Have you ever seen quizzical faces on the part of your audience when you are delivering your technical presentations? If you do, you may need to explain your technical point differently.

A technical idea that only survives one explanation is a fragile creature.

Below are three different perspectives on how to explain your technical ideas:

Analogy Helps You Surface Hidden Assumptions

When you explain your idea through analogy—“This network behaves like a postal system,” “This algorithm acts like a filter in a kitchen sink”—you force yourself to map the technical concept onto something familiar.

That mental translation exposes what you’ve been taking for granted: constraints, flows, hierarchies. If the analogy collapses, you’ve found a blind spot.

If it works, you unlock instant comprehension for audiences who don’t swim in your jargon pool.

When people hear you speak, they are comparing what you say to their experience. When you align what you are saying with what your audience is familiar with, they understand your message more quickly.

Use analogies liberally in your presentations.

One perspective in which you can explain your technical message is through the use of analogy.

Another is the use of logic flow.

Logic Flow Stress-Tests the Internal Architecture

Explaining your idea as a crisp chain of cause-and-effect (“We start with X… that produces Y… which enables Z…”) reveals whether the reasoning is airtight or leaky.

This method clears away slides, metaphors, and storytelling fluff so you can see the naked skeleton of your argument.

If a step feels murky, you’ve identified where Q&A assassins will pounce.

Strengthen those links now, and you’ll answer questions later without scrambling.

Technical people think in terms of cause and effect. If you show how logical your message is, you will appeal to how technical people think and to how they make sense of the world.

Two perspectives in which you can explain your technical message are through the use of analogy and logical flow

A third perspective is to present real-world examples of your message.

Real-World Application Exposes Practical Limits and Relevance

Walking through a concrete scenario—“Here’s how the system behaves on Monday morning when traffic spikes”—forces you to show how the idea functions under actual working conditions.

Suddenly, constraints appear, edge cases light up, and trade-offs become visible.

This approach also helps audiences see the value of your idea by shifting the conversation from theory to impact. And impact is what Q&A interrogators love to explore.

Real-world applications prove your technical ideas are practical and effective. This is powerful, especially for engineers, since the whole point of engineering is to take theory and show its impact.

The three perspectives in which you can explain your technical message are through the use of (1) analogy, (2) logic flow, and real-world application.

Use these three perspectives to thoroughly explain your message to your audience.

Call to Action

• Use analogies liberally in your presentations to appeal to the experience of your audience

• Explain your technical idea as a crisp chain of cause and effect.

• Use real-world examples to show the impact of your technical ideas.

References

• Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy. Cognitive Science.

• Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press.

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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