Watch it on YouTube here.

The real challenge was producing a French version. Stay tuned for that!

UPDATE

Here’s the French Canadian version:

• Dongle
• Cookie
• WAP
• Phone jack
• (Nokia) Navi Key
• Time shifting
• Digital TV
• Ethernet
• (Nokia/Others) PC Suite
• Desktop

What gets me about the list is the range of complexity, from the elementary "phone jack" to Nokia's "PC Suite" phone syncing software, which is a pretty specialized and granular little nugget of knowledge (perhaps less so in Europe, where Nokia has a brand dominance akin to Kleenex).

Most of these terms, though, are ones that many folks might take for granted; they're part of the "modern" lexicon. But I remind myself every day that there are a lot of folks who don't know what Ethernet is, or a browser cookie. That's the audience to which Nutshells often speak.

Bicycles, Rolling Stops, and the Idaho Stop from Spencer Boomhower on Vimeo.

Seligson’s article is about the neuroscience behind what drives people to make life-long commitments to each other. Bear with me; this is relevant to our exploration of what makes a good explanation!

According to researchers, lifelong commitment to a partner is driven by a complex interaction between the rational and emotional parts of the brain. Seligson writes:

“We know from how the brain works that there is so much information that cannot be accounted for in a spreadsheet,” says Jonah Lehrer, whose new book, How We Decide, presents the latest research on the process of decision-making.

In other words, our rational sides are simply not equipped to make complex and far-reaching decisions like when to get married. “The rational brain can only take in seven pieces of information at one time,” Lehrer says. “When it gets more than that, it’s like an old computer trying to run Vista.”

Rational brains falling down on the job when faced with a barrage of information? This sounds a lot like the problem most people face in many aspects of their lives these days: information bloat. It’s something I’ve talked about before.

In the case of love and commitment, Seligson writes, another, very powerful decision-making part of the brain has to be put to use:

Because of this limitation – and because love brings with it such a bombardment of considerations – Lehrer is a proponent of listening to the emotional part of our brains when making such decisions, which can process more information than the analytical part.

This part of the brain is called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). When we are drawn to a person (or a type of music, or an ice cream flavor), that’s the OFC flexing its mental muscle. It’s the part of the brain that integrates visceral emotions into the decision-making process, and reacts to feelings of reward.

Now, I’m not saying that choosing, let’s say, the right Wi-Fi router for you, is as important as choosing who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. But there are similar forces at work here, and it raises questions about how explainers can help people get “married” to a concept. Could it be that explanations that appeal only to the rational part of the brain, explanations that bombard us with statistics, numbers and a stream of facts are less effective than those that also appeal to us on a more emotional level? When creating explanations, should we keep the “OFC” in mind to make them more memorable and more meaningful?

I didn’t realize it before I read this article, but now I understand that when I make Nutshells, I am engaging in a delicate balancing act between rational and emotional appeal. Certainly, no effective explanation can appeal solely to the emotional brain. This comes across as flaccid hogwash. On the other hand, explanations that exclusively appeal to the rational brain are equally unbalanced, thereby alienating the viewer. As Seligson writes, balance is key:

Lehrer argues that while unconscious emotional instincts can have merit, he doesn’t believe they should be acted upon immediately. In fact, he waited years before proposing to his wife. Nor is he a confederate of the Blink school of thought, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, which promotes the value of rapid decision-making, or “thinking without thinking.”

The emotional and rational parts of the brain are always engaged in a delicate interplay, trying to sort out the world as it unfolds before us. Could it be that designing experiences with this interplay in mind is one of the keys to creating effective explanations?