Armano: Good Design Helps Us Learn Faster

[VIDEO COMING LATER]. Realizing that David Armano speaks often about good elements of design, I’m not sure I have a benchmark of what is new versus what may be familiar to his followers. I need to think about this stuff before I create a more thoughtful, inspired post on what it means to me, but in the meantime, here’s the great topline ideas I took down from his talk.

David sums up the creation of good design by the four Ms:

• Metaphor. Envisioning a concept as a relevant symbol. (Ex. Web 2.0 is a subway map)
• Model. A complex idea that can be broken down and digested quickly. (Ex. Think a hub and spokes to show you and your relationship to others.
• Mindmapping. A free-form way to capture ideas by drawing circles and connecting lines between like ideas. Kind of like building a network of connected thought bubbles.
• Manifest. Develop the visual that shows how the concept is crystalized. Think Venn diagram – variable A and variable B overlap with you in the middle.

Still with me? Great. From there, he share six simple ways for getting visuals. (There have been a lot of great, short lists coming out of BlogWorld – this is no exception.)

1. Empathize. See the world as a child. Observe, ask and explore.
2. Memorize. Commit thoughts to memory. If you can draw design ideas out, than you can start committing things to memory. The idea is to capture what’s in the thought process.
3. Analyze. Take a step back. Detach yourself from the thought you’re trying to communicate visually.
4. Synthesize. Filter the signal from the noise. “This is where most people fail – what’s the phrase? Analysis paralysis.” Don’t get sucked up in the analysis, distill it and move on.
5. Visualize. See it, then do it. Maybe it’s something you do with a drawing that build out from your sketch, or maybe it happens in PowerPoint.
6. Materialize. This is really important for making something memorable. Figure out a way to make it stick, similar to the visual he created for the 4 Cs of community. David mentioned Brian Solis as a solid example of making ideas stickier through great visuals. Most recently, that’s taken shape in Solis’ social marketing compass.

So why be visual with your concepts? Great question – here are some thoughts from David:

• Great designs grab attention quickly.
• It helps readers learn faster and more effectively.
• It lets people do their own thing, and specifically, it allows them to interpret things in their own way.
• Design helps us tell stories.

I appreciate David throwing out a reading list to support the concepts he discussed in the preso; a little old school, but very cool. These give some good direction for where to start:

• Envisioning Information – Edward Tufte
• Back of the Napkin – Dan Roam
• Selling to the VP of NO – Dave Gray
• Don’t Make Me Think – Steve Krug

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