ABSTRACT
This book is not about how to motivate behavior change, which many others cover in detail. This book focuses on the role of communication in building understanding. It is about how understanding can be nurtured and ideas can be made more clear. Effective communication begins with an understanding of how the human brain works, then uses practical skills grounded in this understanding. After we build some knowledge of cognitive psychology and perception, we can learn practical approaches to good communication from a range of specialties, including how storytellers reach audiences, how interpreters design museum exhibits, how environmental designers facilitate wayfinding, how graphic designers lay out pages, how information designers make graphs and diagrams, how trial lawyers communicate to juries, how web designers make useful websites, and how writers and speakers of all sorts communicate clearly. In the course of this book we will try to understand not only what approaches are effective but why they work as they do.
