Week 4

Week 4: Board Games

Monday, Oct 18

• Reflections on technical communication

  • So far we've gone over: Scientific American articles, How To essays, The Merchant & Alchemist's Gate, Arrival, and Board Games. 

• Aspects of effective technical communication

  • Narrative: even in a non-fiction piece, there is a story arc. What is the conflict? Who are the characters? What are the stakes? How is the tension resolved?  

  • Audience: who are they, and how does the communication address to their needs? 

    • What do they know, what do they not know? They are always intelligent, but not always knowledgeable.  (e.g. avoid jargon)

    • How does the author create empathy? Why should the audience trust the communication? Why should the audience give their time to the communication?

  • Digestable: strategy for communicating complex ideas

    • Examples

    • Big picture ideas before details, e.g. explaining the general goal of a board game before explaining the rules and structure

    • Catering to the audience's attention span and interests

Wednesday, Oct 20

• Workshopping

  • Grouping 1: we split into groups according to similar short stories. The groups reviewed their short stories, summarized the key themes and ideas, and pitched ideas for technical ideas to explore with the stories.

  • Grouping 2: we split into groups of people doing different short stories and took turns explaining what the story was about and what technical ideas are connected to them. This was a chance to identify challenges in communicating your technical ideas to people who have not read your short story.

Homework

• Since there are midterms this next week, your next assignment (one page blog post) will be due on Monday of Week 6