Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel

Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Defining Empathy in the Design Context Hi this is module two. In
this module, what we are going to do is we are going to introduce the concept of empathy.
You might have heard this word very often but still we will go through the theoretical aspects
of it, and then we will go to structuring and designing content based on what we learned
through empathizing with your audience. And then we will look at very rough prototyping of
your communication artifact, the presentation, and how to present ideas effectively. One
thing I want you all to keep in mind is the context of how this information that we talk about
today will be applied. Designing a communication artifact is seen by me and, you know, by
you also, it should be seen as a subset of designing digital user experience design. So some
of the concepts that I'm going to talk about might have its foundation in designing digital user
experience design itself. And elements of that will be applied in creating communication
artifact. The communication artifact can be a presentation, it can be a video, it can be a
document. But remember that some of these concepts are over and much beyond just
designing a communication artifact. So the first topic, like I said will be you know, introducing
empathy and what we'll discuss here or learn here is how to use how to use empathy and
map that two visual outputs. How are you going to create your communication artifact? So
before we go there, let's define what empathy is. We need to understand what is empathy,
and we need to understand why we are doing it before, how to do it or what to do. So we
look at some key points in terms of what is empathy and what is not empathy. And some of
the pitfalls that is there you might, you know kind of unknowingly fall into, okay. So empathy
is, is a very, very important concept. And, you know, it takes some time to really understand
this. One of the you know, first problems or mistakes, you will do is you know, compare
empathy and sympathy. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Let's say you you know, see a
beggar at a traffic junction, okay. What you feel there is sympathy. okay. Oh, poor guy or
poor girl, poor child. Now what is empathy is what do they feel? okay. And really it's not as if
you know, you are making it up. It's not about what will you feel there, but what do they feel?
That is the difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is getting into the mind and
shoes and heart of the audience to whom you are creating this artifact. The next you know,
concept you need to know about you know, empathizing or empathy is what are some of the
fundamental aspects that build what are empathy towards a person or a group or a
audience? Okay, there are three aspects to this and you know, let's call it the three pillars.
You know, the first is cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is about knowing what that
person is going through or that person is feeling. So let's go back to this example that I took
in terms of someone who is at the traffic junction and you know, asking for money. Okay.
Now, cognitive empathy, there is this person is poor. This person is asking for money. Now,
deeper understanding might lead to other data points and elements that will enrich your
knowing of that person or that individual. So when you're creating a presentation artifact, you
should know what that person feels and wants. Okay. Next pillar is emotional empathy.
Emotional empathy is about feeling, okay. Knowing is based on understanding and getting
data. Emotional empathy is feeling. Now emotional empathy is much, much more difficult
and it takes a lot of time. You cannot you know, have emotional empathy, real emotional
empathy with the person who's seeking arms. Okay. Emotional empathy sometime comes
when you know you have a long exposure and immersion with a person in a professional
context, if you have a, a, you know manager, okay. Or if you have a peer, you are working
with them for quite some time and you have been observing them, understanding how they
react, understanding what makes them work, what triggers them, what makes them happy.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. All these adds to the emotional empathy. You know how they feel.
You know what will make them feel what that is emotional empathy. Now, compassionate
empathy is the third pillar where you convert your cognitive empathy and emotional empathy
into action. okay. So when you know about this person asking for arms, and you are
convinced that is you know, justified and you have enough information, you empathize and
you decide to help them. That is compassionate empathy. Emotional empathy is, let's say
you are working with a, a, a peer or a junior, you know, who you know has a certain style of
working or way of working or certain constraints in their personal or professional capacity.
And you are compassionate to that, you know, okay, this person is a person who will
understand if I give them clear instructions. This person is a person who will need the
flexibility when I give them a direction and then ask them to do something, they will go and
do it. Understanding this and reacting accordingly is compassionate empathy. Okay, these
are the three things. Cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy.
Now in our context in creating a presentation artifact or communication, business
communication, cognitive empathy probably will be the most powerful you know, pillar that
you'll have to focus on, and we will be focusing on that quite, quite a lot. okay. So, because
you're not going to have a emotional bonding or emotional relationship with, with your
audience where you're going to make a presentation or the act of cognitive empathy itself
will be the compassionate empathy that it, it won't go beyond that. Then we go to the third
aspect in terms of defining empathy. This is very important. I will just touch upon a very, very
key aspect but you you might want to research on this and learn about this on your own
further. We will give you some context and references. So these are the biases as barriers,
okay. You are going to create a communication artifact to communicate your idea, or you
communicate a certain complex idea of your organization to someone else. Now, when you
do this, usually let's take away the artifact itself. You are designing something. Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. When you design, you usually go in with biases in terms of, I, I know this, this
is how it is going to work. This is what will work. This is how it'll be effectively communicated.
Now that is a way, that is the fundamental issue that you'll have to be, have your guard
against. okay. One key phrase is Malkovich Bias. I, I would, you know, you, you will learn
about this through the material and go on look up on Malkovich bias on your own too. So
Malkovich Bias is where, you know, you kind of think everyone uses and reacts to
technology the way you yourself do it. You might have seen a lot happening this in your day
to day life. Oh, this is what people will do. okay. I'm looking at this application. Oh, no one
will click this button. Why will anyone click on this you know, banner advertisement? Why will
anyone scroll down below this and so on and so forth. That is because you do it that way.
Now, Malkovich biases about saying that is how you do it. That is not how the world does it.
Okay. Just as a, you know, a tip, 1% of the entire population or researched population
actually goes and clicks a banner app. I don't know whether you click that or not, but yeah, it
happens. We cannot take a biased view on this, so be conscious of the biases and your own
ideas that you're bringing into your presentation artifact. Now, the fourth thing on why you
should empathize is about the impact that the communication will have when it is done the
right way. So when you create a communication artifact, if you empathize, there'll be
engagement. What I mean by engagement is people will relate to what, what is, what is
being communicated. People be interested in understanding what is being communicated.
Even if they don't understand, they will be encouraged to understand it. Okay. It establishes
a connection. If there is no empathy when creating a communication artifact, there is
disengagement. Communication is going on, and no one wants to really react what I'm going
to say might have Malkovich Bias to it. okay. Try to understand and see if there is Malkovich
Bias there on your own, but what do you do when you see a long email? Okay, there is a
practice called TLDR. What is that? Too long. Don't read or didn't read. Okay. Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. So they'll give one sentence. Why is that done? Because the communicator,
the email writer knows no one is going to read a long email. Here's the short aspect of it,
okay. Now, if the TLDR line is impactful enough then the person who is receiving that mail
will actually read the mail. Okay. That is empathy, creating engagement and creating
connection. So the impact of having empathy to your audience is creating impact of your
communication. And finally, you know, kind of flipping the coin, if there's empathy gap, okay.
Let's say you are not able to understand or not able to empathize with your audience. The
audience is too far away. You don't know how to understand your audience. You don't have
the data to build the cognitive empathy. What do you do? You have to understand that there,
that there is a empathy gap, okay. And then what you are communicating, the intent of your
communication might not be the receiver's reality. Okay. You are seeing a concept A, the
receiver is receiving a concept B. You'll have to acknowledge it, okay and find ways to
decrease this empathy gap. Now we will talk about that when we talk about how we you
know, do testing and so on and so forth. But we'll come there. okay. That is the first point in
you know, we are, we kind of defined empathy and we said, why we have to empathize
before we went into what?
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Defining Empathy in the Design Context Hi this is module two. In
this module, what we are going to do is we are going to introduce the concept of empathy.
You might have heard this word very often but still we will go through the theoretical aspects
of it, and then we will go to structuring and designing content based on what we learned
through empathizing with your audience. And then we will look at very rough prototyping of
your communication artifact, the presentation, and how to present ideas effectively. One
thing I want you all to keep in mind is the context of how this information that we talk about
today will be applied. Designing a communication artifact is seen by me and, you know, by
you also, it should be seen as a subset of designing digital user experience design. So some
of the concepts that I'm going to talk about might have its foundation in designing digital user
experience design itself. And elements of that will be applied in creating communication
artifact. The communication artifact can be a presentation, it can be a video, it can be a
document. But remember that some of these concepts are over and much beyond just
designing a communication artifact. So the first topic, like I said will be you know, introducing
empathy and what we'll discuss here or learn here is how to use how to use empathy and
map that two visual outputs. How are you going to create your communication artifact? So
before we go there, let's define what empathy is. We need to understand what is empathy,
and we need to understand why we are doing it before, how to do it or what to do. So we
look at some key points in terms of what is empathy and what is not empathy. And some of
the pitfalls that is there you might, you know kind of unknowingly fall into, okay. So empathy
is, is a very, very important concept. And, you know, it takes some time to really understand
this. One of the you know, first problems or mistakes, you will do is you know, compare
empathy and sympathy. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Let's say you you know, see a
beggar at a traffic junction, okay. What you feel there is sympathy. okay. Oh, poor guy or
poor girl, poor child. Now what is empathy is what do they feel? okay. And really it's not as if
you know, you are making it up. It's not about what will you feel there, but what do they feel?
That is the difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is getting into the mind and
shoes and heart of the audience to whom you are creating this artifact. The next you know,
concept you need to know about you know, empathizing or empathy is what are some of the
fundamental aspects that build what are empathy towards a person or a group or a
audience? Okay, there are three aspects to this and you know, let's call it the three pillars.
You know, the first is cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy is about knowing what that
person is going through or that person is feeling. So let's go back to this example that I took
in terms of someone who is at the traffic junction and you know, asking for money. Okay.
Now, cognitive empathy, there is this person is poor. This person is asking for money. Now,
deeper understanding might lead to other data points and elements that will enrich your
knowing of that person or that individual. So when you're creating a presentation artifact, you
should know what that person feels and wants. Okay. Next pillar is emotional empathy.
Emotional empathy is about feeling, okay. Knowing is based on understanding and getting
data. Emotional empathy is feeling. Now emotional empathy is much, much more difficult
and it takes a lot of time. You cannot you know, have emotional empathy, real emotional
empathy with the person who's seeking arms. Okay. Emotional empathy sometime comes
when you know you have a long exposure and immersion with a person in a professional
context, if you have a, a, you know manager, okay. Or if you have a peer, you are working
with them for quite some time and you have been observing them, understanding how they
react, understanding what makes them work, what triggers them, what makes them happy.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. All these adds to the emotional empathy. You know how they feel.
You know what will make them feel what that is emotional empathy. Now, compassionate
empathy is the third pillar where you convert your cognitive empathy and emotional empathy
into action. okay. So when you know about this person asking for arms, and you are
convinced that is you know, justified and you have enough information, you empathize and
you decide to help them. That is compassionate empathy. Emotional empathy is, let's say
you are working with a, a, a peer or a junior, you know, who you know has a certain style of
working or way of working or certain constraints in their personal or professional capacity.
And you are compassionate to that, you know, okay, this person is a person who will
understand if I give them clear instructions. This person is a person who will need the
flexibility when I give them a direction and then ask them to do something, they will go and
do it. Understanding this and reacting accordingly is compassionate empathy. Okay, these
are the three things. Cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy.
Now in our context in creating a presentation artifact or communication, business
communication, cognitive empathy probably will be the most powerful you know, pillar that
you'll have to focus on, and we will be focusing on that quite, quite a lot. okay. So, because
you're not going to have a emotional bonding or emotional relationship with, with your
audience where you're going to make a presentation or the act of cognitive empathy itself
will be the compassionate empathy that it, it won't go beyond that. Then we go to the third
aspect in terms of defining empathy. This is very important. I will just touch upon a very, very
key aspect but you you might want to research on this and learn about this on your own
further. We will give you some context and references. So these are the biases as barriers,
okay. You are going to create a communication artifact to communicate your idea, or you
communicate a certain complex idea of your organization to someone else. Now, when you
do this, usually let's take away the artifact itself. You are designing something. Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. When you design, you usually go in with biases in terms of, I, I know this, this
is how it is going to work. This is what will work. This is how it'll be effectively communicated.
Now that is a way, that is the fundamental issue that you'll have to be, have your guard
against. okay. One key phrase is Malkovich Bias. I, I would, you know, you, you will learn
about this through the material and go on look up on Malkovich bias on your own too. So
Malkovich Bias is where, you know, you kind of think everyone uses and reacts to
technology the way you yourself do it. You might have seen a lot happening this in your day
to day life. Oh, this is what people will do. okay. I'm looking at this application. Oh, no one
will click this button. Why will anyone click on this you know, banner advertisement? Why will
anyone scroll down below this and so on and so forth. That is because you do it that way.
Now, Malkovich biases about saying that is how you do it. That is not how the world does it.
Okay. Just as a, you know, a tip, 1% of the entire population or researched population
actually goes and clicks a banner app. I don't know whether you click that or not, but yeah, it
happens. We cannot take a biased view on this, so be conscious of the biases and your own
ideas that you're bringing into your presentation artifact. Now, the fourth thing on why you
should empathize is about the impact that the communication will have when it is done the
right way. So when you create a communication artifact, if you empathize, there'll be
engagement. What I mean by engagement is people will relate to what, what is, what is
being communicated. People be interested in understanding what is being communicated.
Even if they don't understand, they will be encouraged to understand it. Okay. It establishes
a connection. If there is no empathy when creating a communication artifact, there is
disengagement. Communication is going on, and no one wants to really react what I'm going
to say might have Malkovich Bias to it. okay. Try to understand and see if there is Malkovich
Bias there on your own, but what do you do when you see a long email? Okay, there is a
practice called TLDR. What is that? Too long. Don't read or didn't read. Okay. Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. So they'll give one sentence. Why is that done? Because the communicator,
the email writer knows no one is going to read a long email. Here's the short aspect of it,
okay. Now, if the TLDR line is impactful enough then the person who is receiving that mail
will actually read the mail. Okay. That is empathy, creating engagement and creating
connection. So the impact of having empathy to your audience is creating impact of your
communication. And finally, you know, kind of flipping the coin, if there's empathy gap, okay.
Let's say you are not able to understand or not able to empathize with your audience. The
audience is too far away. You don't know how to understand your audience. You don't have
the data to build the cognitive empathy. What do you do? You have to understand that there,
that there is a empathy gap, okay. And then what you are communicating, the intent of your
communication might not be the receiver's reality. Okay. You are seeing a concept A, the
receiver is receiving a concept B. You'll have to acknowledge it, okay and find ways to
decrease this empathy gap. Now we will talk about that when we talk about how we you
know, do testing and so on and so forth. But we'll come there. okay. That is the first point in
you know, we are, we kind of defined empathy and we said, why we have to empathize
before we went into what?
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. The Empathy Map So now you supercharged your cognitive
empathy with raw data. Now, how do you actually use that data? You'll have to use some
techniques to model and extract information from that data. Okay. So that's what we are
going to discuss in this short clip. Okay. So this is about synthesizing the data and creating
an empathy map turning observations into, you know, structured mental model. When I say
mental model, you like to create a model of your audience who you are designing this for in
your head. So that is a model that we create in this. Again just to reiterate, these techniques
that I'm going to talk about are very generic techniques where it'll help you to convert
empathy into real you know, understanding of your audience. So here we go. Now, the first
model or technique or the key, the, the, the primary technique here is the empathy map.
Okay. Now empathy map is to understand when you, when you do your active listening,
when you do your contextual inquiry and your extreme interviews and so on and so forth.
You start noting things. You start observing things. You start understanding things. How do
you structure it? So you put your audience, you know, either individual or a group in the
center and say, okay, this audience says this. This audience thinks this. They do this, and
they feel this. Okay. These are the four quadrants we see, says, thinks, does and feel. Okay,
so whatever you know, your, your CEO while presenting might, you know, no, no, no, no, no,
no. He might say that. Okay. Or she might just, you know, turn away. These are the things, of
course, you cannot sit there and do these notings, but you'll have to come back and reflect
on this. If you're structured enough, you can quickly create this. Okay. This is what they say.
