Stop Searching for a Happy Medium

In my last post I made the claim that you should write the nerd report. After that, you can break it down for other people.

So that suggests there are two types of reports, nerd reports & other people reports. But in practice, I think we really see four. Two useful types (nerd reports & other people reports) and two that are not so useful (unhappy medium reports & oversimplified reports).

The differences between the four comes from what I call report design’s uncanny valley.

The Uncanny Valley

The uncanny valley is a concept introduced by Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist in the 70s. It’s basically the idea that as a robot starts to look more like a human there is a point where we start to have a really negative response. It’s why almost human looking robots make good bad guys in horror movies.

Report Design’s Uncanny Valley

Lots of people assume that you can improve a report by making it more digestible. To some extent that’s true, but it can also backfire. Attempting to increase the accessibility of a report can also make it less useful for its original purpose. It’s our version of the uncanny valley

For report design’s uncanny valley I put usefulness on the y axis and nerdiness (how technical it is) on the x axis (from very technical on the left to very simple on the right).

Phase I: Nerd Reports

Thing about nerd reports (super technical stuff), they tend to be really useful for a very small audience. Even if that’s just an audience of one (the person writing it). Slightly reducing how technical it is can improve usefulness, but you can quickly hit a point where it becomes less useful as a nerd report but not yet useful as an other people report.

Phase II: Unhappy Medium Reports

I call the reports that fall into this first uncanny valley (unhappy medium reports). Unfortunately, there are a ton of these in the world of research and evaluation. It’s what happens when people do just enough to make a nerdy report less useful but not enough to make it fully accessible.

Phase III: Other People Reports

Beyond the uncanny valley there is a sweet spot where reports get useful again. A good report in this area is accessible enough to be easily read and consumed but technical enough to be trusted. This area is filled with blog posts, simple videos, slidedocs, one pagers, presentations, infographics, and good executive summaries.

Phase IV: Oversimplified Reports

Now if you keep going from here there is another dip. This is the spot where the report goes from useful to patronizing and oversimplifying. This area is filled with generic takeaways and simplistic stats.

In Short: Stop Searching for a Happy Medium

Here’s my advice.

If you’ve already written a really technical report or paper, let it stay that way. Nerd reports are useful to backup conversations with your clients and fellow nerds (a.k.a. your peers). Improvements in readability can make the nerd paper slightly more useful but it can also backfire, reducing the value instead of increasing the value. Most of the time, it’s not worth it.

If you haven’t created any one-pagers, executive summaries, policy briefs, slide docs, or blog posts, that’s your next priority. This is adaptation, not editing. The nerd report is still there to go through all the details. While these reports exist to help you break down the information for all these other audiences.