long-term professional friend who knows their business. Or the consultant who is advising them on another aspect of their business, who’s looking at the site with fresh eyes, but has no knowledge of the goals set in the brief about the purpose and desired outcomes for the site.

That’s when it’s time to pull out the notes, the wireframes, the sketches, the sitemap, the doodles and brainstorming images you created with the client. Review the personas you have created as the target audience, play “squint at the screen” to show the client how much is really visible and what matters when a new user lands on the site.

Tell your client’s story to improve your influence

Give your client every opportunity to air their fears that the site won’t do well, or seems different than what they imagined it would look like. Learn and understand their story, as they become the owner and publisher of a web site, a mobile app, or a participant in a social network. Create the story of a successful experience for a new user coming to their site, and another story of an experience user returning to their site. Show them why that person would send the link to your client’s URL to a friend.

Be prepared and know the story of your client’s site. Your confidence that you’ve done your work properly and professionally, that you’ve covered all of the goals, whether coming from the perspective of branding, marketing, or sales, should be the strongest influencer on your client. If it’s not, review, refresh, and reboot.

Mindmap created using iThoughtHD on the iPad. To grab a copy of the Mindmap click on the image below:

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This post contains a MindMap summarizing takeaways from Social Media Chat from October 28, 2009.

In the song, “The Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog refers to “the lovers, the dreamers, and me”. I think many of us empathize with the “me” the someplace-in-the-middle.

There’s often talk about opposites in personality and thinking; the “left-brained” (analytic) or “right brained” (creative) types, the linear or holistic types, generalizers or detail-oriented types, or even broader generalizations of people being “thinkers or doers”.  While one style or approach may dominate in each of us, there are tools and methods of exploring idea development and management that can be used by anyone.

Mind mapping, as created by Tony Buzan, is a visual tool using association through lines and proximity as the primary method of displaying relationships between ideas, concepts, objects or processes, radiating out from a centrally-located focal point.

The mind map, and variations on mind mapping (concept maps and collective brainstorming) can be a great tool to generate ideas, bridge the gaps while exploring processes, and make connections appear through “wise wanderings”. If you are willing to allow your mind to associate freely, you can make a mind map.

There is a great deal of software available to create mind maps, from educational packages through online freeware and collaborative tools, but for this example I went the route of paper, color markers and a Flair pen. I like to work this way because it’s quick and easy, particularly in adding quick doodles if an image or visual metaphor comes to mind from the conversation. If you think you can’t draw, you can do the same without adding any pictures but using colored pens to add highlights, make boxes around key points, or adding arrows to show where one thing leads to another.

Here’s my first mind map of the Twitter #SMCHAT from October 28, 2009, where the group discussed “Demystifying Mind Mapping“, hosted by Chris Jones (@sourcePOV) and mind-mapping expert Chuck Frey (@chuckfrey). For the original framing of the Q25 discussion, please read Chris Jones’ original post on mindmapping 101 or http://smchat.ning.com/forum/topics/q25-mind-maps-101 .

While participating and then rereading the transcript, four themes emerged to me: Theory, Practice, Tools and Methods. I placed  Theory on top, floating ideas and concepts (the abstract or ethereal), and Practice below (with concrete, “down to earth” examples of other forms of mind mapping, using real objects). Methods and Tools seem to straddle both theory and practice, so they sit on an invisible horizon line. This divides the map into a Top/Bottom configuration, or Head and Body.

I also used more of a personal visual shorthand to move quickly, eliminating the branching lines that associate ideas while counting on proximity to define the relationship between the short phrases, doodles and symbols.

In this first version, I used the Twitter identities of chat participants to create top and bottom borders. If you were there and I didn’t list you, please know that I added the names somewhat chronologically as people entered the conversation and I let space constraints determine who was listed.

Refining the map

One question that I’ve heard raised about mind maps (and infographics in general) is whether or not they are clear, useful and convey real information to those who didn’t create the image. In many cases, yes, a mind map can easily be as clear as an outline or summary using just words; in the best cases, the addition information gleaned from visual data (including pictures, symbols, color, placement and size) can generate a completely fresh instance of ideas, add additional content with fewer words, or place emphasis, impact and  flow to direct the reader through the map.

