Change Archive

Communicating to change lives: communication design

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Because the pathway to reason integrates the emotional and the mind comprehends through images, as incarnators of the message of Jesus, Christians have to be cognizant of the communication experience.

Traditional communication design has historically focused on the idea of transmission.  The goal has been to “define the conditions that must be met to create a clear message.”[1] Research has, however, revealed that cognitive styles, culture, emotional states, and other dimensions affect the way people deal with information.  Communication, then, deals not only with transmission but interpretation, and as such, communication clarity has become relative; there is no one way to make communications clear for everyone.[2]

Focus has now shifted to the idea of communication design, where the focus is now on the audience.  “The task of the designer, therefore, is not that of translating with a view to transmitting, but that of creating ‘a space,’ a space where people engage with a message, and develop their interpretations.  In others words, designers create conditions that favor the interpretation of a message in a certain – approximately – predictable direction.”[3]

Part of doing that is creating frames for a person’s perceptions, understanding and actions.  Framing is the placing of the message in a context for meaning.  It is a schema for the interpretation of meaning.[4]  This is necessary because people “only understand things that relate to things they already understand…Our previous knowledge provides us with tools for building the frames that will help us acquire new knowledge.”[5]  The struggle for a communications designer then is to create appropriate frames and be conscious of the cultural differences that change the meaning of the message.

A biblical example of this can be found in the organization of the Bible itself. The Bible opens with creation and closes with re-creation. The whole Bible is framed as creation/re-creation. Humanity in the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a garden. Salvation, wholeness and peace are found as people move back into the garden. The center of the Bible is the crucifixion, which indicates that the way back to re-creation is the cross. There are many more examples of reframing, those are just a few.

The frame is important for communication, but space is also important.  For the past several decades, designed space was focused on consumptive activities.  However, new design spaces are emerging.  One is what designers are calling experience space where the focus is on doing and using.  There is also the adapting space where activities include adapting, modifying, and filling in things in a personal manner.[6]  Both of these are emerging from a shift from a consumptive to a creative culture.

People are not sitting passively and enjoying, they are participating and doing. There is interaction.

What this means is that the communicator needs to learn to build “scaffolding for experiencing.  A scaffold is a special type of communicational space, one that supports and affords creative behavior.”[7]  The essence of this scaffolding is interactivity.  Designers create environments where people can interact, adapt and create their own experience within the greater space.  Doing so releases control from the designers hands and frees the creativity, learning style, preferences of the individual, personalizing the communicative activity, and creating a meaningful experience for the individual.[8]

NOTES:

[1] Jorge Frascara, Designing Effective Communications: Creating Contexts for Clarity and Meaning (New York: Allworth Press, 2006), xiv.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Richard Bandler and others, Reframing: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning (Moab, Utah: Real People Press, 1982), 1.

[5] Frascara, vi.

[6] Ibid, 72.

[7] Ibid, 73.

[8] Ibid.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Communication that creates change: an introduction

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Within culture, people are devoting less and less time to community events, relationships and church gatherings.  Ministers in many settings have only the Sunday morning gathering to create an environment for the timeless truth of God to be made real in the life of a person.  Despite the reality that it is ultimately the responsibility of the Spirit to bring change in the life of a person, churches need to develop worship gatherings where the environment is effectively designed for the transmission of the life-changing message of the Cross.  Doing so requires an understanding of how the mind processes information and how to design environments for communication.

The majority of texts on preaching deal more with structure and form in preparation and delivery of the sermon rather than teaching future preachers communication theory as well as helping them understand how meaning, reality, and language are developed and interpreted.[1]  The course of action within many seminaries is to teach the construction of sermons, not to communicate with the group they are addressing.  “We are teaching people how to put together sermons, not to communicate,” noted one professor of preaching.[2]

As less and less time is given by people to the gathering of the church and the communication of the Word of God, more and more emphasis needs to be given to the act of communication itself.  Communicators need to understand how a person constructs reality, understanding language and how those are important to the change process.   Preaching and communicating in a church or worship setting in not simply a matter of a stylistic or formulaic development of a talk, but integrating the message of God to a specific group of people who understand and see life and reality in specific ways.  Communication thus requires understanding the context so that not only does communication take place, but when it does that it does not inhibit or deter the work of the Spirit in addressing behavioral issues which need to be changed.

The master communicator in all of history is a part of the Godhead himself, namely Jesus Christ.  If he was the master communicator, and the creator and sustainer of all things[3], then a reasonable understanding of his communication practices should also be addressed.  His words and communication elements, intersected with the power of the Holy Spirit, have brought about the transformation of the masses.

Combining and understanding of all of these will allow the communicator to make the best use of his time to communicate in a meaningful way and create an environment where the Spirit can integrate the message from the messenger and the timeless truth of the Gospel to see behavioral change in the lives of people.

Notes:

[1] This is an observation based on a perusal of more than thirty texts on preaching from my own library.

[2] Email conversation with Dr. Argile Smith, then Professor of Preaching at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2001.

[3] See Colossians 1:15-20.

Popularity: 4% [?]

How denominations stifle creativity

CreativityI saw this from a lifehack post entitled How to stifle your creativity in 10 easy steps and I thought, “hmm…I’m seeing this from folks in my denomination and from those in denominational leadership.” So I’m posting a few relevant ones for you.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Characteristics of Gridlocked Systems

Failure of NervesI’ve been reading A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin H. Friedman, in preparation for my doctoral dissertation. This book is about how emotional processes are what need to be engaged when thinking about leadership and change within an organization, not logic, reason, or methodology.

Friedman, in the first chapter on “Imaginative Gridlock” deals with the characteristics of a gridlocked system, and there are three:

1. An unending treadmill of trying harder;
2. Looking for answers rather than reframing questions; and
3. either/or thinking that creates false dichotomies.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

It’s Over

I have just uploaded my last research paper before I begin my dissertation. The title of the paper was Designing Communications that Effect Change. I look at how the brain construct our reality, how meaning is constructed, how the brain processes information, and elements of communication that bring behavioral change. I discovered that reason is emotionally constructed (we are emotional beings who think, not the other way around), and thus not nearly effective as stories that touch the heart. We learn predominantly through images, and as a result are all innate semioticians, as the brain processes through neural imagery.

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Popularity: 2% [?]