Technical authors tackle “The curse of knowledge”

If you’ve ever struggled to explain something to someone considerably less expert than yourself, you may have experienced “The curse of knowledge”. It’s a curse that technical authors resolve everyday, although they may not know they’ve been doing it.

It’s a phrase that comes from a great book called “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.

They state:

Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.

Here’s the great cruelty of the Curse of Knowledge: The better we get at generating great ideas – new insights and novel solutions – in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse.

In the book, there’s reference to some very interesting research by Elizabeth Newton on communication – involving tapping out a song to someone and seeing if they can recognize it.

Their solutions to the problem coincide with many of the principles technical authors use.These solutions include:

Start with a beginner’s mind.
Make it simple by taking “knowledge” and refining it down to a core concept.
Don’t paralyse readers with too many choices.
Help people understand and remember by using concrete examples and avoiding abstract concepts.
Get people to act (in the sense of doing something).

It’s a great book for helping technical authors understand and communicate their value – something, ironically, they are generally quite poor at doing.