This is what they do. Okay. Now this, when did they do that? When did they say that? What
triggered them to say that? You'll have to understand that. Okay. Now, based on this, or even
otherwise you apart from this say, think, does and feel. What you need to do is identifying
what, what you'd like to call us pains and gains. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Okay. What point made them, you
know, kind of smile? What point kind of made them nod. When did they say, okay, that looks
like a good point or how was it articulated to them? What was presented to them? Okay, now
what are they looking out of it? These are the pains and gains that you will have to record.
Okay. You have to be very conscious about understanding, like I said, nonverbal cues. Are
they turning away? Are they, you know, kind of zoning out, disengaging? When do they do
that? Are they, you know, starting to look at their phone, starting to fiddle around? When is
your audience kind of, if, if you're presenting to a large audience, these are things that you
will learn as you keep doing again and again, a large audience suddenly they might start,
you know, you, you might hear murmurs coming up because they're talking to themselves.
Now, all these things you'll have to do, and you will start creating techniques within yourself
as a result of this to address those. So the first point is to learn about this when you're doing
your, you know, your contextual inquiry and so on and so forth. And document it through this
empathy map. Okay. You like to note your non nonverbal cues. Then what you need to do is
cluster this information. You have noted all this, you know, sees, thinks, does, feel, now you
will say, okay, they say this because probably they're thinking this and because they are
doing this, they are feeling this. You'll see connections here. Now you cluster it as insights
and then that will give you a certain kind of thematic understanding or thematic mental model
of what, who is this person? You know, this is, this is where your cognitive empathy actually
manifests itself into articulated words or documents or ideas in your head. Okay, who is this
person? Or what kind of forum is this? What makes them work? So now you'll finally, based
on all this, you'll be noting down your you. You'll be creating what is known as persona.
Okay. You will say, this is the kind of persona where when I say, or when I put across
information like this, it actually impresses them or I'm able to actually get through to them, or
I may actually able to communicate to them. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Okay. In persona, it's very, very
important. I want to take a pause here and say, persona is not her. Profile or not a role? You
cannot say CEO is a persona. Okay. You cannot say manager is a persona. You cannot say,
my, my peer is a persona. These are all, these are all roles people fit into, Okay. Or these
are all designations or characters. They fit into what you need to understand and define
while doing. A persona is actually what kind of a person is this? Okay. You might, it, it's not
about age, it's not about gender. It's not about the designation that they hold. It's about what
motivates them. What kind of aspirations do they have? What kind of fears do they have?
You know, you're getting into their, their head or in, in getting into their shoes and see this is
what makes them work or this is what makes them tick. Okay. Let's say I, I'll give you an
example of a persona. Again, you know, go back to your Malkovich Bias and kind of keep
that in mind while listening to me. Okay. This is a you know, middle-aged life insurance
provider who is worried about how he's going to get his next insurance sale. Okay. Now,
every word that I utter here is coming from. A place of Malkovich Bias. I have a certain
understanding of this person. Okay. Maybe this person is correct from my perspective, for
my purposes, Okay. But you will build such personas in your context, which shouldn't have
that Malkovich Bias, Okay. It shouldn't be that you are projecting your understanding of that
person. It should be coming from all the techniques that we said that you are. Learning to
understand the data from getting the data from, and then the techniques that we said you will
use to structure that data and getting out of it. You build a persona of a person, Okay. And
that will really give you the mental model of this person. So again, I want to reiterate,
persona is not the role. Persona is a person. All CEOs are not the same. All managers are
not the same all. Peers are not the same amongst peers. There'll be a very, very friendly,
supportive peer. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. There'll be a very competitive but friendly peer, A competitive, but a
very what should I say, a disrupting P. Okay. All these are personas for the same role called
peer. Okay, so that is what you need to understand and create. Now why, why are we doing
this? Like, I just want to create a presentation. You might say, I just want to create a video.
You might say, do I need to do all this? Do I need to understand this? Please understand if
your communication has to be effective at some level, consciously, subconsciously. You
know, kind of, you know, intentionally or unintentional, unintentionally, you will be doing this.
All you need to do is articulate it separately. Again, the four quadrants, you know, analyzing
what they say, think, do, and feel. That is the primary way in which you collect your data.
Identifying what are the pains they undergo through? What are the gains they look for? That
is the secondary data. Then you look at nonverbal cues. How are they behaving? How are
they, what are they not saying? What are they projecting through their body? What is the
vibe as they say? You know, all these you like to understand then organize all this as in on a
thematic structure, understand the theme and create the persona Whether you are doing it in
a, you know, if, if you're, if you are in a presentation organization, you will do this in a very,
very structured way. But if you're doing a presentation for your weekly status of date, you
might not spend all this time, you'll spend this, you'll create this over a period of time and you
will start seeing that you're using this as techniques. Okay. So create the mental model of
who you are presenting to, who you're communicating to. And that will help you to you know,
effectively communicate to that person.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Design Principles You know, we talked about why we empathize,
then we talked about techniques of empathizing. Then we talked about how to kind of make
sense of that data. Now that we have that mental model or a map of our audience, or a user
in the form of a persona, right. What do we do with that? Okay. Now what we need to do
from that is extract design principles. Okay. For this person, this is what will work. These are
the kind of thumb rules I'm going to follow. So it, the communication becomes effective. Now
you have to extract these design principles from that model. That is what we are going to
discuss now. Again key highlights and some of these will be applicable, not just in creating a
presentation artifact or a document or a video, but you can, you know, extrapolate it to other
things. Now, one of the key things again, a very, very difficult thing is insights. Okay. You
have this you know, we said say, think, do, feel, and all these things, these are all
observations. Okay, well, they said this, they felt this and yeah, the CEO doesn't like this. My
project manager, you know, is always you know, disengages with this kind of content. Now
these are all just observations. Okay. Now how do we convert that into actionable techniques
or principles? Now that is what is insight. Okay. Now I'm going to give an example. It might
sound trivial probably because it comes without a context and comes without any
background information but I'll give you an example. You know, if you say the audience
hates lot of texts but instead of saying that now, because that is from your observation, that's
what they say. That's what they, you observe. That's what. Is there in the persona okay. The
audience hates a lot of text. Now you have to convert that into the audience will prefer to
have animated visuals or graphics. Okay. What they don't want is not, we are focusing on
what they want, is what we want to look at. Okay. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Now is this an insight? You know,
you might say, hey, that's what all presentations are. That's what you know, videos are.
There's a lot of visuals and graphics. Now take a flip. Okay. You're talking to, again,
Malkovich Bias. I, I'm, stop going to talk about that. But anyway Malkovich Bias, let's say
there is a physicist, a statistician, okay. Will that statistician, you are going to make a
presentation to him or her? Will, will that person like numbers and texts on the
communication artifacts that they give, or do they want a cartoonish talking head in the
presentation? So that is the insight that you'll have to get out of your persona okay. So don't
look at it as trivial or biased. Understand that this is what I'm going to, communicate to
communicate this effectively to this audience. This is how it has to be presented. You have to
extract that statement or kind of arrive at that statement so that all your future
communications follow that principle. The next thing is about the visual tone. Okay. What,
what, how does your document look like, you know, if, if you have used any of these
presentation tools or document tools? AI is kind of throwing at you a lot of things. You know,
you start creating a presentation and you click on templates, a hundred different templates
will come. Okay. One will be yellow, one will be pink, one will be black and white, one will be
gray. How do you choose it? Usually, you know, you say, ah, this looks nice. Okay. The
phrase that I'm not going to say this looks nice is from you. Okay. What will look nice to my
persona that is what you need to understand. Okay. This might be, this might be the result of
your emotional empathy or the contextual cognitive empathy of that particular presentation.
Okay. The next thing is about accessibility. Okay. Now, principles on accessibility is not, is is
almost kind of the rights itself. Okay. I if you're particularly sending out this communication to
be on its own and someone is going to read it or experience it when you are not there, Okay.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. The, the artifact has to speak for itself or act for itself. One of the
fundamental functional you know, requirement for artifact like that is accessibility. Now, what
is accessibility? Technically, it means if the person has certain constraints in terms of color or
font size, you'll have to be aware of it and, you know, make your presentations screen reader
compatible. Okay. Or high contracts text, these are some of the things that are functional.
You know, it's, there is nothing emotional. There is nothing cognitive. It's nothing personal
about it. It's fundamental function. You know, you cannot send a English presentation to
someone who doesn't know English. You cannot send a, a, a colourful presentation to
someone who has colour-blindness. You cannot send a text presentation, which cannot be
read or which doesn't have audio to a person who is, who has, who cannot read on a digital
screen. You know, these are accessibility principles. That's, I'm not going to go deep into that
because that's a whole different area, but be aware of it. And the fourth one is tone of voice.
Okay. Now you, you probably, we have seen presentations by various you know, high profile
communicators. You know example is Steve Jobs presentations. It comes again and again,
Okay. Oh, this is how a presentation should be. He introduced the style of just one line and
one big visual, and that presentation is specifically created for a certain kind of audience in
certain kind of a context. Okay. And the way he delivers it, what is the language he's using?
How is he, how is he modulating his voice? Okay. All this has to be consciously designed,
unpractised. Okay. Now, tone of voice is two things. One is the actual tone of your voice.
How are, how are you delivering it? Is it modulated? Is it well pronounced? Is the speed,
right? Is the volume right? Okay. All this you should be conscious of, and these are
principles that should go into your toolkit saying, when I am presenting it to this person, it
has to be this way. When I'm presenting in the audience, it has to be this way. The other tone
of voice is actually the words that you're using. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. You know, there is a formal tone of
voice. There is an informal tone of voice. There is a playful tone of voice, or there is specific
to the point. You know, if, let's say you are delivering a presentation on a extremely sensitive
grim and a matter which cannot be reinterpreted or which cannot afford to be misunderstood,
you probably will get the help of a lawyer actually Okay. To write exactly what should I say,
what are the terms I should use? Okay, that is to the point, okay. Nothing more, nothing less.
And there can be playful where let's say you are saying a story to a bunch of kids. It has
been delivered in a different way. So this, you have to extract from your persona and then
get the assistance or the input from the right kind of you know, technical expert. And then
you'll have to deliver it. And the final one is, you know, it's not all about the receiver also at
the end of the day, unfortunately. Okay, you have certain thing to communicate, Okay. And
that is the primary thing. You know, what you want to communicate is the primary thing.
What if the audience is not ready to receive it? Now, that's, that's a challenge that can be
crossed to a certain extent, but let's say you have to communicate a distressing status report
about a project status. You cannot just say, hey, my manager won't like this. I'm just going to
say everything is good. No, you cannot. What has to be communicated has to be
communicated. So I, I took an extreme example of what, you know, what has to be
communicated, but let's take some of the other, you know, simple samples there. What if you
have to give a lot of data intense information to a audience which doesn't have the time or
patience to look at, understand this as a constraint. Okay. And then you start thinking about
how to deliver this. You have to deliver the data. The, your audience through your personal
building exercise. You know, they don't like data, but that is the reality. You have to give data.
Okay. What if you are communicating something is domain intense? Let's say you are you
the anchor of a change management process. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. You are going to introduce a
different process to accomplish a certain task in a corporate environment. Okay. You are
going to throw away all the systems that are in place and bring in a new systems. How will
you communicate that? You'll have to educate. Okay. Now there is a lot of domain
knowledge there. How will you do that? Again, that is a constraint mapping. You'll have to
acknowledge this constraint and then say, okay, I'll work through this constraint. You'll have
to figure that out based on the context. Okay. Then another concept here, another constraint
is a complete paradigm shift. Okay, let's say you are the marketing team, Okay. And there's
this engineering team. Okay. You have gone ahead and marketed a certain kind of message
to the, your customer base, Okay. And that is a complete paradigm shift from what the
engineering team has been building around. What our products they're building. How do you
communicate that? Your entire paradigm is shifting now when such large changes happen.
Change management is a big constraint. Mapping and be aware of it. You'll have to work
through it through some of the techniques that are there, but still you'll find that empathy gap
that we talked about. Okay. Your audience is still are going to struggle with that. Be aware of
that and in, you know, create ways in which you can reinforce the communication and then
do it as a process rather than one document or one artifact. That is one technique. There
can be other techniques to, you know, work through these constraint mappings. So we
essentially talked about few principles, you know, in terms of how a map will help you to
arrive design principles for your communication artifact. First is insights. You know, what,
what are the insights about the audience? Based on that, you will now, insights will be the
key thing. You'll have to build your repository of insights saying, for this audience or this user,
this is how it is going to work. Okay. Then visual tone, again, context and audience. How the
visual tone works. Then the language tone, both tone of voice and tone of, you know, the
written language. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Both these you are to work through. And then we talked about the
functional empathy of accessibility. You know, if, if a person has certain physical constraints,
how do we work through that? Then we talked about. Conceptual constraints in terms of
constraint mapping. What if you know you are, you are communicating a kind of information
that is inherently difficult to absorb by your audience that you'll have to work through again.
So data domain, paradigm shift, these are some examples. So when you understand the
principles that you'll apply to work across these points, your communication will be effective.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Visual Output So we discussed about principles that you're going to
apply in creating this communication artifacts. So when I say principles, do remember these
are not the generic design principles. These are principles that you have evolved for your
purpose, for your communication artifact that you create. Okay. Principles are done. Now, I
just want to quickly refer back to what you went through in your module 1 and also
something that we will kind of refer in the next block of this module. These are elements, you
know, of how you create your artifact. Now, this is the colour, the type, when I say type, the
font that you're using. Okay. Hierarchy in terms of how the information physically is laid out
and also conceptually it's laid out hierarchy. And how do you connect these two? We talked
about empathy, we know about principles, you know, these fundamentals of design. How do
we connect these two? So the first of these is the psychology of colour. Okay. Now, you have
learned a few things about colour. Now apply that learning and kind of overlap that with your
persona and say what kind of colour range, colour palette will be properly will apply in this
case for your audience. You know, should it be soothing? Pastel colours or should be just
energetic, you know, let's say you're going to, you know I, I, I came to know that MTV has
been shut down permanently. Unfortunately, my generation, and for a long while, we have
been taking MTV as an example for anything energetic, anything colourful. But yeah, your
generation probably will like to look at you know, YouTube videos to see how MTV, the logo
itself is animated, and so on and so forth, how that is energy or let's say you go to a hospital,
okay, and you want to make a presentation to a set of doctors. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Okay. Maybe, maybe soothing blues. This is how you'll have to kind of select,
again, I'm, I'm just throwing these colours at you. Probably coming from my reference. So
you'll have to understand your persona you have created principles, you have evolved, and
from that you'll have to choose your colour. Then go into typography and readability. So
again, understand what is applicable here. The same kind of qualitative phrases can be used
for typographic also you know, soothing, energetic, what font is soothing, you shouldn't
decide. You should understand that from your cognitive empathy. Okay. Readability though
is a very it's a scientific concept. Okay. And there are objective ways in which readability of a
font has been defined for the media in which it'll be used for, for your mobile phone, a
certain, certain fonts will be readable. For your laptop, certain fonts will be readable. For your
big projections certain fonts are better, works better. Understand that and choose, you know,
your font, your font size, your font colour, and all that based on that, you have to choose.
