Communicating stuff

We’ve just used the Newspaperclub newspaper to report on the learnings for a project we did called My Life As An Object. We think it works really well as a way to get people reading stuff, partly due to the form factor (people are used to newspapers, rather than A4 bound reports or Powerpoint print outs) and partly to the sense of timeliness that’s imbued in the paper itself.  This is now, or nowish, rather than something destined to go on a shelf and gather dust.  Newspapers decay quite fast and that is good, because the value of information does too.

I’ve never really understood why research outputs are generally so heavy and dry and demand so much of the reader.  We should treat findings and recommendations the same way we’d treat any other narrative, and look at the best way to communicate it to the audience.

So, we’re thinking of doing more of our research outputs as newspapers using ARTHR, together with short form videos (sub 3 minutes) summarising the findings and the (design) implications.

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