Communicating design to non-designers

Question

How do you communicate design to non-designers? For example, a complex information architecture. Sometimes I get the impression that it is really difficult for non-designers to be able to visualize something that is so abstract.

Answer 1

This is a general question so it's hard to provide specific answers.

Many blogs and websites talk about the Feynman Learning Technique and I think it is a principle that applies when designers are communicating with non-designers (or for that matter, any type of communication between two people from different domain knowledge areas).

In essence, it involves these steps:

1. Pretend to teach a concept you want to learn about to a student in the sixth grade.
2. Identify gaps in your explanation. Go back to the source material to better understand it.
3. Organize and simplify.
4. Transmit (optional).

But take your example of a complex IA, I still believe that a well-organized IA should decompose into smaller and logical modules, until you get to the simplest components. Conversely, you should be able to summarize and concatenate categories so you can present the information at different levels of detail or complexity.