Now, why do we have to choose this? I just want to introduce a idea called, a concept called
cognitive load. Okay. Cognitive load is the effort your brain has to put to understand or
absorb information. Let's say I give you a a a a paper, a lot of text there and read it and it's
all, you know, continue, continuous flowing text, just line after, line after, line after text and all
the information is there, but at the same time, consider a, a, a page or a a printed artifact
where there is title, there is subtitle. The font is different, the colour is different. Your brain
will you know, expend much, much less energy to understand that. Okay, so that is cognitive
load. Essentially, your colour, your type, your readability all this goes into decreasing the
cognitive load of a specific space. The next thing is about the hierarchy that we talked about.
You know, information architecture comes into play. We'll have to create the most
appropriate way in which you have to unveil the information. Okay. What do you say first?
What do you say next? This might sound again, logical. hey, this is what, this is how it should
go first. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. I should show the title now. We talked about Steve Jobs, right.
Does I don't know. I don't want to take a specific example there, but let me make it generic.
Okay. Do people start presentations with something deep inside their presentation to shock
the audience? Right. This is what is happening, and then they'll build a story to say why that
is happening. Okay. Now that is impactful information architecture. I'll throw a piece of
information which will grab your attention. And which will kind of almost give away the climax
of your presentation, but the act of doing that is a very conscious act of information
architecture. You'll have to say, this is what, this is how I'm going to present information, and
then this is how I will unveil it. Okay. This is, you'll have to consider multiple things here, the
right order, the right depths, the right intensity of information, how it is revealed. The next
kind of UI element or the design element that will be there on your artifact will be the
transitions, the animations, you know, in, in certain, in certain artifact you will, there is a
background image and just the text is moving. Okay. In certain presentation you might have
seen there is a separate animated character coming and talking. In another you know,
presentation, you would've seen texts themself getting animated and rearranging. So the,
this is where you can get creative, but also all this should be drawn from the principles that
you're put, you know, earlier based on your empathy. Finally, one you know, kind of technical
aspect of this is what kind of visual elements and images that you're using in your
presentation or your any communication artifact. Now, these elements should be relatable to
your audience. They shouldn't be wondering, okay, what, what, what does this mean? Now
you will see certain icons, as they say, icons or images, which first time when you see, you
won't have any idea what that is. But over a period of time, you will learn what it is because
of the consistency with which it is getting used, and then now you're familiar with it. Okay, so
that is how you build the familiarity for such elements in your presentation artifacts. Okay.
Use don't, don't kind of surprise users thinking that you're being creative and use certain
elements that is not understandable. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has
been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within
the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. You should ensure that they know
what it is and they know what it implies, and then use it. Okay. These are some of the
principles that we are going to use in terms of visual output. So just to summarize, you need
to understand the colour. You need to understand the font or type. You need to understand
how the information is revealed. You need to understand how information is you know, kind
of transition from one information to another, how the flow happens in an animated way, and
then the elements, the graphic elements that you use should be understandable to your
user. So that kind of concludes this part of art block.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Feedback Loops & Iterative Testing We empathized, you know, we
kind of understood why we have to empathize. Then we actually did, you know how to
supercharge our cognitive empathy? Then we said, how do we translate that into you know,
kind of understand all that information, how to lay it out, how to under create the mental
model. Then from that mental model, we evolved design principles that, okay, this is what my
audience is and these are the principles that I will apply to create artifacts that will appeal to
my audience. And then we said how to actually use that using the fundamentals of design
principles you learned earlier how to create a visual output. Okay, we touched upon all this.
So you have artifact now in your hand. You, you can actually go and present it to your
audience. You can share it to your audience, send it to your audience, whatever you do. Now
the final step in any design, the final step is what we call as testing. Okay, I'm, again, I'm
going to use certain phrases and terms that will be applicable outside your communication
artifact, but it's very, very relevant here. Okay. So we'll start with one of the most basic
things, what is called as usability testing. Usability testing is usually, you know, taken in the
context of softwares. Is the software usable? Is the user going to click the right button? Is the
user going to see the button wherever it is hidden or not hidden? Okay. So essentially we
observe how your audience interact with the artifact that you created. Then ideally, what you
would like to do is we created that empathy map, right. You'll have to see, okay, I felt, I
recorded it as the audience feels this and these are the pains, these are the gains, and here
it is getting validated or you'll say, okay, maybe I have misunderstood this. I'm going to
rewrite or change my empathy map. So again let me put a small disclaimer here. Do we do
this with the presentation artifacts in high impact, extremely powerful presentations? Yes,
this is done. Okay. Presentations where Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. it is created again and again, where
it has to, particularly when it is delivered to extremely large number of people or extremely
important financial decisions are involved. Yes, it is done. Okay. But in your case, maybe
you'll start applying this subconsciously and learning, but ultimately when you do the
usability testing, you'll have to go back and say, my model was wrong in a certain way. This
is how I'm going to change the model. Okay. And there is another way of another testing tool
that is there. You might always wonder, should I, should I make a presentation with 5 slides?
Should I, or should I say just send a email or should I just create little posters and put it on
the notice book? What will work? You can take a call that will again, be your Malkovich Bias
saying this is what is going to work, but what is the right way to do it? So in, in software, we
call it A/B testing okay. So maybe in one part of your audience, you know, one office or one
section of your audience, you'll use a poster. In another section you'll use a email, another
section you'll call for a you know, a town hall and make a presentation. You'll like to see
which one, where the communication was effective, and then you will use the same
technique again and again, where whichever was found to be most effective. So that is, you
know, applying various solution techniques or various design techniques or design outputs,
and then saying, this is what is working best and this is what I might use in the future. Okay.
Now the third thing is we talked about contextual inquiry, right. Now, contextual inquiry is
there is formative contextual inquiry, and then there is summit, summative contextual inquiry,
which can be called as usability testing. So essentially, before you design the artifact, you're
just observing the person without them actually interacting with the artifact. In usability
testing, you're actually, they're actually interacting with the artifact, and then you see, okay.
And then you get the feedback. You do interviews there. Okay. What is happening? Okay,
you, you need to collect information where you need to understand what is wrong with the
artifact rather than a new wish list. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has
been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within
the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. It's okay to get a new wish list, but it
would be much, much more helpful in terms of specificity of what should be changed if you
ask them to tell what did they find wrong? So if when you it's, it's usually helpful when after
you make a presentation, you can ask the audience, please give me tips in terms of how to
improve my communication. It'll help immensely. Okay. Finally again, going back to your
map, you know, you created Empathy Map is something you can validate through usability
testing, but after you're done various of these things, you'll have to update your entire
persona, you know, and again, this is not a one-time task. It's a, it's a long drawn task and
it's a iterate to process. Okay. You send something. There is a certain kind of reaction and
then you go, go back to your persona and say, this is what worked, or this is what improved,
or this is how it failed and this is why it failed. And hence my persona definition has to be
changed in a certain way. So the moment that happens, you will, you will start picking up
nuances and say okay, next time I'm doing this, I'm not going to put a you know, a sprinkling
of icons because my audience found that childish. So my audience don't like childish, okay.
Or my audience don't like childish for this kind of a communication, you will change your
design. So you do this usability testing, A/B testing, you understand kind of interview or not
direct interview, but you get feedback and then you refine your map. And to finally close the
loop, you'll have to actually apply these learnings in the next kind of communication artifact
or communication process that you're creating. Okay, you need to put this together, make it
work. And it goes on this. This is a loop really in terms of creating your presentations or
communication artifacts, applying all those principles, and then recycling your ideas and
reapplying the learnings that you have learned and then taking it forward. So it, this is a
never ending process and this is a process where you keep learning again and again. Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan
Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. So in terms of any design happens in iterative and a circular way and the, this
is not different from that, you know, overall generic design process. So just to summarize this
entire block you know, we talked about why we need to empathize. And you know, in that we
realized that empathy is the only way in which you understand your audience, truly
understand your audience instead of taking your own judgment call on your audience and
then communicating to them effectively. Then we said, what are the ways to empathize
techniques that are used to empathize? Then we said, how to apply, you know, our
document, that information in terms of the techniques that we use to empathize. Then we
said that data is documented. Now, from that, we created a model in terms of empathy map
under persona, and those are the ways in which you withdrew kind of design principles that
for this empathy, for this kind of a persona. These are the principles that are going to apply
and then we actually created the artifact. And then finally we said we are going to why that
artifact goes out, that that particular job is done, task is done. A larger task of communicating
to the same person again and again is going to continue. So we get feedback for that artifact
and then document that feedback, go and update our, you know, our data, our models, our
maps, and then continue this process. So that is overall, how design thinking will apply in
terms of creating your communication artifact.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. The Psychology of Information Processing Hi. So in the last
module we talked about empathy driven content, right. For you to understand your audience.
Over the next few clips, what we will look at is you know, structuring and writing information
for clarity and persuasion. At the end of the day, we want you to convey the information
clearly. And you'll have to persuade your audience to a certain goal. So we'll talk about the
techniques and process that you can apply to enable that. So the first topic that we are going
to look at is the way in which a brain consumes data. Okay. The psychology of information
processing. I'm going to be very practical and give inputs in terms of what exactly you can
directly take into your content creation. I'm not going to go into too much of a theory, but I will
touch upon some theory. Okay. So the absolute first thing that you need to know about
content writing and creation is something called cognitive load. Now all of you use a laptop
or digital computer right. Now, a computer has something called RAM. Now, this RAM is, is
the memory that is used to kind of do immediate functions. Now, that is a kind of capacity.
Similarly, for humans, there is a capacity. Now that is called cognitive load. Okay. It's a, it's,
it's the mental bandwidth. So whenever you create content or whenever you pass
information, or whenever you ask a human to process information, you'll have to always
keep that in mind before conveying information. What is the ability of the human mind to
process information to what extent? Keep that mental bandwidth in mind. Now, there are
three components to this cognitive load. Okay. Whenever you want the human brain to
understand a certain thing, the human brain takes a certain amount of bandwidth to actually
understand the task, Okay. At its core. Now, if you had to climb stairs, it, the brain says,
okay, I'll have to take step by step by step. That is an example. The other bandwidth that is
spent is, is there a railing? Do I take support of the railing? Will I trip over? These are all
extraneous you know, information that the brain is distracted by. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. There is a certain amount of bandwidth that gets lost in that. So that is noise
effort. And then finally, there is an effort called the learning effort, effort. Now steps is
something that you do naturally. But imagine the time when, you know when you did that first
or as a child or if you, if you see a child learning to do it, there is an effort that goes into that
process. So, intrinsic effort for the task, removing all the effort for the noise. And then the
effort to learn a task in the way it is presented to you at this point, these are the three things
that occupies your you know, mental bandwidth. So essentially you'll have to make sure that
last two parts are minimum, so that the intrinsic effort gets the maximum mental bandwidth.
So that is cognitive load in terms of how you, you know, structure your content, how you
present your content. So that is, that is, that is the most important and kind of overarching
principle that, you know, we will, we will be referring to and we can keep it in the back of our
mind as we go through this entire module. Next part is, you know, we, we said there is
cognitive load for task. Now, the task, when I said climb up a staircase, you know, it's just
step by step by step. Now, let's say you like to find a specific room in a, in a, in a institute,
Okay. There'll be steps in between. There'll be paths in between. There'll be other landmarks
in between, right. You'll have to navigate through all this. So the next you know, way in which
you kind of help the user to understand information is how you display that information to
them, how much you display to that, to them. Okay. Just a small bit of trivia here or, or a
theoretical concept there was the psychologist George Miller at some point. I think he
discovered that the human brain can hold up to seven items in its brain at any given point of
time, plus or minus two. Okay. Let's, let's just consider that and leave it aside for a minute,
the numbers itself, okay, leave the number. But essentially the principle says the brain can
hold only a certain number of discrete pieces of information at the same time. Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. It cannot process too many things. It has its optimum. So as content writers
forget about seven plus or minus two. Okay. But just keep in mind that only a limited number
of information can be kept in mind. Okay. So it'll always help to look at your information and
then chunk it, you know, in two pieces. Let's say you have 10 pages of information to convey
or present, or 10 slides or whatever it is, if you can say, chunk it into 5 pieces, part A, part B,
part C, part D, and part E. Then the human brain is able to say, okay, I'm going to look at
these 5 things, and then you go deeper one by one. Then the brain is able to process it and
also remember it. Okay, 5 and then there is subcategories and so on and so forth. So as
long as you chunk the information into meaningful units. Then you'll decrease the cognitive
load on the brain. Okay. So create logical groups. Don't, you know, to, to take an example
Lego pieces. You can't just throw a bunch of Lego pieces at someone and say, make sense
of it. As long as you kind of block them, block them together and say, hey, these sets are, if,
if you see how Lego pieces come packaged, it'll be packaged in certain components. Put
them together, then it's that much more easier. So that is the second principle. There is a
maximum amount of information and load mental bandwidth in order to address that mental
bandwidth, you'll have to chunk your information so that the brain can process it. Going to
the next part, now the next part is called, as you know introduced something called the Dual
Coding Theory. Okay. This was you know, introduced by someone by the name Allan Paivio.
Now, the primary point of this dual coding theory is there are two channels through which our
brain absorbs information. Okay. Channel one is text, be it auditory or what you read, Okay.
Visual, visual text or audio text. The second channel is visual. Visual when I say it's imagery,
so you can have information going to the person through text and information going to a
person through images and small icons and so on and so forth. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Now, these two, if they complement each other, then the brain may not use too
much of its RAM, it's, you know, it's, it's not a too much of cognitive load, and it immediately
understands what the information is. Okay. So essentially don’t use pictures just as pretty
decorative elements. Use pictures to compliment the verbal content or the textual content.
The moment you do it, it's much, much more easier to convey what you are, what you want
to convey to your audience. The fourth aspect that I want to highlight here is when people
consume the information that you're giving to them, what, what exactly are they doing? You
know try to remember how you consume content, particularly in this day of you know, digital
and micro content. How are we using it? How are we doing it ?A long time ago, researchers
found that we don't really read. Okay. We scan, we kind of quickly look at things and then
say, okay, this is what this thing is about take quick conclusions and move on. Okay. So this
is a very, very difficult, hard truths. Okay. There are you know, researching groups like
Nielsen Norman Group who have done years of eye tracking. Eye tracking is a methodology
where, you know there is a camera in front of you and it kind of scans your retina and sees
where your eyes exactly pointing. So through eye tracking, researchers understand or
analyze how we consume textual content or any content that is presented to them. Okay.
There are two fundamental ways in which our eye scan. One is the F pattern. F pattern is,
you know, it, it goes, it goes straight down quickly, then it comes across, and then the
second part, it goes to the next it, it doesn't go fully. It goes halfway or maybe full, but
essentially it's F. So that is one way of quickly grasping what is there on the screen. The
other way is, particularly for visual images, it's a Z pattern. Z pattern is you start on the top
left corner, go across, come diagonally down, and then go across. So that those two patterns
are the most commonly observed eye tracking patterns that you know, researchers have
found people are using. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Now, what is the tell? This tells that,
first of all, they're scanning and they're scanning in a certain way. Okay. So essentially you'll
have to put the content in certain spaces of the screen that is available and highlight it in a
way that it captures attention. So there are some techniques to you know, kind of enable or
amplify the understanding when scanning is happening. Yeah, so there are, there are 5
components to it. One is using headings. Obviously we all use it, you know, so we, we put
the heading on top left corner. Okay. And if you look at extremely large amount of text, you
might not be doing extremely large amount of text in your own presentations or you know,
simple, text content, but in a document you probably will be using, if you're using large
amount of text, it has to be left aligned, Okay. And it has to have a heading and it has to
have a subheading. So this helps in terms of F scanning. It enables that. And then there has
to be keywords which is highlighted. Why should keywords be highlighted? Because it
grasps attention. We look at you know, how highlight will happen, and so on and so forth. A
little you know, a little down the line, but keywords has to be identified and that will enable
scanning. Third is you'll have to incorporate wide space in your overall content so that there
are relief points. Again, we'll talk about it in a little bit more detail later. Then use lists again.
