[Sigia-l] Making the complex simple

[Emily Leahy-Thieler]

I'm sure I'm not the first to struggle with this on a
personal level, but as I progress in my career, I'd
like some guidance from my fellow IAs. 

It’s not in my nature to try and make things sound
complex. In fact, I think my most important skill is
making things that are complex easy for others to
understand. When I’m in a group of people and someone
is trying to make a complex point that just doesn't’t
seem to be coming across to others, I listen, attempt
to understand, ask clarifying questions, and then
create a simply summarizing statement that I share
with the group. I used to use these interpreting
skills in school to help the other students understand
what an instructor was saying and I use them now in
meetings. No one taught me how to do this, but its
what makes me feel like I'm in the right field. That’s
the basis of what we do, right? We should not be in
the business of making what we do seem overly complex.
We shouldn’t use $100 words when we can explain our
methods and design decisions when it can be done more
simply. Doing our jobs means that not only should the
things we design be simple and easy to understand, but
that our deliverables are simple as well (and I use
the term “deliverable” broadly to mean not only
physical deliverables, but the communication we’re
paid for as well).  

Now, I do understand why we like to create fancy
documentation and use the words we learned in our
information science, cognitive psychology, industrial
engineering and computer-human interaction classes. A
lot of us spend a lot of time and money in
universities (or worked our butts off in "real" jobs
or both) and we want to be valued by employers
accordingly. We also need to be able to be seen as a
peer to lead developers (and others) who may have
opinions about interfaces and use very technical terms
and elaborate diagrams. When we use normal, human,
conversational words, we may not seem as sophisticated
and intelligent, and therefore be respected less.  But
if you were building an interface and the client asked
you to make the labels a little more difficult to
understand and the interface a little more complex
than it had to be so that company's image would seem
more sophisticated and intelligent, you’d try your
darnedest talk them out of it.  

So, what do we do? From experience, I know that
keeping my language and deliverables simple is
sometimes detrimental to my career. The person who
uses the biggest words tends to get the most respect
even when no one understands what the words mean (and
often the substance isn't there). I would love to know
what others think about this and where the right
balance is.

Thanks, 
*Emily

About me:
-I’ve done ID/IA work since 1999 in a variety of
settings (Web agency, educational institution, small
consulting firm focusing on government clients,large
company)
-I have a Master’s in Information Studies from Florida
State University
-I currently work in the web development organization
of a Fortune 100 company



		
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