How do you explain the details of something technical to a non-technical audience?

When writing about technical topics it is often difficult to get across the complexity of a topic without getting "stuck in the weeds" and ultimately leaving the audience confused or disinterested. Particularly when the audience lacks the necessary background to explain the topic in it's own terms (e.g. explaining the usage of a certain type of cryptography to management or end-users).

What techniques can you use to help explain the important parts of a topic, and possibly introducing the relevant jargon, while keeping such an audience engaged?

Answer

When explaining concepts of any kind to an audience unfamiliar with the knowledge domain, the following methods are highly effective:

• analogy & metaphor - compare (albeit inexactly) what this thing does to how that thing does whatever (in computer software, hardware, and services (among other fields), there is the ever-present "car comparison")


• stories - humans are highly story-oriented beings (it's used in selling, teaching, programming, history, math, etc etc)


• the three pitches (there are variations, like this one, too):
  
  
  
  • 30 second :: aka "elevator pitch" - get someone excited enough to want to keep listening/reading
  
  
  • 300 second :: you've got their attention, don't lose it; go into a little more detail - but don't overwhelm
  
  
  • 30 minute :: you really want people to buy-into what you're telling them
  
  
  
  
  

Communication is like selling - it's all about return on investment. And ROI is all based on understanding abstractions (and how they leak). You need to give the reader/listener enough of a promise they're going to get value at least proportional to the time spent consuming what you're trying to convey that they want to stick around.

Guy Kawasaki promulgates the "10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint" (in direct relation to pitching to venture capitalists, but the general premise carries into most other realms well, too):

• no more than 10 slides


• no more than 20 minutes


• no font smaller than size 30

If you cannot convey the core basics of what you want your audience to "get" in a few minutes with [the equivalent of] a few bullet points in an easily-followed (ie "large font") manner, you're [probably] not going to be very successful in "communicating".

Once you've accomplished the levels of "hook" you need to get your audience to want to continue through, keep it up: there will be boring aspects of what you need to convey - don't skip them, don't dwell on them too long, don't lie about them, and don't over-simplify them - but try to make them as short and interesting as you can.