The 1 Trillion dollar story

Web design is like advertising - it's about selling something to someone. 
Designers are given a task of translating a businesses information into a story that can translate to an intended user via a single page or multiple pages. It's basically a visual story about a product or information; a story to help the viewer understand what they're viewing.

But what happens when the story doesn't translate to the intended viewer? Well, you lose the viewer.

It's like the words "1 Trillion dollars". It means something to everyone. That "thing" is usaually a lot of money! But that's where our understanding to most things ends...unless we can relate to that word or story.

 

I recently watched a Ted talk by Richard Saul Wurman. He told a story about 1 Trillion dollars which I thought was brilliant. Like most people I've seen the words "1 Trillion dollars" but never thought anything about it as it didn't relate to anything that I understood. Below is my translation of the 1 Trillion dollar story.

A family opens a bakery in the year 1 and each day they lose 1 million dollars, so in the 1st year (365 days) they've lose 365 million dollars. If that family was still alive in the year 2012 they still wouldn't have managed to lose 1 Trillion dollars. That bakery would need to remain open till the year 2738 to lose 1 Trillion dollars. 

So how does this relate to web design? Easy; like the story above when we design web pages we need to make sure the intend user understands the product via a clear and relatable story.