Technology and information about technology are usually harder to digest for ordinary people. Technical terms have the tendency to further confound rather than inform, that’s why. Owing to the engineering precision that must always accompany tech info with regards to specifications, people also become more intimidated by it. There are far more people willing to be informed about technical information or technology per se if only the language to understand such could become easier to digest.
Non-tech oriented people usually outnumber those among us who are so inclined to use terms that perfectly define precise engineering equations that tech usually has. This becomes a problem every time tech people try to explain things to people about new technologies. How they function, what ideas lie behind them, or when these could be suitable are such urgent talking points that most non-tech people have the least capability to make sense of. However, technicians need to learn to speak the language that people understand. It used to be the layman language. Now, even that has even become unreliable owing to rapid tech advancement.
Kindergarten tech
Speaking in layman’s terms could help considerably when explaining things in face-to-face discussions between tech people and tech beginners. You could, for example, attempt to explain the workings of a RingCentral PBX by mentioning easy-to-follow analogies with analog systems being wired networks cobbled together while online cloud-based systems being wireless networks interconnected via the web. That could work in one-on-one talk situations but when expounding on such subjects more conclusively with readable text, things could get more complicated than you imagine. Tech lingo, no matter how simple would always have the ability to jar audiences.
This is why most harder-to-digest tech systems tend to go the minimalist visual route: Lesser elements but with more efficient semiotics. User interfaces, web icons, social media calls to action and the like all have a strong bias for such owing to their ability to convey messages faster and with a higher rate of comprehension even among fledgling tech users.
Picture feature
People tend to take lightly to images or pictures more than words. They are visual stimuli much easier to understand while having the ability to entertain or arouse interest. Information or messages bearing high pictorial quality are most often literal when used in the online tech context. This is the biggest reason why visually communicable tech gets to be understood better in the following situations:
- Infographic content. Some studies, surveys, or talking points in certain urgent topics that juxtapose images, pictures, graphic design elements, icons or semiotic symbols opposite key text or factoids have a better chance of being understood by ordinary people. Web info seekers who encounter such info in search engines are helped along by the associations they form between certain images and words. The relationships between statistics and exact figures contained in them when set against appropriate images work like visual aids found in common classroom discussions.
- User interfaces. Various digital gadgets, equipment and mobile devices employ visual information out of the desire to make good use of limited space in device displays. Online tech such as computers, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets and phablets use icons and various buttons extensively in lieu of text because people find it easy to know what they all stand for.
- User manuals and instructionals. Teaching people how to operate gadgets, devices or equipment via manuals and instructionals become easier when accompanied by detailed illustrations or line drawings. They offer clearer ideas of how things look like when in the process of being used.