So, F we said it, it may not be just two lines. It, it goes on like that. So lists always gets a little
bit more understanding and makes things easier. And finally, emphasis, which I talked about
during you know in the keywords part of it. So using emphasis, using colors to emphasize or
using size to emphasize these things will help in reading. So while, while. You know,
designing content so that for scanning you'll have to have headings, keywords, wide space,
lists, and give emphasis appropriately. So just to quickly summarize this part, we started with
cognitive load where we said there's a certain amount of mental bandwidth and we'll have to
keep that in mind while passing information so that the brain can process and keep
absorbing it as we continue to give information. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. The, the second component we
talked about is chunking information that enables kind of you know, to balance the cognitive
load in a sequential manner. You, you, you kind of group information logically and then keep
on sending groups of information together. Then we talked about text and visual, you know,
the dual coding theory. We can use text and images separately effectively so that
understanding is, and data consumption is quicker. Finally, designing your content for
scanning versus reading. You know, you'll have to design it for scanning if the user wants, if
the audience wants, they'll go into the details while reading, but you'll have to fundamentally
design your content for scanning.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Information Hierarchy and Scannability So we talked about
scanning and reading right. Now, that's a, that's a powerful way of displaying and
communicating information. So we go into a little bit more detail about it, how to increase
scanability. Now, we'll be using information hierarchy, visual weight, and so on and so forth.
We will talk about those principles in this clip. So the first one is visual hierarchy. Now visual
hierarchy is you know, it can be metaphorically speaking, it can be the volume knob of your
content. Okay. You, you would've listened to orators, great orators. They don't stay flat, you
know, they, they slightly increase the volume. They'll decrease the volume. They'll give a
pause. All this is for effect, right. So exactly the same way text, when you put it on a, on, on
a, you know, on a medium you can use the size and scale to bring that differentiation. So
that's why we call this as the volume knob of texts. Okay. If it's all the same size. It'll be like
someone just whispering in your here at the same volume. It just keeps on going kind of a
thing, and you don't get really anything. You don't tell the user what to focus on, what to care
about, what is priority, what is complimentary. All this is has to be done using the size and
scale. Okay. In one, one thing here is, you know, don't be afraid to use extremes. You know,
your, your entire slide can have just two letters, or entire document can have one word. I
mean, entire page can have just one word. Okay. And then move on to the next one. It's like,
boom, shouting something at you, and then, okay, move on. That has made an impression,
so. You can use your, use your creativity, you know, look at a lot of presentations, powerful
presentations, and you will, you'll see this happening. Okay. Now, having said that, that that's
how you bring visual hierarchy, what is important, what is less important, and so on and so
forth. Next very important point is the power of white space. So, white space, you know, you
probably can guess it, it's like a pause or it's like a break, you know, break in your
conversation. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. You put one big paragraph and then give a space and then put
another paragraph. You have chunked the information, you have given hierarchy, and you
are given space to process it separately. So it's very, very important to use leverage empty
space. Don't just fill every pixel on your screen with information. Don't fill everything. Don't,
don't think that, oh my God, I have to give information as much information as possible so
that my audience takes it. No, you have to give the right amount of information at the right
pace so that they can absorb it. So use white space in your communication. It's like the
oxygen in your, in your content. Okay. Without that space, everything will collapse into each
other and they will suffocate. Now, going to the next part, it's like we talked about the
metaphor of oration for text size and scale. right. Again, the user, you know, the orator won't
just increase and decrease the volume. They'll bring emotion to their conversation, to their,
to their speech, to their text. How do they do that? You know, they, if they want it to be angry,
they want it to be emotional. They bring that. Now how do you do that in text? Color is used
as the emotional aspect of your text. Okay. That's the emotional soundtrack in your content.
Color is much, much more subtle and you know, it directly communicates. You need not ask
the user to read and interpret. The moment they say, see a colour you know, something is
already happening, it goes directly to them. So it has a much, much more effective way of
reaching your audience. So if, if something is dangerous, we always use red for dangerous,
put, put the word in red. If something is, you know background, subtle, maybe blue. We will
come to how to pick, pick color and things like that a little later. But use colour you know,
otherwise scanability will decrease. People will have to read. Now, finally this is, this is a big
part of you know, this, this particular com, module the Gestalt Principles. Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Okay. Gestalt literally means the unified whole. Okay. It's, it's a way in which
you know, it, it, it, it's, it, it describes how human brain naturally organizes visual elements.
Okay. In your document, in your slide, there are going to be images, there's going to be
content, there's going to be, you know big picture in the background, there's going to be title.
Now, when, when a user looks at that component, how is, how are they interpreting it? What
relates to what? All this is defined by Gestalt Principles. Okay. Now, if you use this effectively
and you know, in, in correlation with your size, scale, and colour you know, you would've
communicated a lot without even the user having to read it. Okay. So there are, there are, I,
I'm going to talk about 6 Gestalt Principles The first one is proximity. It's a simple rule. If two
things are together, they're probably related to each other. The, I will see them together as a
single unit. Okay, so that is one Gestalt Principles. So if you want two things to be seen as a
one, one single entity, put them together, then similarity. Okay. Similarity is another way, the
brain will organize information if both are in the same font, Okay or both elements are in the
same colour and the brain is immediately going to say, okay, these two are related or if it's
going to be one in Times New Roman and another is in Arial and again, immediately the, the
brain will say, okay, this is, at some level, this is at a different level. It still doesn't know the
hierarchy, but it knows they are different. The third is continuity. Okay, so continuity is your,
your most important title is a certain font size. The next title is one less. Next title is one less.
Next, Next, then probably the content itself that is one less. Okay, so there is a continuity
here. So the moment the brain sees the text of a certain size and another text of the same
size somewhere, then the brain knows, okay, these two have to be seen as related content.
That is how the brain will know that, okay, these are at the same hierarchy, same level.
Closure, closure is a more you know, it's, it's very related to visual. You would've seen lot of
you know, logo com kind of quizzes and things like that where you'll, you'll end up seeing a
different figure suddenly the moment you realize what's happening. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. For example, the arrow in the FedEx logo, okay. It's, it's all the, it's all letters,
and suddenly you see a arrow there now that the arrow shape is, is formed because the eye,
the brain recognize a closing pattern. Now, that is one way to tell the brain, okay, this is
related. This is something you'll have to give focus on. And the fifth one is the brain has to
wait to tell what is, what is figure and ground. Now any, any presentation or any document
that you put out there? There is the background, there is the paper, or there is the slide.
There is a big white color. And on that you have text or images. So the background is the
ground and then figure is the information on top. The eye has a way of knowing which is
which. Okay. It, it, the, the brain has a way of interpreting and finding, which is which. Now,
use that, use that to your advantage. You would've, again, seen lot of these visual illusions
and illustrations where the figure and the ground confuse and you create certain you know,
cognitive dissonance in your, in your mind. What exactly does this mean? Don't do that in
your presentation those might be good for your you know, for, for fun and understanding how
things work. But in, in your, in your documentation, the way you create your digital assets
have a clear figure underground. Okay. And then finally we have something called common
fate. Now common fate is if, if everything leads to a certain thing, Okay. And then the brain
knows, okay, all this are attached to each other. They are, they are in a flow. They are
coming together. So that is common fate. So we went through some principles in terms of
how you can design content for hierarchy and scanability using various techniques. First was
the, you know, volume knots, which is visual hierarchy, just by size and scale. Okay. Next is
the importance of white space. While you have size and scale, introduce white space to
differentiate and bring some you know, breathing space in your content. And third, we talked
about the emotional soundtrack of your content, which is the color. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Okay. Use color effectively so that you can communicate much, much more
you know, directly without even the brain having to process the logical brain doesn't have to
interpret it, read it, it directly knows. So use color effectively. And finally understand and go
through the Gestalt Principles so that you, you, you lay out, you kind of paint your canvas in
a way that the users or your audience can absorb content in a effective way.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. The Art of Progressive Disclosure In the previous clip essentially
we talked about how to kind of layout, how to put it on the screen. Okay. Now what we are
going to discuss about is the actual content, how we are going to actually write the content
?And how it will play up? Okay. So, the first one of the most powerful tools here is the call,
it's called the Art of Progressive Disclosure. Okay. It's about showing what is necessary,
when it is necessary. Okay. Now, why we do this and how we do this, we will kind of
elaborate a little bit. One of the first things to keep in mind why even we do this progressive
disclosure is, it's, it's, it's so that we prevent choice paralysis. Okay. Choice paralysis or
paradox of choice is that, you know, we might think, oh, there is all this information let me
laid out to my audience, okay, at once. Okay. That's, that's the real catch here. Now that is
going to actually result in your audience absorbing less information than actually making
more, absorbing more information. So what we do is don't present everything at one go, but
we do it gradually. A kind of related kind concept or law is called the Hicks Law. You know,
when, when essentially it says you know, the amount of time required to understand or make
a decision based on the number of choices given goes algorithmically higher when the
choice number of choice increases, it's not a linear increase in time. It algorithmically
increases. So we don't want to give the users all the choice, all the information at same go.
Okay. Essentially, as a designer of content, you'll have to be a concierge, not a mapmaker.
You know, you'll have to tell see, if you're a mapmaker, what you're going to do is you lay out
the entire thing on the ground. If you take this part, it goes this way, this road goes this way,
everything, like everything is there in front of you, Okay. But as a concierge, what you'll tell
us, you'll say, see, these are three things, three best things that you can do at this point.
Now, once you choose between those three or four or whatever those best options, then you
go to the next step. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. So you kind of guide the user through the content and, and through
the information, not just lay it all on them, all at one go and then say, okay, it's up to you.
Okay. So that is the most kind of fundamental principle here, don't paralyze your user with all
the information at one go. Now let's look at two key strategies where how progressive
disclosure can happen. Okay. Now, of course, this, this can, this will be, and these can be
used together. And so the two strategies are, one is the first, is the read more strategy. You
would've seen it in all your news, news websites, news channels, Twitter, everywhere there
is that little text called Read More. Now, where is this coming from Now? If you look at you
know, if you look at Twitter earlier, it used to be a certain number of characters. Then they
doubled it. Now you can write an entire essay if you show the entire essay at one go. You
are making the user look at just one tweet. Okay. But what they have done is they have
collapsed and said, just a teaser. And then the next tweet, and then the next tweet, and then
you can scroll to. So what the read more strategy is about presenting options quickly and
giving a little taste of what is buried within that. And then, let you choose what you want to
do, Okay. It's not, it's not about hiding the content, but it's about helping you to prioritize
which content you want to dig deep into. It's, it's, you know, even you can also equate it to
some kind of a movie trailer. It sometimes, if, if that read more strategy is properly done, you
will show a glimpse of all the interesting things that is going to be there when you go deep
into that particular information. So this essentially read more strategy is used as a bifurcation
point. You are at a, you are at a point of decision making and you have certain options, or
you are at a point in your information dissemination that, okay, we are going to talk about all
these things now let's go one by one. So you, you kind of bait your user with all this saying,
instead of saying, okay, first we'll do this, next we'll do, they might not even wait for the next
one, right. So you say, all this is in line now. Let's go one by one. So that is, read more
strategy now. Read more strategy. Like I said, it's about decision making and choosing a
specific path. Now a more Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. important or I wouldn't say more
important, equally important way of progressive disclosure is sequencing information, right.
So now the user has, you know, you have guided the user or you have taken your audience
to a particular part of the information you want them to know about. Okay. Now, after that,
again, that information might be a lot Now. What do you do there? You don't, again, dump
everything at one go. What you do is you sequence that information. You don't, you don't,
you know, tell it at one drop. You tell it as a story. You create a narrative arc, and you build it
up. Your narrative a can, you know, depend upon how you want to convey that story, and so
on and so forth. I'll, I'll just give you a, a, you know, a sample of what that narrative arc can
be, you know, it can be what is called as the hook. You know, you just say, hey, boom, this is
what you'll get here. Okay. And then, okay, that's interesting. Now I am, I am hooked. Now
let's go to the value. What is the value? Why should I care about that particular information?
Okay. And then you take them to the details, everything about the information. And then
finally you say, okay, this is what you gather in this. Okay, so this is a narrative arc.
Sometime your narrative a arc can, you know, start with the call to action or, or your climax.
You, you know, you might have seen this in movies, the first sequence, they'll, they'll show a
shocked face or a, a person with, you know, blood in their hand and so on and so forth. And
then, they go to three years ago, and then the story starts. Okay. Now these are all ways to
sequencing information so that you kind of hook your audience and keep them engaged and
take them through the entire narrative so that they stay with you while you know, while read
more strategy is about a point of decision making. Sequencing information in progressive
disclosure is about keeping users or your audience engaged as you draw them deeper and
deeper into your, in your content, and so that they slowly but definitely absorb all the
information that you have instead of throwing it at them at one go. So that is sequencing
information.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Persuasive Copywriting & Microcopy So the next way in which you
can really make your writing effective is is a technique of using microcopy. If you look at
some of the presentations you know, recently a slide will have just two words, three words,
one line, one image. Now, why is this so effective? Let's, let's kind of go through that aspect.
Okay. See writing and behavioral psychology when you combine these two, you most
probably will get microcopy and with, with some of these principles applied. Okay. The first
principle, or first topic is I want to highlight is the power of active verbs. Okay. In, you know,
in most content writing, microcopy kind of refers to the tiny texts, you know, one, one phrase,
one label, one message, you know, these are small, but this text does the heavy lifting of
moving a user, you know, through the narrative. You know, it, it kind of suddenly makes them
pause, makes them absorb, makes them kind of react to what's happening. Now even in
Microcopy, what is most powerful, the powerful tool of Microcopy is active verbs. Okay. Do,
say, think, consider very precise action, active verbs. Okay. You know, it, it, it is not just a
grammar choice, but it's also its psychological trigger that clarifies the intent and drives
action. Okay. So now to kind of give you a quick example of this, there are, what is the
difference between passive and active? I'm, I'm sure you know, this is like your you know,
primary school grammar, you know, click on you know, when you do this, you'll be able to
download. Okay or just download. Downloading will start or download. That is the difference
between active and passive. Another way of looking at this microcopy with active verb is,
one is vague. One way of articulation is vague. When you use active with microcopy, it
becomes again, active. You know, you can just say, you know, if, if you, if just referring back
to our earlier clip, clip, you can just say read more. Okay. That's a generic thing. Okay. It's
vague. People use it because it applies everywhere, so they just put it, but if you do
customize presentations and content, don't use, just say read more. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. You can probably, let's say you're doing a product presentation. You can give
the introduction of the product and say, don't say, read more or more information, probably
you like to say explore features that will essentially lead the user, tell the user what to do.
You know what to expect, what, what comes next. You kind of see the lens, see, see the,
you know, content through the lens of, I want to finish it. Okay. You can either say, I want to
read more, or you can say, I want to explore features. You can kind of quickly figure out
which is more effective, which will draw the, you draw the audience and draw their you know,
attention to that kind of content. Again, it has to be verb, not noun. You can't just say
features. You can't just say information, explore is as important or more important and as just
features because psychologically it triggers you to take that action. Okay. Now the next
aspect is a little again, it's a psychological phenomenon. It's called the framing effect. Okay.
