Four Ws: WHO. Is doing WHAT. To WHOM. And WHY?
In my very first class of my very first day of college (Haverford), Microecon Prof Mike Weinstein (Stanford) explained to the class how he wanted us to write for our weekly quizzes and exams (paraphrase):
Every time you apply theory, I want to hear who is doing what to whom and why. If you can’t bring the theory down to real human interaction then you don’t understand the theory. And any theory that can be used to explain who is doing what to whom and why is useless.(*)
I am increasingly saying this phrase to nearly everyone I work with and talk to about marketing and design. There are so many words in both fields that put us as at a distance from the people we’re trying to talk to, interact with, sell stuff to, etc. More there are so many dynamics that we’ve captured in our labels that we’ve lost track of the dynamic or missed that the dynamic has changed. Finally, thinking in terms of these five Ws makes us write better sentences.
(*) This was in 1983 before maths took over large portions of the field and the ability to prove that y-markets containing n-commodities where n and y can go on to infinity can reach a state of equilbirium and growth (Walrasian equilibrium if I remember correctly) was a great feat.
September 24th, 2009 at 12:44 am
[...] If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough — emphasis mine. The ability to communicate simply and clearly is something we all praise (and that I’ve praised here) or at least give lip service to. What I love about this is that it places the onus on the person — if you can’t do it, you’re not that good at it. [...]