In Formation

[Another TM talk ... You can find more about synaesthesia & the referred Bouba/Kiki effect at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect, and the other figure I had was the popular Gestalt figure on the top left at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reification.jpg ... as for the magic trick, there's a TED talk from Eric Mead from which I learnt it]

Okay, time for a very short quiz; don't worry, for most people it's very easy. I've got three figures behind me. Let's focus on the bottom two for now. One of them is called 'Bouba,' and the other one is called 'Kiki.'

By show of hands, who thinks the one on the left is 'Bouba'?

Looking at the top figure now...is it just me or is there a....what shape do you see there? A triangle? [filler]

Okay, as unscientific as that little experiment was, we've revealed something interesting. Actually, lots of interesting things.

You'll notice I've got a few labels beside these figures. We're all familiar with both of these words. Beside the triangle thing I've got 'structure.' We live and breathe structure. Gravity keeps us all planted to the ground, morality keeps most of us out of jail, and for those it doesn't, cells and the courts keep people in. These are all structures. As speaker's you'll recognise it in that we help people understand us by speaking the same language, and arranging sentences in a certain way.

Beside the Bouba & Kiki figures I've got 'association.' Everything we learn builds on what we already know. Knowledge is cumulative. Association is the bridge connecting the familiar and the new. It's what makes pacing, pitch, and bodily gestures to hilight points such great aids.

There's one other word that captures this whole example perfectly. Caricature.

When I use the word caricature, many of you probably think of 'cartoons,' but something that should serve as a better example is a magic trick. I'm going to show you a very simple trick – it's been in every children's magic book since at least the 1950s. It has two parts; my hand, which you can examine, and a knife, which you can examine.

… Present trick, and then explain it …

So what does that have to do with caricature? Like all caricature, magic is about directing attention. You can think of this as structuring ideas in such a way so as to highlight something important. When you consider it this way, you see caricature everywhere.

Caricature is familiar to speakers, cartoonists, magicians, game designers, advertisers, con-artists, dancers, cinematographers, architects. Anyone who communicates ideas. All of us. We don't always reflect upon it, but it's always around.

We begin learning from a very early age how people respond to our different actions. Upon entering the fields you work in, you will have soon become familiar with whatever 'vocabulary' is used to efficiently communicate with colleagues, or customers, or captivated audiences. We are, you could say, all intuitive psychologists.

Of course, at the centre of psychology is the human mind. Central to understanding how we should communicate ideas is to appreciate how we think. We need to appreciate not just how versatile the mind is, but also its limitations. The key to that magic trick was not noticing the missing finger because of how the mind groups the rest.

Similarly, the key to competent communication is caricature - drawing out the details that are important, so we aren't overloaded with everything that's not. Good designers know they are done not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away.

We all know the importance of structure. We live and breathe it. Fortnately, we live in a democracy. Without structure, you have anarchy. Knowledge is cumulative; association allows us to discover the new, based on what we already know. And there all along, as our guiding light in this journey of discovery?






The biggest criticism of my previous speeches was their lack of the 'personal' touch. No use in speaking if you're just going to alienate your audience - so I tried simplifying a little. It's funny, I can't help but feel presumptuous simplifying as I feel the potential for talking about something overly obvious, but also feeling presumptuous talking about something complicated in the worry that I could come off as bigoted...I guess getting over (in multiple senses) the struggle for that balance is going to be one of the valuable lessons of all this.