You know, you know, framing affects are, you know, a psychological phenomenon where
people react to a particular choice in a different way, depending upon how it is presented to
them. Okay. How it is framed to them, Okay. You can either say, you know, 95% people
succeeded, or you can say 5% failed. That is called a positive and negative framing. Okay.
Now I'm not saying positive framing is the way to go, and I'm not saying negative framing is
wrong. You'll have to look at the context. What is the context and what do you want? What
do you want to register in your audience's mind? You'll have to use that and then use the
right way in which that framing happens, that that information is passed on. We all know it's
a hundred percent 95% succeed, 5% means 5% failed. Now if, if you want to highlight that
success, your is your more important aspect than you like to say, 95% succeed or only 5%
failure in transaction. If, if that is what you want to highlight, then you'll have to highlight 5%
failure rate. Okay. So you'll have to frame or elevate the, the perspective in which that
information has to be consumed. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has
been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within
the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. You know, contextual framing is
very, very important because words are never neutral. It, it'll be read in a different way based
on the context. Let's say you are you know, you are, you are selling your product, and then
you want to give the subscription. You can say, hey, monthly, you like to pay 400 rupees. Or
you can say it's less than the price of a popcorn at PVR. Now, again, I don't know which
would be appropriate in your hypothetical context, but look at the framing. What is going to
be more effective? And pause and decide how you want to frame it. Every time you write
content, you are setting a frame. You'll have to be conscious in terms of what does it trigger,
what do you want it to trigger, and that is what you want to frame. The next aspect here in
terms of copywriting and microcopy is, is the social proof and scarcity. Okay, now we started
with Active Works. Active Works is the primary engine. It kind of gets things moving. It, it
says, okay, do this, it, it starts, it powers. Framing is like a steering wheel. You have started
the journey. Which direction do you want your audience to go? That has to be done by
framing. You steer the way in which your audience absorb it. Now the social proof and
scarcity is a way in which you can really turbocharge your engine. The, the speed at which
they go in certain direction. And you will see this a lot in advertisements. Okay. Extremely
effectively used in terms of how social proof or social. Approval and or the scarcity aspect of
it. Okay. Now, how many times have you heard, okay, 9 out of 10 dentists say this, or, you
know everyone in my class does this. That's called the safe be in term safe bet aspect of
social proof and scarcity. Okay. It's, it's the way in which the entire pack moves and the
moment you say, you, you let your audience realize that they are moving with the pack.
There is safety there, there is others who are aligned to that and they fall into that fall into the
same thinking. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. The other aspect is FOMO, fear of missing out. Everyone is doing
this. Why aren't, why aren't you doing this? How many times we have come across the you
know, a little text in airline booking or ticket booking app saying only three tickets more.
Okay. Why is that my problem? If you think logically, that's not my problem, right. If only
three years there, fine. I want. It's the, it's, it's in the benefit of the seller to make it available
to me. But still, the moment you see only three available, oh my God, let me order it
immediately. So that is a FOMO. Okay. Now, if you can combine these two, safe bet and
FOMO, it's, it's takes you to the other level. Now, I don't want to sound pretentious here, but
I, this is probably a good point to kind of bring the topic of being ethical when you're writing
content. Okay. Words are powerful. The way you frame it is powerful, the way you, you
know, use directives in your content is very powerful. You will, if you apply these principles,
you will move your audience in a certain way. Okay. That's a superpower. Okay. You will
have to have your ethical guard, right. Okay. You'll have to figure out how do, how do I do
this? Am I doing this right? Is this the right thing to do? You'll have to be conscious of that.
Okay. I'm, I'm putting this across there because it might not always happen. But be
conscious that you will, as, as, as a designer, as a person who is influencing the behavior of
a audience, you will have to have your ethical guardrail. Okay, now finally you know, we said
what all to do in terms of use verbs, frame it well and tell what will be missed if they're not
going to listen to you or understand you or observe what you're telling. Finally, I'm going to
kind of just quickly touch upon how to reduce friction, Okay. What not to do. Don't, you know,
unnecessarily fluff, add, you know, content and jargon to sound big, no, it's not going to help.
Jargon is you know, is not the right way toinfluence people who are learning from you. Okay.
Jargon can be there as a simple you know, introduction, but use most effective direct
language when you're talking to the audience. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Usually, what this does is, is
introduces friction in terms of understanding. If you create a sentence that is extremely
complicated, okay, but it could have been replaced by a simple sentence, obviously the
simple sentence will be absorbed that much more easily than the sentence, which is
complicated. So complicated sentences or breaks in the understanding, remove these
breaks, don't have them, and just you know, the other aspects, you know, active verbs,
framing, and other techniques of persuasion use them as fuel. So that's how effective
copywriting and microcopy can be used to convey your information and get your audience
on your site. Yeah.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Data Visualization for Persuasion So the last clip, we talked about
how to write content. It's about text. In this set of conversation, we will talk about how to
design data, okay. How to design data and numbers so that that can persuade on your
behalf when you're making presentations, when you're creating content, and when you are
creating documentation. Okay, so essentially you'll have to make data intuitive to
understand, and you'll have to make it emotional. It has to appeal to your audience. okay.
The first, you know, fundamental principle here is choosing the right chart. okay. Now, when I
put it that way, it might sound a chart is a boring thing, but there are so many ways in which
data can be visualized. You have to really pause and think in terms of how your data should
be visualized. See, a, a, a chart is more than a display of numbers. It's actually a visual
argument, so to say, okay, you, you are making a argument. You're making a case with that
information, with that data. okay. Choosing the wrong chart or the wrong way of you know,
displaying that information can actually hide the truth or, or worse, still it can actually mislead
the audience. Okay. So you'll have to be extremely careful in terms of how you are
visualizing the data for your audience. You know, to be persuasive, you must match the chart
to the type of relationship you're trying to prove. Okay. There are some basic relationships
we can talk about comparison, you know, which is higher, which is more, which is lower,
which is faster, which is cheaper, and so on and so forth. It's a basic comparison that is one
kind of relationship between the data that you want to show. The next is trend, you know.
Now it is so much then it was this much. In future, what it's going to be? How is it moving?
How is the information data moving in? What direction is it moving? Is it moving in the right
direction, wrong direction? So that is the next one, trend. The third is what is the share your
information is having of the whole, okay. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. You know, you know we call it pie
chart, right. But. The pie chart can, is probably the simplest way of showing it. There can be
other ways, but in, in a very abstracted sense, what is the share that, what is, that is another
relationship that you want to convey. The fourth one, you know, the final one that we are
going to talk about is correlation. When one information is doing this or it's, it's moving up or
moving down, how is the other information moving? Okay, now comparison is a, is a kind of
correlation, but comparison, correlation is a much, much more complex comparison. okay.
The way you can bring in trend, you can bring in share. So correlation is a way in which how
to data is related. What way? What is the relationship? okay. So those are the ways in
which, you know, data can be, relate made relatable to your audience. Okay. Now, data
visualization is really a translation service, okay. You, you have numbers, you have a data
grid, you have a table, but the moment you put it into a visual, into a data visualized chart, it
becomes suddenly understandable. You bring meaning into the maths, okay. There is a lot of
data analysis that has gone in, but what, how to make sense of it. It has to come out
automatically. If you make a beautiful chart, which is very colourful and you know, has all
these three dimensional effect and so on and so forth, but it needs actually five minutes of
explanation, then actually you're doing it wrong. Okay. You are probably picked up the wrong
way of data visualization or you pick the wrong way of manifesting that chart, applying so
many other things. okay. So we'll talk about that too. So your, your, your data visualization
should be straightforward and should be understandable. It should become simpler to
understand the math than become more complex because you did data visualization. The
second aspect is, you know, being conscious and being aware of what is called as
ChartJunk. Okay, now we like to eliminate it. So it's, it's, it's the aspect of eliminating
ChartJunk. Now, ChartJunk is actually a term or a phrase coined by data pioneer go by
name, Edward Tufte. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. So he's a pioneer in data
visualization and, according to him, you know, every visual element in the chart that doesn't
represent a piece of information should be removed. okay. So if you put grid lines, if you put
you know, lines that are just there for the sake of it, or even text that is just there for the sake
of it. It is actually inhibiting, if you remember, we talked in, in in cognitive load. We talked
about noise. You know, this is, this is that kind of extraneous load. You know, you want to
avoid it, don't put it there. okay. So when you're trying to be persuasive, every unnecessary
line or colour or effects, you know three dimensional effects. If you, right now, if you use
some of the tools which are available out there to create a, to create a presentation, the
moment you put one grid, they'll suggest, okay, where, what, what you know, chart you want
to use and here is option A, option B, option C. So that might be impressive just on, on the
surface, but it is actually creating visual noise. Don't, you know, get kind of distracted by that
kind of that kind of options that are thrown at you. Be very, very critical in terms of what you
want to use and how you want to use it. I just, just as an example you know, I would want
you guys to take a look at this you know data visualization chart that was created by data
visualization genius by accident, Charles Minard. Okay. This chart is a, is a, is a, is a story in
itself. okay. It's, it's the Napoleon's campaign to you know, to attack Russia. It, it starts, it, it
combines, you know, the strength of the army, the location of the army, the time at which the
army was there in a particular point, and the temperature. There are so many data that is
kind of beautifully brought together. Edward Tufte himself, you know, kind of said that this is
one of the best data visualization maps that was ever created. Now, so moving forward, we
said we'll choose the right you know, data visualization chart. We said we'll avoid all you
know, extraneous load and keep it direct to the point. Every piece of line and text on our
chart should be meaningful and useful. Now, after all this, you have to consider what is
called as the ""So What?"?" factor. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has
been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within
the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Okay. Okay. Now a, a data report is
just that, it's a report. okay. It, it just says, okay, here is some data that is not useful to your
audience. What you need to do is you have to give, tell a data story, okay. There is not much
kind of difference between data report and data story. If you take care of the right kind of
data visualization and if you eliminate all the junk and if you address the "So What?" factor?
You have a data story. Okay. So essentially you have to ensure that the meaning of the data
comes through. okay. When you show this data visualization to someone they should look at
your chart and say, okay, I know what to do. Instead if they say, okay, but "So What?"? Then
you're lost it. You, you, you didn't persuade them, you didn't make use of the data that you
have. You know, essentially you have to give them a reason to care about the data that
you're presenting to them. And then based on that, they should be able to tell what direction
they should move in, what action they should take. So it's, it's a extremely powerful
opportunity to be persuasive, so do not miss it. You will have to show the insight that is
coming out of the data. Just putting beautiful graph is not enough, but how to interpret that
graph and hence what to do, must come across very, very clearly. It's essentially a bridge
between the observation of just the data and the number and the action that you're
supposed to take. Make the bridge or as short as possible. Ensure that bridge is there first
and then make it as short as possible. Okay. So that is the "So What?" factor. Going to the
next one, just like what we talked about in text colour is important or probably more
important in you know, when you have to do data visualization. You know, it's, it's, it adds a
dimension to it to the data that is you are being you, you're showing to your audience. So
when used correctly, colour can kind of communicate complex information faster than text.
We talked about it earlier also, that colour appeals to your, your, your cognitive capabilities
directly, you know, you can understand it even without interpretation. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Because of the way we have been trained and our life experiences, it
immediately translate into a certain meaning. So you have to use colour as a functional tool
to, you know, shorten the bridge that we talked about much further to go to the highlights or
the insights very, very directly. There are, you know, a certain ways in which colours can be
used. We have talked about multi, so, so these are all perspectives in which colours can be
used. That was a, in that frame. Now we are looking at data visualization frame. In data
visualization frame. You know, you can use colour to show sequencing. Okay. If you use a
gradation of colour, it means it's changing in a certain way. If you show variation in colour, it
shows just like a rainbow. It's, it talks about diverging, so you can use colour for sequencing
and divergence, and certain colours can kind of subconsciously mean based on that there is
some action. You know, if there is red for example, red means there is something wrong.
That that's our, that's our cultural and you know long learned habit that red means something
wrong, at least through a certain, certain demographic of people. Just to quickly look at the
empathy that we talked about, red might mean something else to some other culture, you
know, so understand that. Use colour to indicate action. Okay. There is also sim semantic
resonance, for example, colour can be used for certain meaning. okay. What does colour
mean in a certain con context, red might mean something in you know, in, in a, in a status
report where if you put a red dot, it might mean something. But in a, in a presentation that
you're making just before the Christmas holiday season, red might as will mean cheer and
joy. So you, you like to understand that and use colour. Then finally, colour can be used as a
for categorization, how do you use colour to categorize content? It's, it's a very direct thing,
you know, again, referring to a earlier principle that we used in terms of Gestalt principle, use
the same colour. There's commonality to that, and then it becomes same thing in your user's
mind. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Now, colour, one other aspect. I would like you know, you all to
keep in mind is the accessibility aspect. Let's say you create a, a beautifully coloured you
know presentation or a poster or a slide and let's say you take a black and white printout of
it. How does that look? Does it still make any sense or have you embedded all the
information only in colour? Be conscious of that. If it is embedded only in colour, you might
you might not be able to communicate to people with certain abilities that are not common
with others. okay. Colour blindness or certain other you know, blockers will disable them
from understanding. Keep that in mind when you're doing using colours. Then finally, in
interactive data now, most of the thing presentation artifacts that we are talking about might
be static. It might be just one, you know, kind of simple image or a simple document, but it's
quite possible that you're going to use movies or moving information in your presentation,
which we will discuss later. Now, in while using that interactive data, it's like a supercharge
for data visualization. You know, if, if you show the user that they can, they can interrogate
the data the way they want, and the data can answer those questions because of the way
they asked those questions, they can discover their own insights, then it's a extremely big
win. So if you're able to create a data visualization where it becomes interactive and the
medium allows it. Please go for it. But don't use interactive elements just to, you know, okay,
change my colour to red. Use this theme for this. And you know, that, that becomes mostly
decorative and probably useless, so don't go for that. But use interaction, interactivity, and
the power of you know, technology to allow the users to actively interrogate your data. And
convince themselves, instead of you presenting them a certain way of looking at the data, let
them go ahead and do it on their own. Okay, what if what, what if this parameter changes
this way? Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Then it is that much more convincing for the users. So that kind of
wraps up for the data visualization part. So, very quickly, we, I want to summarize for the
data visualization, it's, we like to first choose the right chart. You know, what, what kind of
visualization paradigm we are going to use. Then we should eliminate all the useless
information. Then finally, you know, you like to introduce the "So What?" factor where the
user can see what the data is actually telling them to do. Not just see the data, but see what
the data is telling them to do. Use colour appropriately and then you know, if, if possible
leverage the you know, possibility of interaction with data to take data visualization to the
next level to convince your audience of the message that you want to convey.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Testing for Clarity So we have seen ways in which, you know, you'll
have to design your text. We have seen in which ways in which you have to design your
visuals and much more fundamentally, we talked about how brain consumes information and
some of the psychological principles that are work at work fundamentally. Now, let's say you
absorbed all that and then you created your content. Now, finally, we ideally we'll have to test
your content if it actually works. You know you might, you might wonder, I mean, is it, is it
worth, I'm just doing a PPT, I'm just doing a, you know, I'm just doing a simple document.
