The thing I stopped explaining and started showing

I used to explain my product. Long paragraphs about what it does, why it matters, how it fits into a workflow. I was proud of those explanations and nobody read them.

Then I started showing it. One screen, one action, one result. No preamble. And people understood it in three seconds in a way that four paragraphs had never managed.

The lesson was not that explanations are bad. It was that I was using words to do work that a single demonstration could do better. I was explaining because it was easier than designing something that needed no explanation.

I still catch myself doing it. When something is not landing, my instinct is to write more words around it. The better instinct is to wonder why it needs the words at all.

Do you explain your work more than you show it? And what happened when you stopped explaining?