Learn sense making and storytelling from the world around you

My wife and I paid a (socially distanced and suitably masked) visit to the Tower of London last week. It was a strange experience to be visiting this site of so many historical events whilst in the middle of our own historical event, and even stranger because it was so quiet: visitor numbers are currently strictly limited.

The quiet gave us an opportunity to spend a little time longer with the exhibits, and to appreciate them in more detail. The one that stayed in my memory was an exhibit in the Bloody Tower which told the story of the princes in the Tower. (If you’re not familiar with this story, then you can learn more on Wikipedia or, if you’re in London, plan a visit when conditions permit.)

This exhibit held my attention because it told the story in two very different ways.

First, there was a standard written panel mounted on the wall: a few paragraphs of matter of fact text, laying out the details and the dates, what is known and what is speculated. There is nothing wrong with that: we have all seen countless such panels in museums. However, we all also know that we often don’t pay as much attention to those panels as perhaps we should: we let our eyes skim over the facts, and then move onto the next room, quickly forgetting what we have just read.

Second, using almost exactly the same words as the panel, there was an audio-visual presentation. A voice read out the text, while images was projected directly onto the wall. They showed the complicated family tree of English royalty, the way the branches of the tree had been cut by age, war and accident, and the significance of the princes to their uncle, soon to be crowned as Richard III. They illustrated the scant facts known about the princes’ stay in the Tower, the discovery of skeletons in the 17th century, and the varieties of speculation that ensued.

What is more, this presentation carefully matched its style to its content. The voice that read the text was not the expected voice of an academic or presenter, it was that of a young boy, about the same age as the princes would have been. The images were not of contemporary or later paintings, but simple monochrome animations that fit the starkness of the medieval surroundings.

There are obvious lessons for technology architects here. Technology today is complicated, difficult to understand and essential to the future of our enterprises. Tomorrow it will be even more complicated, even more difficult to understand and even more essential to the future of our enterprises. It is part of our job not just to figure out how to use this technology, but to figure out how to explain it to others in ways which are memorable and understandable.

This does not mean that every part of our technology strategy and standards must be accompanied by animation and voiceover in an atmospheric setting. Rather, it means that we must find media which fits our message, and avoid the simple regurgitation of facts. It might mean the difference between many pages of packed text and a presentation which comprises a simple, compelling image. It might mean the difference between a demonstration which comprises a relentless walkthrough of every function on the menu bar, and a demonstration which recreates the experience of a real customer.

It will be, I am certain, the difference between a story which makes sense, and a story which does not make sense. And I think that we should set the bar high here: by making sense, I do not just mean a story which is logically coherent and factually accurate, I mean a story which make sense in an active way, by taking something which we do not understand and makes it possible for us to get to grips with it.

The story of the princes in the Tower can be difficult to make sense of in this fashion. Once we get beyond the base mystery, we quickly become entangled in questions of dynastic succession and royal authority, all laid over with propaganda, interpretation and myth making across centuries. The exhibit at the Tower did a remarkable job of recognising all that complexity while steering a path through the story.

I am still learning how to tell stories and how to make sense, and am not always successful. I don’t have any magic tricks for doing it better: it is dependent on your context. But I do think that technology architects do well to pay attention to the world, to spot good examples of sense making and story telling when we meet them, and to learn from them.