Now, it all depends upon what is, what is the impact of that content? How many people are,
is it going to reach or what is the, what is the cost of wrong communication? What is the cost
of no communication? Based on that you can take a call whether you want to test, but you
know, testing is always good and kind of iteratively improving your content is also a good
way to you know understand the principles at play and make your future content in a much
better way. Okay. So I'm going to talk about four kind of techniques. Two techniques are very
simple and it can be done even with a small audience. And one of the technique, you don't
even need an audience. And then we will talk about two more techniques, which are a little
bit more advanced and a little bit probably it has its own cost also. So what you can do, what
you probably need to do if the stakes are higher based on that, you can take a call. Okay. So
the first test, the simplest test is, is kind of a it's a brutality test. Okay. It's like putting your
content to a gunpoint and checking. So it's called the five second rule. Okay. You kind of very
simple. It's a direct you know, research methodology. Okay. In real world, people are
distracted and their attention span is less, and so on and so forth. Because of that, what we
do is you show Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. your content to someone the design that you have created to
someone exactly for five seconds. Okay. Show it to them. Count down, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, take it
away and ask them, okay, what did you just see? What did you take away? If they're able to,
you know, tell you exactly what the key information you're trying to convey or the key action
you want them to perform, if they understand it, awesome. If not, you are not just fail the test,
but you're, you're, you're kind of lost your audience, you know, in five seconds, if you cannot
hook the audience, they're not going to stay with you. Okay. So that is the five second rule.
It's, it's a very simple, straightforward test. You, you can just, you know, you're creating a
PPT, you can just turn your monitor to someone sitting next to you or ask someone to walk
by, hey, what do you think? Simple test. The next is the five Second rule is for the content,
actual information that is there, text, visual, and so on and so forth. The next is the blur test.
Okay. This test is more in terms of how you, how you have designed the layout. Okay. Are
you, are you, have you designed it for impact? Have you designed it the right way? It kind of
evaluates the structure of your presentation artifact. Okay. Again, very simple. You, you
know, you can either do it with a tool or a, you know, yourself, yourself in the sense the, the
test participant can do it. What you can do is put this, put your, take a screenshot of your
document, use one of the visual editor and blur it. You know, you can you can use
Photoshop or Figma has certain plugins and capabilities. You can blur that entire screenshot
a little and till to the point where the text, everything becomes unreadable. Okay. Now, at this
point you'll have to see. Is my structure right? Can I see my title? Basically, if you had used
the right font, right scale, right thickness, and so on and so forth, your headline will still be a
kind of visible blur. Is chunking happening? Are there blurs in chunked blur? Okay. So think
of all the structural things that we talked about and visual things that we talked about. Is
there a focal point so that Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. your scanning is easy? Is there an
action colour? Is there something that is coming out? Are there groups in terms of chunking?
Essentially this will, this will remove the, the aspect of, hey, my, my presentation is looking
good too my presentation works well in terms of logic of the layout. Okay. So you are, you
should not be able to actually see the content, but is it tied together well? Okay. You can
either do it with the tool or you ask someone, you put it on the screen, ask someone to stand
back, squint their eyes and ask them, is it is, is it grouping working, is colour working? And
so on and so forth. These two techniques are very simple. You can do it from your desk.
Now, the next two tests are slightly more advanced and it's, it's are probably, you know, if
you, if you're creating, let's say a communication, a poster that is going to go across the
entire organization announcing a major you know change process or announcing a major
policy difference and certain things cannot be missed and certain things shouldn't be
misunderstood. Maybe these are worthwhile. Okay. The first one is called the cloze test.
Okay. It's a kind of a stress test, and it was developed by someone by name, Wilson Taylor
in 1953. Okay. You know, it, it kind of measures how well a user understands your message
without them having to completely read it. Okay. So it's essentially a fill in the blanks. What
you need to do is, you know, take the content, take the most text heavy and yeah, close test
applies only to kind of content where there's significant amount of text, you know, it won't
apply to our microcopies and things like that, but it applies where there is a lot of text. So
essentially you kind of just blindly go and remove the fifth or sixth word so that there is gaps,
blanks in your text, and then give it to people. And then ask them to fill in the blanks, Okay. If
they're able to correctly fill those blanks with the right you know, action verbs or, you know,
the value propositions and so on and so forth, then you return your copy well. Okay, you
return your text well, you're taken care of your sequencing, your taken care of, your framing,
you're taken care of, your emphasis and so on and so forth. Okay. Now. Should they
precisely get the exact words and so on and so forth. Not necessarily. If they're able to guess
even 60%, you know, that's the recommended kind of threshold, they're Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. able to get more than 60%, then you pass the test. Okay. Again, like I said, this
is a slightly advanced tough test. You can use it if and when required. Then the final one is
you know the, it's, it's, it's kind of the reality of your content. So while the, you know, five
second test, blur test, and cloze test are all about what your audience are saying after they
have gone through the test, your you know, heatmap or eye tracking test is something you
will find, I mean, there is objectivity to it, Okay. It's kind of truth serum. They, your users
cannot lie. They cannot say, yeah, I understood it. No, they cannot. There is truth serum to it.
Okay. So you ask them to read your content, read your document, run the eye tracking test,
and then analyze the heatmaps. When you analyze the heatmaps, you will know, you know,
did they look at the point that has to be noted down. Did they kind of dwell on things that are
important? What did they ignore most importantly? All these things will come out. Heat map
typically will have red spots, yellow regions, green regions, and white regions. Red spots are
called fixations. Okay, so your eyes is, eyes are fixated onto something. Is your eyes fixating
onto the right point? You can validate that and yellow is the second most important place.
Your attention is lingering. Is that in the right place? Green is complimentary. You know,
maybe important information or not so important information. Now white are the blind spots,
Okay. If essentially there is no colour on a certain part of your document or your presentation
then no one is looking at that place, Okay. You should ensure that that is not something to be
missed. So once you know this, you, you are sure about the layout of your information and
how it is being absorbed. So we talked about four tests. One is five second test and the blur
test. This can be very quickly and easily done. The closed test and the heatmap, eye
tracking test. These can be done with some effort and some cost based on the you know,
stake what is at stake. You can use these tests. So once this is done, you, you should be
able to, you know, iterate and improve your presentation artifact and get the right impact that
you want to create.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Rapid Prototyping of Presentation Hi again. So we have come to
the third part of this module which is about rapid prototyping of presentations and storyboard
ideas. What we have done in this module so far is you know, kind of and address how to
empathize with your audience so that you can create content and you can create the style in
which you're going to present based on your audience's preferences, audience's
expectations, and audience's personal. The second part we touched upon about how to write
the content. You know, persuasive ways in which you can write your text, select your
content, be it image or video, your data visualization, and so on and so forth. A third, we are
coming to actually getting now to actually creating the presentation. You know, we have, we
have learned a lot of theory. Let's get into some, some kind of practice. Even here, I'm going
to start a little bit with some, some concepts, some ideas, some techniques. And then we will
go into actual work on creating the prototypes. Okay. Now, why am I saying prototypes? See
prototypes essentially from a larger design thinking perspective. Prototype is the word that
we use to kind of quickly put on an idea and then iterate it, fine tune it. So we are going to
use the same technique here too. Now, this is a mindset. Okay. Rapid prototyping is a kind
of a mindset where you know, there is a iterate of fabrication or it's, it's a, it's a, it's a
technique where we repeatedly put down our thoughts, formalize it, and then fine tune it,
iterate it. You know, in, in, in the, in the context of storyboarding and presentations. It is an
act of externalizing an idea as fast as possible to see if the logic holds up. It's not about you
know, the finesse of the images or the, the pure text wordings that stays what we are putting
together is the structure. It's, it's, it's not about building the thing, it's about building the
facade of the thing to test its impact, how it'll appear quickly. Okay. So that is the mindset.
Now we'll have to just to give Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. you a very quick, slight detailed
glimpse of what is the, you know, rapid prototyping mind mindset versus you know, actually
final polished artifact. The tools that we use here will be, you know, pen, paper for a digital
artifact. We, we start from there. Pen and paper, or maybe a tablet where you can sketch.
For a polished artifact, we will actually be using you know, your, your standard template that
we talked about on a digital system with right fonts, animations, and so on. It, it gets to the
finishing work. Okay. And here it's, it's about maybe 2 to 5 minutes per concept we'll spend,
okay. concept, when I say, if you say, okay, what should be my first slide? That's, that's a
concept. Maybe you'll spend 2 to 5 minutes. What is the idea through which I'm going to
communicate my most impactful argument for the solution that I'm creating? Just 2 to 5
minutes. May in the final one. Maybe you'll spend 2 to 3 hours but here, 2 to 5 minutes.
That's it. And what is the kind of you know, detailing you're going into in a rapid prototyping?
We stay at structure level. It's kind of, does the story make sense? Does the flow of the story
make sense? I mean, splitting the story structurally well, that is what we. Focus on in, in the
polished final artifact. We are looking at surface. You know, I don't like that shade of blue, or,
I don't think that word should wrap around, or we will say, I don't think the smile on that face
is appropriate for this content and so on and so forth. What is again, the emotional
attachment? You know, here we are extremely detached. We are, we are just externalizing
and thinking fast. We discard, we pivot very quickly. But for the polished one, you hold onto
it. You know, I spent all night on this. Should I throw it away? No, you won't. So that is why
we start with rapid prototyping. The goal fundamentally for a rapid prototyping is to learn
quickly and validation of certain ideas and the polished ones final approval and final
execution. So with that, what you get at the end of a rapid prototyping exercise is, okay, this
is how I'm actually going to go into details. You get the structure, you get the skeleton. Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan
Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Okay. Now what is the, you know, what is the value of creating a low fidelity
prototype, as we call it? You know, particularly in this era of AI where, you know, you say,
okay, give me a icon for this. Your, your AI tools will throw it up. Give me a photograph
appropriate for this. Your AI tool will throw it up. Why should we wait? You know, there are
three reasons for this. First is you know, it, it kind of reduces the cognitive load when you
look at a blank high-end design canvas, you know, maybe you're sitting on a Mac or, or a, or
a, or a paid software like Canva, Adobe or, then you start worrying about, okay, am I using,
am I, have I put the right hex code of colour? Have, am I choosing the right font? Is this font
paid? Is this font free m and so on and so forth. But by using a pencil and paper, you strip
away those, those anxieties and choices. Okay. The only thing you, that you're forced to you
know, focused on is the structure as I talked about. What does the narrative flow? What is
the hierarchy of information? Once you get that in place, then it'll be easy to drill down and
make those design choices like hex codes and font, pair, pairings and your colors. That will
no longer be a cognitive load at that point. The second one is it kind of you know, you'll be
able to invite collaboration. Let's say you sit through a entire night and create a pixel perfect
presentation. Your polished design feels finished when you show that to a potential client or
you know, you know or even a potential collaborator with whom you're working on the
project, they don't feel like they, they're participating in that communication. They feel like
they're the audience. So when you show them a rough storyboard or a rough piece of
concept which obviously gives a feel of in progress, it kind of you know, in a warm positive
way, it invites them to say, hey, why don't you do it this way? I think if this is presented in this
way, it'll be better. So you invite collaboration in a, in not as a criticism and not as a
feedback, but as collaboration. And then finally the reason for rapid prototyping is the speed
of thought. You know, you, you, Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has
been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within
the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. we are all not artists, you know we
are what we are going to do here is not pixel perfect or finished illustrations or finished
concerts, but human hand and eyes have is still the fastest way to kind of project a spatial
idea, Okay. By the time you boot up your system, you put a open your designing software
and so on and so forth, and even ask AI to give you maybe for a cloud icon or whatever,
you'll be able to put 3 or 4 ideas quickly on a piece of paper much, much faster. So that,
those three in, in terms of you know, value, you know, cognitive load collaboration and speed
are, are, are the advantages that rapid prototyping brings in.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Rapid Prototyping Now we look at some very, very simple
techniques. See there, there are extremely large number of techniques. I'm going to
probably talk about the absolute minimum. I'm just going to talk about three techniques,
okay. Probably this will help you to kick off or start off, and then you can, you're obviously
free to go and explore and find other techniques of quick prototyping and visualization. Okay.
Remember one thing about rapid prototyping technique and in general about creativity, okay.
If, if someone asks you to some come up with something creative, you'll be blank. okay. Let's
say I tell you, okay, come up with a brilliant idea to make driving experience better. You,
you'll kind of go into a absolutely wide zone. It's almost as if you know you're throwing into
your, into space and you just start floating out. But for a minute you think if, if I say create a
better way of driving experience by solving the gears shifting problem, immediately you will
start thinking, coming up with ideas. It's like channelling your, your, your vision, channelling
your exploration. So always remember constraints creates freedom. Actually constraints
create creative freedom, okay. And it gives creative direction. Keep that in mind while, you
know, we kind of go through these techniques. So first one is the 10-Second Rule. Now over
the period of this course in this module and the course otherwise, also, we have been talking
about various seconds, right. 3 second, 5 second, 10 second thumb rules. It's, it's a very,
very short span of time. That is the 10-Second Rule. Now, if you cannot convey the soul of a
slide or a, or a, or a piece of communication in 10 seconds, the concept probably is too
complex. okay. You'll have to just convey that one thing quickly and then move on.
Otherwise, there is cognitive load and so on and so forth. All the theory that we discussed
about, okay. So 10 second. Now, in your presentation, your audience usually kind of decides
within seconds. If they understand a slide, they look at it, do I like it or not, or do I understand
it or not? They quickly take a call. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has
been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within
the course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. If your prototype takes minutes to
draw, you're likely adding noise. okay. What you have to do is look at a blank frame, set a
timer literally draw one thing that matters most. If it's a graph showing growth, maybe just a
upward arrow. If it's a fee, you know, person feeling happy, draw a smiley face. If it's a, if it's
a slide that has to communicate confusion, maybe a gray cloud, you know that, that's, again,
I'm, I'm kind of thinking on my feet now. What is the one idea and what is the one way in
which you, you will convey that? That has to come. Every time you think of a slide, what is
the first thing that should hit the user or the audience, and how quickly you can convey that,
that kind of, you know, the goal essentially is to strip away everything else and just find out
what is the must haves. Essentially, instead of saying, okay, this slide, oh, okay, this slide, I
have to do this, I have to cover this, I have to cover this. No. You will get there when we go
into the detailing. But the first thing in rapid prototyping, in structuring, you decide this is the
one thing that I want to cover. So that is one technique you should remember whenever you
create a piece of canvas, a slide what is the one thing quickly put it down. Now the second
you know, concept that I technique that I want to talk about is, is, is a divergent thinking tool.
okay. I, I'm sure you know about brainstorming right. Now, brainstorming is a generic word.
Okay, go and go and do brainstorming. Simple, but yeah. How, what, what will enable us
what will kind of push us to do a interesting way of brainstorming for a visualization
presentation artifact? Okay, so this is a very core design sprint method used to push past
your first ideas. Essentially, if you, if you, if you are designed, if you think of something, you'll
say, wow, what a brilliant idea and you put it down. That usually will be the most, you know,
used existing uninnovative, probably everyone else is going to think of the same kind of a
boring idea. Okay, so. This technique is to push you past that first idea. What is the setup
here? You know, take a standard sheet of paper A-4 paper and kind of fold it, you know, fold
it into 8 pieces. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. So we have this A-4 sheet and folding it for you. 1, 2, 3 you, you
get if you fold it thrice 2 cube is 8. Yeah. So we have 8 panels right. Now, that's all. This is all
this is all the space you have and this is all the canvas that you need to do this divergent
thinking. What you should do is, you know, you have again, take a, take a number, maybe 60
seconds to begin with, to sketch a unique solution. So in the, the previous technique we
talked about 10-Second Rule and one idea, and one thought I'm, I'm kind of pushing that
limit here a little bit, take 60 seconds, but you have to create 8 ideas, okay, at the least.