I created a second map to make the navigation easier and to prompt additional discussion:

#SMCHAT - Mindmapping 101

The four large branches titles are enlarged and emphasized, but I’ve filtered the content in each branch. It is a selective filter, certainly, but the point of creating this map was not only to summarize the previous discussion but to stimulate a second conversation. Chuck Frey remarked, “being able to see info represented visually helps you see “white space” opportunities – between existing ideas.” I hope you can find these through this map, and they become rainbow connections for you.

With that in mind, please join us for the next #SMCHAT  on Twitter on December 9, 2009 at 1pET : Q25R Mind Maps, the Remix. I will be moderating the chat and I hope to see you there.

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The simple story of transformation

In a world where Martha Stewart reigns as “Queen of the Craft”, it dawned on me last night that during the Great Depression of the 1930′s making clothing, cooking, and even handwriting were practiced, utilitarian crafts in many if not most homes. Jump to 2008 and my focus on visualization skills of the typical, high-school educated to high-level professional, and I routinely see outright FEAR when I suggest laying out a story on index cards, post-it notes..anything non-digital. I love facility and ease of use, most certainly: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, PowerPoint, Flash, Final Cut Pro…all are my great and good friends. However, the invitation to tell a story the PowerPoint way – “Insert your TITLE HERE”…”Add your text here”..or through Flash’s interface – “Start with a Keyframe on a layer” – “add your library elements” doesn’t address the question that drives the purpose of using these tools in the first place: What is the point of telling this story? These are great tools, but they create anarchy when they offer no guidance or pathway to the process. And, to make matters worse, much of the templating/chart building/clip art libraries obscure the message or are useless.

Specialization, as in inspired and gifted artwork and design, has its place, but it really heightens one’s own ability to take ownership with pride when you can craft it yourself. At the very least, understanding the process of having an idea, seeing it in your mind’s eye, showing some kind of representation of that to others and, lo and behold, making the communication happen, should be an essential craft in your arsenal. Learning by doing? I’m all for it. Here’s a simple exercise:

Draw a square on the left side of a post-it note. Draw a circle on the right side. Draw a 4-sided box with rounded corners in the middle. Draw an arrow between the square, and then one between the rounded-corner box and the circle. You have just told a story of transformation!

In summary, don’t be afraid to sketch it, doodle it, scribble. In fact, you SHOULD do that and more–a slick presentation is like packaged white bread: a pretty wrapper and a lot of air to puff up an anonymous product. Make it, own it, wear it.

Here’s T. Boone Pickens doing it, live, on a whiteboard: http://www.pickensplan.com/media/?bcpid=1640183817&bclid=1641831862&bctid=1650060434

Send me your scans/shots of your index cards, post-it notes, napkin sketches. Anyone have a good visual concept of “Status quo”?

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I have a debriefing call on Monday about a training on presentations I co-facilitated 3 weeks ago. A senior management team convened for a “Reporting with Impact” training seminar, and my role was to teach them Visual Expression in reporting to executives. I’ll talk about that elsewhere, but my challenge for Monday is: How do I remind everyone of the issues we discussed three weeks ago, and make it feel fresh? My solution: at the beginning of that workshop I drew a rough sketch of the table, listing the names of everyone there in their seating arrangement, their titles, and then one or two salient quotes from each person as they spoke. I will admit, I don’t remember people’s names very quickly off the bat, so this was a trick I learned watching lawyers prep prospective jurors–they use a card system with a seating chart, and they write notes on the cards. Here’s my version, first, the pencil draft, and then revised into a graphic that I will distribute before we meet for the review:

Quick sketch showing individuals and their key concerns

Cleaned up and ready to distribute for review

Here’s the take-away for you: Organize your notes visually, using spatial reminders: draw the layout of the room with major elements, the tables or seating arrangement first–no fine drawing skills required. Use a single page. Write on the page or use post-it notes to label the participants in their position in the room. Make quick notes of what they said on the post-it note or under their name. It will remind you not only of who said what, but will bring back the spatial memory–did the team leader sit at the head of the table? In a panel discussion, who sat next to whom, and was that because they had a relationship worth noting? You will probably remember more with the seating chart jogging your memory than a standard bullet-point note-taking format. Try it at your next meeting or conference.

P.S. if you look at my previous post about the Edward Tufte Workshop I attended in November, you’ll see that I made a quick little layout of where he sat at the beginning of the program and where I was sitting in that giant hotel ballroom. Now you know why I do that.

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