Services

What We Look For

We assess against five common failure patterns:

• -The Expert's Explanation - Opens with definitions, assumes knowledge the audience lacks
• -The Data Dump - Everything presented at equal weight, no hierarchy or progression
• -The Beautiful Confusion - Visually impressive, conceptually unclear
• -The Boring Textbook - Accurate but no hook, no engagement
• -The Wrong Audience - Vocabulary or detail level mismatched to readers

Plus cognitive load analysis, visual encoding assessment, and progression mapping.

What You Get

Audit report identifying specific issues and opportunities. 2-3 redesigned samples demonstrating improved approaches. Prioritised recommendations covering quick wins and structural changes.

Our Process

We don't start with visual style. We start with the information gap: What does your audience already know? What do they need to understand? What's the shortest path between those two states?

From there: audience analysis (expertise level, context, time constraints, what they'll do with the understanding), concept mapping (identifying dependencies, sequencing from concrete to abstract), visual strategy (choosing the right encoding for each type of information), progressive disclosure (layering complexity so readers aren't overwhelmed), and production (final outputs calibrated to your channels and contexts).

What You Get

Research synthesis and information architecture. Visual system including illustration style, colour palette, typography, and diagram conventions. Production files in the formats you need. Documentation for internal teams.

The Problem

Traditional explanations force a choice: optimise for one audience and lose everyone else, or compromise with a middle-ground that serves no one well. Research shows that techniques helping novices can actively harm expert comprehension, and vice versa.

Our Approach

We design explanation systems that adapt to your audience. The right implementation depends on your content, your audiences, and your technical environment:

What You Get

Audience research identifying distinct user segments and their knowledge profiles. Content architecture designed for adaptation. Technical implementation appropriate to your platform. Analytics showing how different audiences engage.

Why This Matters

Every adaptive system generates data: what level users select, how they perform on assessment questions, where they use shortcuts versus expansions. This feeds back into refinement. Your explanation gets better over time.

When Interaction Adds Value

Not everything benefits from interactivity. It works best when the concept has parameters readers might want to vary, when different starting conditions lead to different outcomes, when understanding requires building intuition through experimentation, or when personalisation is part of the insight.

What We Build

Explorable explanations where readers manipulate variables and see consequences. Data tools that let users filter to their specific situation. Calculators that make abstract relationships concrete. Simulations that compress time or reveal hidden dynamics.

Technical Range

From embedded widgets within existing pages to full standalone web applications. React, D3.js, Observable, Three.js. We match technology to the problem.