Good writing is good product design
What Barbara Minto taught me about breadboards
Over the last couple of years, it has become clear to me how important it is to write well. Most of the time when I try to communicate through writing, the ideas I am trying to convey do not get through to the reader.
I wanted to get better at writing, so I starting looking for people and resources to help me. I had heard the platitude "clear writing is clear thinking" so I searched for the clearest thinker that came to mind. Jeff Bezos.
The key insight that I learned from reading about Jeff Bezos and the communication principles at Amazon is that well structured, narrative text, allows the reader to understand the interconnectedness of ideas.
While this insight did not help my writing in and of itself, it allowed me to think deeper about what the purpose of writing is, and why it’s important. Understanding the interconnection of ideas is pretty much the basis of all we do because the interconnection of ideas is the basis by which we make decisions and take actions. All of a sudden the search to learn how to write better became a search for a way to think about and structure systems of thought better.
Barbara Minto
While Amazon and Jef Bezos expanded my perspective about the purpose of writing, I needed to learn how to translate this new perspective into something useful and practical. After some searching, I found Barabara Minto, the creator of The Minto pyramid principle. Her book is worth reading, but the main point can be summed up as follows. Clear writing follows a pyramid structure, it starts out with one big main abstract idea that raises a question in the reader’s head. You then answer that question logically with your succeeding statements and follow the pattern to a conclusion.
Minto method structure
I started to take Barabara Minto's framework and apply it to all pieces of communication. Regardless of whether that communication was an object, website, app or essay. As I did this it became clear that great product experiences should be like great writing. Easy to understand, useful in answering the audience’s core questions and when done really well, emotionally compelling.
Breadboards x Babara Minto
Breadboards are a tool that product designers use to think about key information to be conveyed, the affordances available and the connection between the two. Although, it has always been unclear to me how to appropriately structure the elements on a breadboard. What comes first? why? User research plays a role here, but user research just gives you insight about what is important or what might be missing, it doesn’t necessarily tell you the structure or unspoken path dependence of the solution.
The Minto pyramid is useful here. Using your insights as a foundation, putting them into the Minto pyramid principle form, and then creating a breadboard based on that structure is a really powerful tool.
The result will be UI interactions that are easy to understand, useful in answering the audiences core questions and when done really well, emotionally compelling.
The Process
Gather your insights
Structure them in the Minto Pyramid Principle Format
Take your Minto Pyramid structure and translate all elements into (a) text (b) affordances
Gather your insights
Gathering insights could be another essay on its own. For this essay, we will just focus on the essentials of insights. You should be able to answer the following questions about your user (audience).
What are the questions they have in mind?
What is the situation (context) that they are in?
What are their biggest struggles?
What are the goals that they are trying to achieve?
What are the relationships between all our info?
Structure into the Minto Pyramid Principle
Structuring into the Minto Pyramid principle asks us to refine our insights. To think critically about how relevant our insights are for the user (audience). We have to look at our insights/data and ask ourselves:
What is the user’s context? what is their situation?
What is their point of confusion? what is the problem they have?
Based on the context/moment in time for the user (audience), what question are we answering in their mind?
What is the answer?
As a result of our answer, what new question arises in the user’s mind?
What is the answer to their new question?
From Minto method book
Translate your Minto Pyramid structure into a breadboard
Lastly, we have to take our Minto pyramid and turn it into a breadboard. The first thing we need to do is take our elements and turn them into one of two variables, text or affordances. Text is information that is only one line, affordances are actions. Once we do that, we can reference our Minto Pyramid to assess how text and actions should be ranked on the interface.
Our breadboard, in the end, will allow us to think a lot more clear about what our UI communicates and how it interconnects with the other "ideas" on the other UIs within the product.