I'd Rather Be Writing » Holly Harkness

Does Translation Mean You Should Omit Illustrations?

Tom Johnson — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:27:27 +0000

One can hardly dismiss the power of visuals. One of the oldest truisms in communication is that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Instead of lengthy text, we praise infographics, diagrams, workflows, and other visual illustrations that communicate ideas. (See this collection of New York Times infographics.)

In Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, Robert Horn’s main premise is that the combination of text with visuals creates a powerful form of communication.

The other day a colleague, a graphic designer, told me she doesn’t read text on web pages; she moves right to the visual, she said – proudly.

In short, large blocks of text suck. Visuals rock. (See Nation Shudders At Large Block of Text.)

The Problem

Despite this triumph of visual communication, when it comes to technical documents that need translation, visual communication is problematic. If you’re translating the document into 10 languages, every screenshot you use requires translation as well. One screenshot becomes ten. Ten screenshots become 100. One hundred screenshots become 1,000.

And not only do the screenshots need translation, you need access to other operating systems, you need the ability to maneuver around in other languages to produce the scenarios to get the screenshots, and so on. For example, try reproducing an error message screenshot in 10 languages.

Let’s say you forego screenshots and instead stick with illustrations only. Although it’s possible to communicate basic ideas through wordless shapes, you may end up with the equivalent of Pictionary scribbles. Conversely, if you remove illustrations and other visuals, you end up with a text-heavy encyclopedia.

As such, it seems that technical communicators have the following options:

Pursue a costly route of image-based text, which may result in attractive but expensive and time-consuming documents.
Strip out all images and deliver text-heavy documents, which users may despise.
Deliver documents with mysterious and perplexing wordless shape diagrams.

An Alternative

Let’s explore an alternative to this conundrum. If you’ve ever assembled something from Ikea, no doubt you’ve marvelled at the wordless instructions that move you from step to step. There are no multi-lingual instruction manuals with Ikea products — just one global picture booklet.

Holly Harkness explains that the model works “because Ikea builds simplicity into their products from the get-go” (The wordless manual). In other words, wordless manuals work because the products are so easy to assemble, they don’t require words.

Recently while assembling an Ikea bookshelf, my wife struggled to understand this particular Ikea picture:

Who should you call, the local Ikea store, or Ikea headquarters?

She kept calling headquarters when she should have called the local store, apparently. Upon returning the bookshelf with its defective parts to the local store, the sales clerk asked why she didn’t call the store first. My wife had called — but to headquarters, not the local store.

I doubt the wordless picture model that Ikea adopts could work for all forms of documentation, especially software documentation. But certainly Ikea shows us that it’s possible to use wordless visuals to communicate an idea.

(By the way, you can browse Ikea’s manuals online here.)

Ikea’s Secret?

One hunch I have about Ikea’s visual technique is that they use a lot of small pictures in sequence, rather than several large diagrams (see this example).

In the Ikea model, you see about 20 smaller pictures to follow, rather than one or two large diagram-like pictures. Why? Without words, you’re forced to simplify the process you’re representing. The way you simplify an image is by breaking it into smaller images.

Perhaps the way to incorporate illustrations in documents that require translation is to chunk up the illustrations into simpler images that almost anyone can follow. You may end up with more images, but as a whole the images in sequence can help tell the same story that the single image would tell. (Note: I’m referring to illustrations, not screenshots.)

The Principle of Small Multiples

My hunch about why Ikea’s technique works ties in with a principle I read about in Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information (a classic to have on any coffee table). Tufte says one principle of visual information is to show a series of small multiples:

Small multiples, whether tabular or pictorial, move to the heart of visual reasoning–to see, distinguish, choose (even among children’s shirts). Their multiplied smallness enforces local comparisons within our eyespan, relying on an active eye to select and make contrasts rather than on bygone memories of images scattered over pages and pages (p.33).

In other words, small multiples force you to compare between the images. In that comparison, you can derive some meaning. The differences tell a story.

To illustrate, Tufte includes the following image, called Color Coordination, which has been redrawn in Tufte’s book from Yumi Takahashi and Ilkuyo Shibukawa.

Color Coordination, an example from Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information. This image shows the idea of color coordination through small multiples.

My Own Examples

In my own documentation, I’ve started to move to wordless pictures in sequence as well. Without understanding the context at all, what do you make of the following images? What story are they trying to tell?

By breaking up a single image, which might have been adorned with various callouts and labels, into a sequence of simple images, with slight variety between the images to tell the story, I hopefully communicate an idea without words. This image can be used in documentation in any language, without requiring translation.

Additionally, below each image I could use captions to elaborate on the meaning of the illustration. In the case above, my images are showing the idea of a layered calendar, similar to Google’s calendar. You have multiple calendars available, and you can turn the calendars on or off to determine what events show on the main calendar view.