These are all just numbers that, that gets thrown. Essentially the idea is to push you to think
more. As a thumb rule, you can probably say the first panel 1 and 2 will, will throw the usual
obvious ideas. You know, this is kind of the safe zone. Yeah. I you know, in the previous
thing I said, oh, you growth put an arrow. Genius, right. No, it's not. So what does, what, how
can you represent growth panel 1 and 2, panel 1 and 2 on this one arrow in one way, the
same arrow, another way done. Now it starts get getting difficult. You are forced to
experiment. You'll think of, can, can I put a staircase? Can I put a, you know, balloon? Which
is flying up. I don't know. I'm running out of ideas. Panel 3 to 5, let it go. Now, push beyond
this. Go to panels 6 and 8. Okay. This is where kind of the magic starts happening, okay. You
are out of ideas and your brain is primed to the requirement and it starts making weird
creative leaps. okay. So it's okay. It can be weird. Now, this is brainstorming visually, okay.
You're getting ideas, more ideas you get the better. Now, what is the outcome of this? You
don't get 8 perfect slides. It's not about getting perfect slides, but you end up with, you know,
maybe one or two unexpected things there. okay. You wouldn't have found those out if you
had said, okay. Growth arrow. No. What comes on the eighth panel? What comes on the
sixth panel? Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by
Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. That is what you're really looking for. When I say sixth or eight
panel, it, it doesn't necessarily mean your third panel is going to be a bad idea. It might be a
good, good idea, but push yourself through this, you know, kind of creative, creative hurdle
and block and then your mind starts working better. Now the third technique that I want to
want all of you to kind of develop for yourself is a visual shorthand. okay. This, this is so that
you, you are able to quickly jot down things. This might come out handy, not just while
creating presentation artifacts, but it'll also come handy anywhere else. Okay. While
conveying idea to immediate you know, client with whom you're having a coffee, it comes as
a very, very good visualization language. Okay. Develop a personal code so you don't have
to actually draw anything. Okay. This is about symbolic representation and it's not illustration.
Okay. It's, it's just a, it's just a way to say, okay, this is what this means. Okay. Some you
know standard things that you'll see if you, if you Google for wire frames and you know,
storyboards, you probably will find this. You know, headlines will probably be just one thick
line, you know, probably used with a thicker marker across the board. A body text will be a
series of you know, kind of squiggly, quick scribbled kind of lines. Okay. And then images of
photos are usually a rectangle with a cross mark inside. Right. Now, call to action probably
will be, again, a rectangle, but maybe shaded a bit and maybe actually a word there. Okay.
A, this is where a actual word is there. Everywhere else it's, there is no word, there is no
actual meaning it's only representation. Here, you might use a word and then if at all there is
a, there is a person involved, you can use stick man, you can use strawman. It's, it's up to
you. You can, you can go and develop your own, you know, style and whatever likes,
whatever you like and how you show interaction, some, some of you might use dotted lines.
Some of you might use different you know, colour or different stroke. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Essentially, you develop your own language, alphabet. okay. So these 3
techniques kind of gives you the necessary tool to quickly prototype. First is your, the, the
mindset that you'll have to quickly put something on the paper, you know, your 10-Second
Rule. okay. The second is your ability to think because you are constrained, push yourself to
create more ideas. okay. Crazy 8s with the paper. Third is develop your own alphabet, your
language so that you can quickly and confidently put down without any inhibition of, okay,
does that look, look like a artist work? No, it need not be you, it's communicating ideas.
These three, once you have that in your kit, your, you're good to go to start doing your rapid
prototyping.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Prototyping Finally before we actually get a pen and paper or a
tablet and start doing a prototype, I want to touch upon one thing, what will be prototype.
Okay. Now, I, I said we'll be focusing on the structure and focusing on the narrative and so
on and so forth, right. So let me try and relate this back to some of the you know, concepts
and theories that we discussed in the earlier parts of this module. Okay. The first thing that
we will prototype is the narrative arc. You know, the narrative arc is, there is nothing to
visually prototype, but you have to know, okay, we, we talked about this but nevertheless,
what is my overall script? What is my overall story? How will I start? Then what will I talk
about? And then what will I talk about? Why is that continuity interesting? How will I
conclude? How will I converge? And then how will I close? So this is a narrative arc. It's
almost like a script writing. That will be prototyped. So let's say you have to create a pitch for,
you know, a hypothetical smart key chain which will alert you if you walk away from it, maybe
in a public space, maybe in a cafe, or maybe in a movie hall, or maybe in a restaurant. And
then it alerts you. Okay, so it, it's, I, I'm just taking that as an example for our discussion
here. Your narrative arc probably will have just maybe 3 or 4 components. You'll probably
start with saying, hey, have you ever felt this frustration? Then you'll say, here's a solution for
that, and you'll probably go into some amount of boring details. Oh, these are the technical,
blah, blah, blah. And then finally you'll say, see, you won't be frustrated anymore. So that's it.
Your frustration, your, your experience of not losing it, and then your joy of getting that alert.
That's it, that is your narrative arc. Now that will be prototyped. Okay. I, I probably you know,
gave you a very, very simple example, which just three acts to it. Far more you know,
complicated narratives can be built in your real life and you'll have scripts taking different
parts and so on and so forth. So you'll have to prototype this. And you'll have to think on
what is the most effective way to do it. Don't immediately start putting, oh, this is my title, this
is my, no, what is your story? Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Okay, and then what is the overall
content design? Okay, your narrative arc is there, essentially your frames are there, and then
your little titbits of content of each frame. Okay. And then your key content, we talked about
cognitive load and chunking, right. You'll say this will be the main thing and this is how the
rest will be grouped together, and this is how it will arranged, laid out. Okay. We talked about
progressive disclosure. We talked, talked about using data visualization technique, how to
reduce cognitive load, and so on and so forth, right. Bring in all those things and design your
overall flow. We talked about, you know, dual coding theory in terms of whether you'll use a
text or image. We talked about design for scanning. What is the headline? What is the
tagline? And then where will your eye move? Where will, where will the key image be?
Where will the key text be? And so on and so forth. This is layout. This is for every screen,
the layout. We will be prototyping these and also what that does is we will be doing the
visual hierarchy. You know, this is the most important thing, has to hit the audience first, and
then if they're interested and if they're absorbed, they'll go to the details. How you'll use the
white space, how will you apply principles of Gestalt in terms of bringing the whole thing, you
know, seamless, to seamlessly together instead of just things scattered around. All that will
happen. If you, if you noticed, I'm going from top level element of the entire story, then going
into each frame and then each frame content and each of that elements. But still, I have not
gone into a few things. So I will quickly touch upon what we will not prototype. Okay. We are
not going to prototype bulk of the actual words. You know, that's a, that's a, that's probably
another exercise in itself, and you will be using certain rapid prototyping principles but in a
different way. You know. What, what is the best way to phrase something? How to, how to
fine tune the words. That'll happen separately. Okay. Here you have just figured out this is
how, this is the information that has to come here and this is how it has to flow. Digital
Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan
Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor:
Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. And we have not, we are not prototyping images. In a sense, we are
prototyping images from the perspective of, okay, this image will be a smiling person, or this
image will be landscape of a urban industrial area, and so on and so forth. That's it. But
images, it'll be just, you'll just say images. Okay. Some gray areas here. You know, will, can
be prototype colours maybe, yes. If you're comfortable, you know, if you are, if you're the tool
that you're using, if you have, if you're using pen and paper, and if you have 2 markers, you
can say, okay, this is the CTA, different colour but always prioritize speed. Okay. If you think
it's not working, it's okay. You start with doing without colours. Maybe once you get
comfortable, you know, with, with the overall technique of creating these presentations, you'll
start using colour better. Data visualization. How to prototype that is another question. How
detailed you'll data visualize that's a separate exercise in itself. So you probably just like
images, you'll say, I will show the data visualization here and I will ensure that insight. You
know in data visualization, we talked about how the data visualization should help the user
see a argument, see a narrative, right. We'll point out that in the prototype, this data
visualization should manifest or represent this insight, or it should argue for this case and
then move on. So that is where we'll end. Now what we are going to do next is make a
attempt at actually creating a, a prototype visual in a, in a visual way with pen and paper,
and then maybe with a digital tool. And then we'll wrap up. As a wrap up, I want to give some
suggestions on the tools. My favorite is paper and marker. Okay. That is how you start, if at
all, you can't do that. And you are, you are in a area where, you're in a metro and
prototyping, if you're in a car and prototyping, you can always use a digital tablet or even a
mobile phone. Softwares like procreate, which is iPhone specific, and Concepts that is the
name of the software itself. Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online
course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data,
illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Concepts for Android systems.
These probably will be helpful. The choice of tool, the tool can you know, tool landscape is
very, very rapidly changing and it is evolving. So by the time you know you decide something
else might have come to the market, the choice of tool, the only principle that you'll have to
remember is make it as close to paper and marker. Okay. Because we don't want any
tool-based restrictions forcing you to think or create in a certain way. The tool should be able
to respond to your creativity rather than you responding to the tools constraints. With that, I
would like to close this. Thank you.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Demo Session - 1 Hi again. So we are coming to a kind of a demo
session for paper prototyping. Okay. We talked about some of the things, how we'll do the
paper prototyping, the mindset required, the techniques, what we will prototype, what we
won't prototype, and so on and so forth. Let's look at it in action as an example. So. I am
going to take a hypothetical, simple product idea. Okay. Let's say you are pitching a smart
key chain, Okay. That alerts you if or when you leave it behind somewhere. Let's say you're
in a cafe having a coffee, and then you, you're leaving, you, you leave your key chain aside,
and then you're walking away this key chain. Send some message to your phone saying,
hey, you're leaving me, and going. It's a simple product. I'm just taking it as an example so
that I can demo the techniques of what we discussed. Okay. So we will set that as the
background and then look at what I mean by paper prototyping and rapid prototyping. So I'm
going to use my account, tablet, and the screen is being recorded, and you will see that you
know, overlaid to what I'm talking about. But mostly I would've ideally wanted to do this with
the paper but that wouldn't be that wouldn't come across well. So we are doing it an asset
digital paper. Okay. So it's completely simple. Bare bones context. Just a white sheet and
then a black pen. That's it. Okay. So in terms of techniques we talked about three things.
One is the 10-Second Rule. Okay, we'll come to that when we actually do. The second we
talked about is you know the Crazy 8's in terms of ideation. How do we ideate for each and
every slide or each and every frame, and so on and so forth. The third one was the
shorthand, the example, right. I'll creating a language for you to develop, right. So first I will
give some examples of how to develop this language. So for example if you want to show
what a title is. First we create a frame. Okay. This is, let's say, a frame. Now I, I'm drawing
this frame so that it can be a boundary for you, but your paper itself might be the frame.
Now, from here you know, what should a headline look like? Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. You know, I'm going to use a scribble like this. Okay. This is my headline.
Okay. Now, what is going to be simple text? It's going to be smaller wiggle, but many lines.
Okay. Simple text. Now, see we will develop a language, a shorthand as we progress. You
will develop it over a period of time. If you, if you're in the business of creating a lot of such
presentations or you like doing this process, you'll do this a lot. So between headline and
simple text, there might be levels of headlines. You might use that. Okay. Then we might
have a third concept of images. Now images, you can just use a box and cross across it.
Okay. And maybe you can just say image of, this is where you will actually, actually say what
you know every, otherwise, everything else is abstract. This another aspect is if you're going
to use a certain kind of flow or a movement or animation, you might say, okay, this is going to
animate this way. Okay. Or this is going to animate this way. So see, I'm just giving examples
of what will form the letters and your code for creating this prototype. So you will have
headlines, you'll have simple text, you'll have your image, and maybe you will develop a
certain way of showing a call to action. Okay. A call to action can be a thicker box. Okay. So
you will develop this, and as you go along, you'll create your own letters. You'll create your
own vocabulary to, to do your rapid prototyping. So don't worry about should I create this
whole, whole thing and then get into it? No, it's not required. I'm just saying you will allow
yourself to be abstract, and this is all we are going to need in a paper prototyping or rapid
prototyping exercise. Okay.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Demo Session - 2 So once we have developed this language, this,
you know, vocabulary and the syntax not necessarily fully developed as I was saying. Once
we understand that we have to develop and we'll work with that kind of a language. First
thing that we'll have to decide is the narrative arc. If you remember, we said what all we will
prototype. The first thing is the narrative arc. Now, what is a narrative arc? You know you'll
have to consider your presentation as a movie. Okay. Now, it sells ideas, it sells your
position, and you must have a storyboard to it. Okay, so we will say, I will start here. I will,
you know, make my case and then I will end. Okay. Now, you know the titles that we give,
the, the words that we give for this narrative arc is up to you. It depends upon the context.
Okay. Now we said we will take the context of a app that is Reminder, Reminder app, right.
I'm going to just put a very broad you know, kind of a narrative arc for this. I'll just say my,
what is going to be my start? You know, the context. What is the context? Why are we here?
Like why are we making this presentation? Why? Why am I making this presentation? Why
are you here to listen to this presentation? When I say you, I'm talking about the audience.
Why is the audience for this presentation there? You set the kind of a stage. Okay. And then
let's say my narrative arc goes into conflict. Okay. When I say conflict, it need not be
necessarily the conflict in literal meaning what is the problem? Okay. What is the, what is the
issue that is being addressed? Okay. And then we will say, we'll talk about what is the
resolution. Okay, that's it. Start my case. The resolution is actually your case. And then
finally your call to action. Okay. Now, what I have here is a kind of a storyboard structure. All
this, let's say, will go into one slide each. Okay or two slides or three slides. We don't know. It
depends upon the amount of information or amount of content you want to put together.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. So if you, again, remember we said first we'll do narrative arc, then
we will go into the large content design, right. So why are we here? Maybe we will see, see
even before this, there might be a title slide. We'll say, okay, so we set context right. Now,
why? Then we will say conflict. Paint the story and then highlight issue. Then we have, we
have our resolution. So, entry product and then product story. Finally, CTA. Now, all this
again. It's, it's all, it's, it's putting the entire narrative arc in details. You know, you're scripting
your narrative arc. You're saying why maybe one slide is enough. Paint the story, maybe one
slide. Highlight the issue, maybe one slide. Entry the product, maybe one slide. Product
story, maybe two or three slides because this is the meat of your presentation. Then call to
action. It's, it's the final one, probably one slide. Now, so this gives me, okay, I'm going to do
one slide on context, one slide on story, one slide on the issue, and so on and so forth. Now,
after doing this see, when I show all this, you're literally scribbling this in a notepad or in a
sheet of papers. Keep it aside. One thing is I'm just doing one of this, right. Ideally you would
put this, those screens, we had those one, 1 slide, 1 slide, 2 slide, 3 slide, and so on and so
forth. You, you will probably iterate on that. Right. Initially it was 1-1-2 slide, 1 slide structure
and then you'll say, no, this is probably will need some more expansion. So I'm going to have
one slide of you know, the context. One slide of conflict, one slide for the hero entry of my
product. And then I'm going to have one slide for detailing out the feature in a fun way. And
then one slide for boring details. When I say boring details, it need not be conveyed in a
boring way. We will come to that. I, I'm just saying. So the next iteration the number of slide
increases. Okay. So you, you will go through this process of iteration. Don't you know, don't
see what I'm doing here right now. This is kind of choreographed, right. I mean, you can
imagine that. I would've done this narrative arc in my head when I'm doing this and I
would've said, no, I will do only this much to convey the email you know, information.
Similarly, you'll be doing that. Okay.
Digital Design Tools Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor - Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Demo Session - 3 So we now have a broad creative arc, and we
have details in terms of what will go into each of those components. We have a idea of how
many slides each of that will have, and so on and so forth, right. Now, take that with a pinch
of salt. Okay. This is rapid prototyping as you prototype, things might change. Don't worry
about that. Ideas will come. Don't worry about that. It's just a way of directed creativity, okay.
