In an effort to improve a set of Captivate demonstrations I created for an application, I have started adding diagrams to the introductory slides where the voiceover exceeds 20 seconds. It’s a fairly arbitrary number, but I had to draw the line somewhere. After the introductory slides, I go into the demonstrations, so things move along at a pretty good pace. But I recognized that I’d put users to sleep if I didn’t throw some graphics or diagrams in to illustrate what I was talking about in those first slides.

Some concepts are easy to illustrate, but I’ve run into some trouble with slides where the concepts described aren’t so easily translated to images. While talking with a colleague to get some brainstorming going for one video, I decided that some of the script and voiceover needed to be rewritten so as to be more easily illustrated. So I revised it, and we were better able to connect certain images with the concepts.

This has made me wonder how effective this could be as an exercise to judge the clarity of writing. It seems like a paradox at first: If text is already clear, why does it need illustrations? And I agree with that question.

I’ve said before that if a product is hard to describe, it isn’t designed well. But if text is difficult to illustrate, it may not be written well.

Notice that I’m not prepared to say this is true in every case, all the time.

By looking at this particular piece of text, though, and deciding how to illustrate it, I arrived at a simpler way to say what needed to be said. I was hesitant to do this at first because I had already recorded the original audio, and it’s a bit of a hassle to redo it. But because the new text is more satisfying and is easier to illustrate, I’ll ignore the inconvenience.

To return to the question named earlier—that of the purpose of using illustrations if the text is clear anyway—many people are visual learners. “Clear” text is a subjective description, and no matter how clear the text is, some people will just get it when they see it illustrated. Because of this, and because I don’t want to lose people’s attention during that first slide, illustrations at the beginning could significantly improve the quality and helpfulness of the videos.

This exercise of increasing diagrams and illustrations to assist visual learners could potentially help me increase the clarity of the text in any deliverable so that it benefits any who take the time to read or at least scan. At the very least, asking myself whether I could easily illustrate or visualize the text may help me write more clearly.

Related entries (auto-generated):

The Visual Learning Style in Tech Writing

The Auditory Learning Style in Tech Writing

A Possible New Step in the Writing Process

The Tactile Learning Style in Tech Writing

Informal Help via Electronic Conversation Can Lack a Certain Professional Quality