Unless I included a lot of labels and callouts, this image wouldn’t work as a single image. But by breaking it into a series of images — small multiples -- the meaning is clear, even without words.

Blog Sponsors

How to Get Everyone and Their Dog/Family/Friends Reading and Subscribing to Your Blog — 10 Tips

Tom Johnson — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:34:04 +0000

Just a few days after someone begins blogging seriously, he or she starts hungering after subscribers and comments. We want readership, we want lots of people visiting our site, reading our posts, subscribing to our feed, and regularly leaving comments. This, my friend Clyde says, is the “payoff” of blogging.

Although I try to write for a higher purpose outside of trying to get more readers and comments, I must admit that the interactivity of blogging is what makes it fun. To this end, I offer ten tips for increasing your readership:

Be patient. My friend Ben Minson is just starting out with his Gryphon Mountain blog. He currently has 4 subscribers, but he’s been writing excellent posts for the past 2 weeks, and he’s starting to get noticed. My wife has a witty, fun-to-read blog (whataboutmomblog.com), but only has 51 subscribers. To people who get discouraged at a lack of subscribers, I say be patient. It takes time to accrue readership. I have ~~471~~ 472 posts on my blog.
Use Twitter and Twitter Tools. Twitter is the most surprisingly useful tool I’ve seen. I’m starting to check it almost as much as Google Reader. When I publish a new post, through the Twitter Tools plugin, that post is automatically published as a tweet on Twitter. Lots of cool people (e.g., Robert Scoble, Darren Rowse, Chris Pirillo) will follow you on Twitter if you start following them. Check out the Twitterati here. But really, you want to follow people like yourself. Through your tweets, they’ll pay closer attention to you and your posts.
Search-engine-optimize your posts. My site stats show about 65%+ traffic from Google. Google finds you by matching keywords that searchers use with keywords for your site (obviously). Pack your titles with search engine keywords. And use the WordPress SEO plugin to differentiate the title your readers see from the title Google sees. For example, this post’s Google title is more generic: Increase Subscribers to Your Blog — Tips for Increasing the Number of Readers. Boring, I know. But it’s the kind of string people search for. I want to be found.
Link abundantly in your posts. People check you out when you link to them. We’re always curious to know the contexts in which we’re being mentioned. The pingback brings people to your site, and if you look interesting, they subscribe. You’ll notice I’ve linked to everyone I mentioned in this post. Linking to people is like tapping them on the shoulder to get their attention.
Make intriguing titles. I find myself reading posts with interesting titles (for example, Dear WordPress, A Response to Your Letter). Even when the post is outside my category of interest, I’ll click a clever title out of curiosity. Copyblogger also has excellent advice about titles. I think learning to create intriguing titles is an important art in drawing readers in. (Holly Harkness reminded me of this lately.) Don’t worry so much about keywords and use the WordPress SEO plugin I mentioned in #3.
Catch the attention of people with influence. If you catch the right people’s attention, they can mention you on their site and boost your readership far more than you can alone. One of my earlier posts caught the attention of Joshua Porter (Bokardo), and overnight my readership grew by 80+ new subscribers. Some of the people I interview for podcasts (e.g., Anne Rockley) mention the podcast to their large readership base as well.
Use the Feedburner chiclet to watch your readership. I don’t watch site stats as much as readership stats. I’m convinced that good posts will naturally attract new readers. If my readership shrinks, I know my writing stinks. If it grows, it’s because the posts must somehow be worthwhile. People naturally link to interesting posts, which grows your readership. Without Feedburner, I don’t see how you can measure readership at all. (By the way, the numbers always artificially dip on the weekends. I am still inching toward my 1,000 mark.)
Leave comments on other blogs. I always check out the blogs of those who comment on my posts. And I try to leave comments on posts I enjoy reading, if only to let the person know that I read it. Commenting on as many blogs as possible is a tedious strategy for gaining readers, but when you’re new, you need make yourself visible. No doubt you read blogs already, so add a comment. Other commenters are also attracted by an interesting comment you leave, which leads more people back to your site.
Write a few home run posts. The best post I’ve ever written was 20 Usability Tips for Your Blog: Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences. It has 293 comments and trackbacks. I spent weeks writing it — it was the core of my presentation at least year’s Doc Train conference. It is certainly my home run post. Everyone has a home run post inside them. Rhonda’s is a little post about blueberry muffins, which has surprisingly attracted thousands of hits. When you write it, your readership will take off.
Write useful content. A vague assertion, I know. But if your information isn’t useful, practical, or somehow noteworthy and interesting, no one will subscribe. Part of the appeal of sites like Lifehacker and The Blog Herald is that they provide useful information.

Bonus Tip: If you want quick exposure, write a guest post for my blog. Simply contact me and send me either your post or an idea for one.

photo by cogdogblog