So you have your 5 slides that we talked about. Now let's start with the first one, okay. Now,
before the first one, one quick thing that you know, you might want to ideate on is, what is
your visual metaphor overall? Okay, is it a journey? Okay. I'm starting here. I'm going
somewhere. I'm going here, then I'm going there. I'm going here, okay. Do you want to show
that or do you want to show it as a climb? Okay or do you want to show it as a
transformation? Something is here and then it becomes something else and then it becomes
something else. What do you want to show it as? Okay. Now, don't again worry about
detailing it out yet. Just imagine that you should have some kind of a visual metaphor for the
overall narrative arc so that the theme kind of continues throughout. Okay, now let's get into
the first one, okay. We said we are going to do a introduction, right. Now, introduction, if, just
to remind you, we'll have to start with our crazy 8. I'm going to essentially 8 parts. Okay, if
you remember, we folded the page. It gives 8 parts, so this is the crazy 8. Now we said
introduction is just going to show something about the product. Probably name the product.
Okay, big pitch. So, what do you want to show? Now, see, this is where we said we won't go
into image detailing, but image ideas, title, and then there is a human with surprised
expression or maybe, I don't know. There is a title, there is a car key and a question mark,
okay. Again, if you remember when we said crazy 8, the first two ideas will come quickly and
those probably will be the most boring, right. Boring is a bit of a harsh word, may be those
are the obvious, okay. Maybe this looks obvious enough so you like to keep pushing
yourself, okay. Can we do should we do animation of, you know, a key and you someone
walking away or should we just say title and then include talk essentially I'm saying. Just a
title, single word. If you remember we talked about you know, 10 second thing. May be this is
all you want your user to your audience Digital Design Tools Documentation and
Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This
document has been authored by Course Instructor - Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for
use only within the course "Digital Design Tools Documentation and Presentation" delivered
in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo,
data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. to give attention to. Let the name
kind of embed and then you're going to give a good talk or introductory story or spiel, you'll
have to practice that, okay. So this is a combination of your script and your visual. So you go
through this entire process and say, Hey, I'm going to say no. We, we'll have to push
through. I don't want to push through right now. We might not have the time to do that, but
you'll have to do this and continue to do it till you kind of satisfied, be happy with an idea.
Now, why are we doing this? Because if you start opening your software and then start
putting it in, there'll be 10 templates from AI. There'll be something else coming up from you
know, time pressure. You will just put something and move on. We are not looking at that,
right. Now we are not looking at finished product. This is a experimentation exploration
phase. So we will go through this ideation, okay. Yeah.
Digital Design Tools Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor - Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Demo Session - 4 So we finished the ideation and we have some
you know, kind of convergence that this is the introductory style. So let me try to say we
have slide one to an extent done. Okay, now we go to the next part. Now, see the next part
we said we are going to do the conflict. Okay, what is the conflict? You're losing your key
chain. Okay, now again we will go through a process of crazy 8 and so on and so forth in
order to design how you will tell that story of loss and what is happening. See, so for the
sake of our discussion here, let's say I'm showing a cafe and someone is having a coffee
and then you can say your big text here and then your little text there, and then you say,
okay, go to next one. So there is a kind of a layout, okay, that is forming here. Now, one thing
that you'll have to tell us. If you remember, we talked about how to create a GPS or anchors,
give the users a kind of visual indication of what's going on overall, right. Now, before this,
we had one slide. After this, some something is going to come, so you start kind of reserving
spaces on your on your prototype saying, okay, this is where my slide title is going to be. If at
all, this is where I'm going to maybe put a kind of a, some kind of a visual indicator saying,
where am I now? Okay, so there can be multiple methods of doing this. In a story, a simple
story like this, maybe this will not be required, but in a complex story, when you are narrating
a business decision or a business process, you might say, I am doing the you know, market
research now. Okay, this is the phase for market research. And then you can probably show
that as a big one and then we can say the rest continues. Okay and what happened here?
So you show this as a pro, as a GPS marker in each of this slide. Again in a paper prototype
you're not going to actually put this here. This is about ideating in terms of how this is going
to look when we actually design it on a digital you know kind of more finished one. So you
are ideating in terms of how this sequence is going to unravel itself, how the user should be
indicated of it, you are putting that. Then from here you go to your next slide which is about,
you know, maybe here there'll be a bigger kind of a more exciting visual saying, Hey, there is
a alert on your phone. You'll have to show this. And then the next slide shows happy face
saying I have seen this, so I'm happy that the product has recommended. Digital Design
Tools Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 ©
All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor - Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. Now, here is a kind of a glimpse of your product or the solution. Now this is
again, a simple context. In a larger context, you will have expansion of these things, right.
What is the problem? Okay and then what is the solution? This will be not just one you know,
slide or one image. Here I've shown maybe a happy so. You know, my language is that this
kind of explosion, explosive star is the happy indicator happy image saying something is
good, is happening, okay. And there is a alert on my phone and then the audience is happy
and there coming back to they know what is happening, okay. So this kind of narrates,
sequences that there is a loss and there is the product does its job, and then the user of the
product is happy. So in this journey this is all visuals and the content and elements like
these, like this GPS content can be supplementary content on the slide. Of course, we said
each slide should pass the 10 second rule. Each slide should highlight one main thing and
so on and so forth. So that is what we are prototyping here in terms of what is key. All this
other technical aspects can be light and in the background.
Digital Design Tools Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor - Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital
Design Tools Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Demo Session - 5 So I'm going to kind of go to the next phase of
this you know, in our narrative arc. So just to tell where we are, we said we have our you
know, introduction slide. Then we had the next stage of you know, there is a conflict. Then
there is the big relief, and then the user is happy about the product. So if you look at it, our
overall arc is building up. See, digitally I threw away, kind of raised my screen and threw
away everything. But if you're doing it on a paper prototype it, all these things will be lying
around you, right. So you would've done much more iteration ideally. And then you'll pick and
choose okay, this is the layout that I want. So essentially you will build these, what I've
shown here on the top, these 4 kind of a thing, 4 slides thing. This is going to be my slide 1,
slide 2, slide 3, slide 4. Structurally again, we said we are not going to details exact content.
For example, in the introduction we said one of the options might be a talk. We are not
capturing that. We are just capturing that there is a talk, right. So now this arc is done.
Finally, you might want to emphasize the big relief, right. Even though we have said, you
know, sad to aha moment and then happy you might want to. In your narrative work, you
might want to pause at that happy moment and say why you are happy and what your
product does to make your customer happy. So that slide, there'll be again you know, a
process of exploration. Here, you probably will decide, okay, I'm going to say what is exactly
going to happen in my presentation. My mobile phone will get a alert, right. And then I'm
going to, this is slide 1. Then another slide will be here. The user is seeing this on the
mobile. And then the next slide is going to be the zoom in of my mobile phone with some
specific details of what those you know how it is communicated, actually, your product
details. You might want to say, I want to put it here. What is going to appear here and what
triggered, and then maybe your feature says it's I don't know. It says 10 feet to your right or
in your earlier desk, and so on and so forth. What are these features? You want to highlight
those. So, you will build a sequence of what this happy moment, what is this relief? And then
you'll say, this is how my product helps. You know, here, stage step one, step two and so on,
so forth. You are building a larger narrative. Now, this is not going to be simple in terms of is
that all? I mean am I just scribbling something? No. So Digital Design Tools Documentation
and Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved.
This document has been authored by Course Instructor - Rajavel Manoharan and is
permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools Documentation and
Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this
document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the
author. you will ask, as you put the story, the slides that I had, you will go into each of those
slides and say, what exactly am I going to show here? What is that will appear on my mobile
phone? What will be the reaction? So you will start building the high level content. Okay, you
know, what is seen. What does the reaction, so why am I writing this instead of using my
squiggly things? That is primarily because this is a direction for the content, not the content,
right. So you'll have to capture this in your prototype so that when you actually go into
detailing the prototype, you'll see, okay, this is what I need to write. This is what, so when,
what is seen and what is reaction can be seen as you know, what is happening and what is
the benefit for the user. So you will start building these narrators and these explanations in
your head as we go through this. So remember this, rapid prototyping is about structure. It's
about big reliefs or big, you know, narration in terms of what your product is about. Since we
have taken such a simple product, it's probably not, you know, enough to talk about it but
when you look at complex presentations where complex information has to be
communicated, there'll be context to this. So when we said one of the advantages of doing
paper prototyping is collaboration. So let's say you are showing this to your manager or your
boss, or maybe a test user as a validation, right. We had one then 1, 2, 3, then the screens
we had. The final screens, which are showing the details. So maybe someone would say,
Hey, no, I think we need one more component here, which talks about something. So the
moment you lay this out in front of a user in a quick way very quickly saying, then you get
feedback. So it enables that feedback mechanism and says, yeah, this is what I want, or this
is what it should be or a user probably a potential audience will probably look at one of your
slides and say, this looks like too much of a comics to me give me some technical details.
Then you'll say, okay, let me this is just very, very high level narration. So you will probably
build in your story saying, I want to put a slide, which is almost product specifications, okay.
What are the components of my product? What are the technical requirements of my
product? What is the cost of my product? Maybe, see again, these are all elements. I am
calling it out in a prototype because this is this. This is the kind of content I want, it's not the
actual content. Actual content will still be my squiggles. Okay, you do this now, you did one
iteration, one audience said, I want actual technical details also, you added this. So now
your entire story is becoming stronger. You have your introduction, then you have your
simple comic key narration Digital Design Tools Documentation and Presentation Course
Instructor – Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been
authored by Course Instructor - Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the
course "Digital Design Tools Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course
format by IIM Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations,
pictures, scripts, may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise –
without the prior permission of the author. of what your product is and then it goes into a
slightly technical elaboration. And then what if you look at it, we started with one narrator.
Now, because you were able to collaborate and you were able to quickly get feedback, your
narrator is becoming stronger, okay. Or at least your narrator is anticipating what a potential
audience might anticipate and it is getting absorbed. It is still open to feedback. Now, that is
the joy of rapid prototyping. So right now, if you remember, we said one, 1, 1, 2, 1, just 5
slides. Now it's already become 7 slides. We also, you know, earlier, if you remember, we
said maximum, there must be 10 slides and maximum, there must be 20 minutes, and so on
and so forth. So we will try and see how all that has to be optimized. All this is playing on
your mind. Then finally you will say, what is my call to action? What is my closure? Right,
closure we said, oh, thank you, no, this is a wrong, wrong thing to do. So we say, you should
have a valid call to action. Otherwise, then there is a problem. So that is fundamental
requirement that there must be a call to action. We say, you know, product launch, details or
you know. Your company or you say, come and take a look at experience the demo. There is
a experience. Here's my live product. Come and experience the demo. So these are all I am
actually kind of, this is, let's say another way of crazy 8 in terms of, What all is going to
happen in make call to action? What can I do? You will have to align that with your business
readiness and your intent of the presentation and your communication and do that. And then
you have your full story. Now you have your introduction. Plus there are three slides of your
problem and solution and 2 slides of solution expansion. Then there are 2 slides of technical
details and then there is one final slide for CTA. So we have our intro story, joy, tech, CTA.
Now our narrative arc has slightly changed from where we started but that is fine that is the
entire point of rapid prototyping and paper prototyping. So now we have this. Now did we
miss the details? Of course on a digital tool like this, we have probably missed the details.
But no, we have not missed the details. You have all this on a paper, right. You essentially
look at what is my best idea for intro? You did the crazy 8. You had your you know, you had
chosen from that and best idea for intro. Take that sheet. You have your best idea of your,
you know, your problem, your solution, your big aha moment and Digital Design Tools
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor – Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor - Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. your joy. There are 3 slides. Now, each of this you're doing, ideally you're doing
crazy 8, or you're having some conceptual conceptualization of it and you have these 3 and
then joy, you are going into the mobile phone screens and showing details and how the
transition works and so on and so forth. You have those main screens, you have technical
details and then your CTA, so you have your 5, 6, 7, 8 paper prototyped slides which is using
your language saying, okay, this is going to be my, this is going. So every slide will have
those component, right. Every slide is going to have your, okay, this is going to be my title of
the slide. This is the kind of image that is going to be there and this is going to be the little
squiggly details and there'll be instructions in terms of what kind of transitions are going to
happen, all that is captured. Now you have this basis to go into the polished actual artifact
creation to quickly do it. Now that you have the full picture of full view, you don't have to
struggle in terms of, am I doing this enough? Am I doing this more? Am I doing this less?
No, you have the full picture. You know the entire structure, how it is going to play out and
then you are going to just put in details. Now, is that easy? I'm not saying it is easy. You will
have, you know micro you know, sessions of what should be my tagline here? What should
be the exact words? What should be the most effective way of writing this? What photo or
image should go here? All this is the next level of detailing of your prototype or next level of
detailing of your presentation. So when you do this in a staged way, you know what is the big
story. Now each and every component is up for you to prototype and detail as you go
through this process and go through the process of probably validation or feedback. You will
get a much, much stronger artifact that is, you know, that is aligned to your business goal
and then that will achieve what you intended to achieve.
Digital Design Tools: Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan Module 2 © All Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course
Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design
Tools: Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM
Bangalore. No part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts,
may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior
permission of the author. Demo Session - 6 So I just want to conclude by saying you know,
prototyping is not about details. Prototyping is about structure. You have the structure, you
know what is going to go into each of that, you know why it is there, and so on and so forth.
Right. Now, you go into the next part of detailing. Before closing, I want to talk about the
tools. I am a big proponent of simple paper-based rapid prototyping. We are talking about
tools for rapid prototyping. Paper, pen because it allows you to be free. Like I said, when we
started this module, by the time you open your laptop or your machine and start looking at
icons, downloading, and so on and so forth, you would've started putting things down. That
is much, much more powerful than your digital tools, but if at all you want, and if you're at all
you're comfortable, there are tools like procreate for the Apple Ecosystem and tool like
Concepts. It's the name of actual application on Play Store. These are powerful for you
know, Android and Windows based systems. See, the only difference that I would suggest
you use in a rapid prototyping phase is bring in maybe one or two additional colours. So for
example, I, I created our entire you know prototype through this module saying, you know,
just black colour and you know, whatever. But let's say if you have a digital and if you're very
inclined towards it, you can maybe say, okay, I'm going to use a little bit of colour for call to
action. Okay. Essentially, when we said you create your own shorthand, when you create
your own syntax or language, include the colour in that. Okay, I'll use green for, context.
Okay. I'll use wherever there is blue, you know, that'll be title. Okay. Whenever there is red, I,
I actually, I don't want to complicate the screen further, so I'm going to erase this and use
something else. You see rapid prototyping, what you look at must be very, very simple, and it
should be bare bone stripped to structure and essentials, not details. Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation Course Instructor: Rajavel Manoharan Module 2 © All
Rights Reserved. This document has been authored by Course Instructor: Rajavel
Manoharan and is permitted for use only within the course "Digital Design Tools:
Documentation and Presentation" delivered in the online course format by IIM Bangalore. No
part of this document, including any logo, data, illustrations, pictures, scripts, may be
reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means –
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission
of the author. That is why I'm discouraging you to, to use too many variations. Let's say you
will develop a language for if, if it is red, then you will say, okay, what are my you know, what,
what is my negative story? Negative, you know, in a script, usually when something goes
right, it'll spin into a positive track, and if something goes wrong, it'll go into a negative track.
So you can show what is the wrong way of doing this and avoid it. You can use colours just
to highlight these things, but the best way to work with paper prototyping or rapid prototyping
is simple tools and simple structuring that's about it. So I'll conclude with that and hope you
enjoyed it. Thanks.