Talk: WebVisions 2010: Kevin Cheng: See What I Mean: How To Use Comics To Communicate Ideas

See What I Mean: How To Use Comics To Communicate Ideas
Kevin Cheng, Designer, Yahoo! Pipes (now Product Manager at Twitter?)
WebVisions 2010, Portland, OR

http://bit.ly/swimbook
http://delicious.com/kevnull/seewhatimean
http://seewhatimean.org

Twitter: @k (wow, that's a cool Twitter handle)

His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/kevnull/communicating-concepts-through-comics

This was another great talk at WebVisions, about the richness of information that can be conveyed by comics, as opposed to real pictures.  My takeaways:

(Courtesy: Disney, Corp)

• This reminded me of how effective even my crudely drawn comics have been in terms of conveying a story, especially involving designs that involve multiple stakeholders.
• I was startled by Kevin's examples of how much meaning can be conveyed by even stick-figure faces.  Think about WALLY, and how expressive his emotions were, given that he only had basically eyestalks/eyebrows to communicate with.

My talk notes below:

• Why Comics?
  • Communication
  • Imagination
  • Expression
  • Motion
• All you need is eyebrows and mouth!  (See Wall-E example above, and how expressive he is!)
• Comics are amazing at conveying just the important things in UI (instead of screenshots)
• Comics are low-fidelity: check out his Slide 46 that shows the spectrum of representations of Kevin Cheng
• Comics can add so much meaning to phrases such as “thank you” and “I’m sorry” (Slide 52)
  • Showed 8 panels x 2 to show how much more expressive it is than even “he said ‘thank you’ sarcastically”
  • Showed eight examples of those phrases with different expressions, demonstrating concepts like resentment, anger, sarcasm, exuberance, gratitude, etc...
• Comics can also convey time, using panels, colors, etc...
  • When Confabulator got bought by Yahoo!, they told their story in comics
• When To Use Comics
  • If you’re a leader: Distill a vision and share it across the organization
  • Marketers: Get the attention of potential clients and customers
  • Engineers and Designers: Crystalize problems and solutions and get team feedback
• Before a project starts, you can use comics to...
  • Set goalposts: follow a vision
  • Share with execs: to get sponsorship and buy in
  • Validate ideas: with potential users
  • Even combine with things like swim lanes: comic timeline is on top, mapped to swimlanes on bottom
• After the project completes, you can use comics to...
  • Present research that you did
  • Example: Evangeline Haughney from Adobe
  • Use it to market the finished product
  • "At Raptr, we double the number of signups with comics (tested with A/B)"
  • "At Nectar: the front page of the website was a comic.  It was low fidelity:"  Essentially it said, “if you want to create a website, holy moly, it’s done five menutes later” – more effectively communicated than any bullets
• You can draw!
  • Common excuses: “I can’t draw.”  “I don’t want to hire an illustrator”
  • Exercise:
    • Draw a person at computer, and another user who’s been waiting for too long
    • You may not want to put on home page, but it is very effective for internal communcation
  • You can trace!
    • It’s much better to trace than to just take photos
    • It’s better to be abstract
  • Mitigates internal giggling reaction when people see photos: “Oh, there’s the picture of Kevin pretending to be at a coffee shop.”
• Other options to generate comics
  • Even use avatars
    • "I tried it out. http://avatars.yahoo.com"
    • Generated Mack Daddy Kevin, skateboarder Kevin, depressed Manhattanite: all with same avatar, but with different backgrounds
  • Use professional artists: too expensive
  • Bitstrips: pretty powerful (http://bitstrips.com) but he doesn’t like the art style
  • Wally Woods: "22 Panels That Always Works"
    • These are 22 archetypal panels that can be used to tell almost any story: http://joeljohnson.com/2009/wally-woods-22-panels-that-always-work-unlimited-edition
    • It’s the 22 ways that people talk to each other
  • Kevin created 12 panels of interacting with computers
  • Sun Microsystems had some comic tool: but too close to reality/photos
  • Comic Life (a utility that used to be included with the Mac)
    • Intended for family photos, but you can use it for drawings and layout tools
  • Best for last: Pixton: online tool (http://pixton.com/)
    • Wow, watching him use the tool, it looks easier than creating a Mii!
    • "They’re targeting it being used as a technical tool"
    • “I hope these guys stick around, because it’s amazing and great.”
  • Alias Sketchbook: “a pretty cool tool on the iPad”

Comments

[Steve Kaplan]

Gene,

Thanks for the post - great information. I personally started using comics to tell the Citrix WinFrame story in the mid 1990s when I ran a solutions integrator. In fact, I sent a comic book to then Citrix president, Mark Templeton. He was out of the office, but his admin opened his mail. When he returned she told him, "Now I finally understand what we do."

Comic books also helped put my next company on the map, another solutions integrator focused on VMware. Here is a link to the comic books we published http://www.accessflow.com/virtualman.php