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technical made simple
Anyone can explain something in a complicated way. Making it simple without making it stupid is the real feat of engineering — and the rarest.
the gap that isn't one
the starting pointThere is a cliché that clings like coffee stains on a whiteboard: creatives handle the colourful, engineers handle the true. The truth is less comfortable: the gap is not a gap at all. It is an excuse — for both sides.
Because the hardest task in communication is neither the beautiful nor the correct. It is the comprehensible. Explaining a highly complex subject so that an expert nods and a layperson understands is not a matter of diligence. It is a discipline of its own — and the people who know the most are often the worst at it. Not out of arrogance, but because of a cognitive defect that research has measured with remarkable precision.
the curse of knowledge
curse of knowledgeThe economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein and Martin Weber first described it in 1989: once you hold a piece of information, you can no longer put yourself in the position of someone who does not. Knowledge cannot be switched off. It sits in your head and insists that everyone else knows it too.
The finest illustration came in 1990 from the Stanford psychologist Elizabeth Newton. She split her subjects into tappers and listeners. The tappers chose a well-known song and tapped its rhythm on a tabletop; the listeners were to guess the song. Beforehand, the tappers estimated how often they would succeed.
The tappers expected a hit rate of 50 per cent. In fact the listeners recognised 2.5 per cent — three out of 120 songs.
The reason is revealing: while the tapper taps, they hear the full melody in their head, with lyrics, harmony, instruments. The listener hears none of it — only a few disconnected taps, like a bizarre morse code. Exactly this happens when a developer explains their software, an engineer their turbine, an accountant their structuring idea. They hear the melody. Their audience hears tapping.
jargon is a curtain
not competenceThe reflex with which experts try to bridge the gap usually deepens it: technical language. Acronyms, abbreviations, terms that activate a whole web of meaning in the speaker's head — and nothing at all in the listener's. Where the expert calls up a rich field of associations, the newcomer is left with an empty piece of vocabulary. Two people, the same word, no shared picture.
The error runs deep: many believe jargon signals authority. Research says the opposite. Studies in science communication show that avoiding technical jargon raises comprehension, strengthens perceived competence and even earns the speaker more goodwill. Plain language does not make you sound less clever — it makes you more credible.
How consequential the curse becomes in practice is clear from a look at medical practices: research shows that doctors routinely overestimate their patients' understanding by 20 to 30 per cent. The result is missed doses, missed appointments, avoidable complications. In business, that damage has another name: lost customer.
simplifying is not omitting
condensingSimple does not mean simplistic. Simplifying a subject does not mean leaving out half of it and hoping nobody asks. It means exposing the core so that it holds up without ballast — which presupposes that you have found the core at all.
That is exactly why real simplification is so hard: it demands deeper understanding, not shallower. You have to have worked through a subject completely to know what can be cut without losing substance. Simplification is condensing, not diluting.
Anyone who has truly understood a subject can explain it to a child. Anyone who has only memorised it hides behind technical terms.
This is the point where creation and engineering stop being opponents. Technical understanding delivers the core. Creative translation delivers the form in which that core can travel — as an image, an analogy, a story that stays in the mind because it makes you feel something. One without the other is either correct and boring or charming and wrong.
context beats content
the shift in perspectiveWhy does the tapper fail? Not because they say too little, but because they keep in their head the context the listener would need. Without context, even correct information is just noise. The listener gets fragments and no connection — and a brain that cannot make a connection switches off.
For any brand selling something complex — a technology, a method, a piece of software, an engineered product — that is the actual job: supply the context the audience does not have. Not more facts, but the one frame in which the facts make sense. The best explanation starts not with what you know yourself but with what the other person does not yet know.
no fog
takeawayThere is a comfortable form of failure that disguises itself as professionalism: buzzword bingo. Empty superlatives, inflated promises, sentences that claim a great deal and say nothing. They usually arise not from bad intent but from insecurity — unable to grasp the core, people circle it with words. Fog is easier than clarity.
Clarity, by contrast, is a decision. It means committing yourself, becoming assailable, giving up the protective noise. It is less comfortable — and precisely for that reason more effective. A message that is clear can be contradicted. But it can also be understood, shared and remembered. And only what is understood can persuade.
That is the attitude behind “technical made simple”. Not a sacrifice of depth but the nerve to make depth accessible. The recognition that the hardest translation is not the one between two languages but the one between two levels of knowledge. Anyone can talk in complications. Being understood is the real achievement.
Sources
- 01Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G. & Weber, M. (1989): “The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings”, Journal of Political Economy, 97(5).
- 02Newton, E. L. (1990): “The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions”, dissertation, Stanford University — the tappers-and-listeners experiment.
- 03Heath, C. & Heath, D. (2007): “Made to Stick” — the curse of knowledge applied to communication.
- 04Birch, S. A. J. & Bloom, P. (2007): “The Curse of Knowledge in Reasoning About False Beliefs”, Psychological Science, 18(5), 382–386.
- 05Bullock, O. M. et al. / Baram-Tsabari, A. et al.: research on jargon in science communication and processing fluency.
- 06Studies on doctor–patient communication: overestimation of patient understanding by 20 to 30 %.
- 07CXL / BPS Research Digest: “The Curse of Knowledge” — applied to marketing and customer experience.
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