Jargon 30–3–30 Challenge
Explain a piece of jargon in 30 seconds, 3 minutes, and 30 minutes.
Jargon: special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.
Challenge Summary
- 30 Seconds: explain jargon with a felt pen on a wide sticky note.
- 3 Minutes: explain jargon with an infographic or short article that can be read in 3 minutes.
- 30 Minutes: teach something about that jargon in a 30 minute hands-on workshop.
Why? To Build Shared Understanding
Ever been in a meeting and you hear words that you don’t understand and everyone else seems to? Ever hear a word used “wrong” by someone else? Maybe it’s time to step back and and do a team exercise to understand what in the world everyone does.
There are many ways you and your team could identify what jargon needs to be unpacked. You could do a team affinity diagram of what everyone does (using normal sticky notes), and along the way have people call out jargon words (on wide sticky notes) that they don’t understand. Write the jargon word at the top of the wide sticky note, and post it up for someone else to fill in a sticky note sized explanation.
30–3–30 Format
This is a common format used for a pitch, just reframed for creating shared understanding of a jargon instead of share understanding of an idea. Jargon could be considered an idea… but I digress…
30 Second Wide Sticky Note
Also known as the elevator pitch. Writing it down on a sticky note with a bold felt pen helps you explain the jargon briefly. People ramble when they talk, so writing it down makes it easier to make jargon more concrete. Use your own words, keep it simple, and don’t sweat it. It’s just a sticky note.
3 Minute Infographic or Article
Okay, now you can start sweating it. It takes effort to make an effective short article or infographic. The 3 minutes is for audience, not you the author. It should only take them 3 minutes to read and get some more understanding about the jargon.
30 Minute Hands-On Workshop
This is the fun part! Imagine how you would teach people about this jargon with a hands-on activity in only 30 minutes. Sometimes you might be able to teach the actual method described by the jargon, sometimes you might need to abstract the concept and think about how an elementary school teacher would teach a topic to a class of 1st graders.
30–3–30 Goal
The goal is to transition from reading to doing to build a deeper shared understanding through a shared experience (the workshop). Along the way, you are building your own deeper understanding by teaching about the jargon. Then the next time someone asks you to explain the jargon in a meeting, you will effortlessly explain it in 30 seconds, and be able to point them to a short article if they want to learn more offline.
Benefits
The primary reason to do this is for your team, however much of the benefit is actually for you:
- Create shared understanding with your team, to make it easier to work together.
- Practice communication design with creating an infographic.
- Practice effective writing with a concise article.
- Practice facilitation with workshop.
- Create external presence by sharing online.
- Practice speaking (video record the workshop so you can review yourself later, and share it online).
Share Your 30–3–30 Jargon Challenge
If you participate in this challenge, please share a link to your 3 minute article or infographic in the comments below!
Thanks for reading! I came up with this exercise while driving in to work (commute time is good thinking time). I’m planning on proposing this to my team for a monthly jargon workshop to keep up the momentum from our team face-to-face where we built our affinity diagram with wide jargon stickies.
If you liked this and want to encourage me to keep sharing these types of exercises, please give it some claps! 👏
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Design Strategy, User Experience Design, Interaction Design
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