This blog post uses the joy of making coffee to explain how we condense research from 10,000 words (i.e. the original research, the coffee beans) to 1,000 words (i.e. filtered coffee!)
Let´s start!

Two main activities underpin what we do: we condense research and visualise it. Project management is the glue that ties everything together. Thus, all our projects require a Project Manager (PM), a Research Communicator (RC) and a Graphic Designer (GD), collaborating with a Client.

Please indulge us in accepting these terms:

So this is our process:

The final text version, in our case purified filtered coffee, becomes the basis of a visual output, such as Infographics, Visual Summaries, Policy Briefs, Illustrations and Infocomics.
Read more about our overall process in the blog post What does it mean to ‘retell research’?

Step 1: THE PM CREATES A ‘COFFEE FILTER’ (The PM asks the Client five questions)

People often ask me how we’re able to condense research reports when we are not experts in that field. My answer is always that that is precisely why we’re able to do what we do.
You see, when you are an expert in a field, you become desensitised to jargon. You become used to words like ‘conceptualised’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘methodology’ or other specific abbreviations.
The benefit of working with someone outside of your research area is that you have to unpack and simplify that language.
The mere act of explaining your research and answering questions in a non-technical way organises your thinking and clarifies the main messages in your head.
To do this, the PM has a short-and-sweet call with the Client to go through five questions that:
– Serve a specific purpose;
– Ensure we don’t miss the mark on what needs to be condensed;
– Provide a frame of reference for us and the Client throughout the process.

The ‘Coffee Filter’

The answers to these five questions form the ‘Coffee Filter’:
1) What key information do you want the reader to absorb about the project from this summary?
This question frames the narrative and focuses our efforts to condense the research. The research team can steer the content and main messages as they already know what the most important findings are.
2) Out of the sections contained in the report (if any) which are the ones that you would/wouldn’t want to have as separate sections in the summary?
This question deals with the structure of the document. We are sense-checking to see whether the report’s structure could be partially used. The Methodology section is often removed but others may apply depending on the aim of the summary.
3) How do you want the audience to think about the project after they read this briefing note?
This question puts us in the shoes of the reader and helps us think of the end goal of reading the summary.
4) What is your normative stance on the project? Do you think the research is going well and do you want people to think that, or do you think the project is not going well and an intervention is needed?
This question frames the research and gives it an overall normative direction.
5) What tone of voice should the briefing note be in? How (in)formal does the language need to be?
This question dictates the tone of the document.
Using these answers, the RC can now condense the research from ±10,000 to ±1,000 words.

Step 2: THE RC ‘GRINDS THE BEANS AND FILTERS THE COFFEE’ (The RC reads the report and processes it through the Client’s five answers)

At this stage, the RC reads the full report in a quiet place, gets immersed into the research, absorbs the information, processes it through the Client’s five answers and creates a <1000 word summary.
We allocate 2-3 days for this and present a first version of the text to the Client in a Word or Google Document.
This step is hugely satisfying for our RCs. In her own words, Victoria says:

“I immerse myself in the context of the narrative and dissect its technical construction to identify gaps or spaces that allow me to get creative, and to see whether and how to tell the same story differently or to tell a different story using the same evidence.
It is technical because it requires zooming in on the linkages between words/sentences and their meanings/messages. Yet, it is ultimately creative as any space or vulnerability identified between these two things is ceased upon to reconfigure the narrative.”

Step 3: THE CLIENT, PM AND RC ‘PURIFY THE COFFEE’ (The Client, PM and RC use feedback opportunities to polish the text)

Based on the first version, the Client, PM and RC use three to four feedback opportunities to polish the text. Our aim is to achieve a version of the text that the Client is 100% happy with. 
We are always ready for a phone call or Skype to clarify any misunderstanding quickly and efficiently.
The PM facilitates this feedback loop in two ways:
– To act as an interface between the Client and the RC
– To ensure quality control (i.e. that feedback is properly communicated and implemented)
At the end of these feedback opportunities, we usually have a 2-page, approx. 1,000 words or less that can be transformed into a visual output.

Conclusion

To condense research the Project Manager asks the Client five questions, the Research Communicator reads the report and processes it through the Client’s five answers and, finally, the Client, Project Manager and Research Communicator use feedback opportunities to polish the text
We enjoy this process and are always excited to learn and condense research!
What do you think of our process? Did the coffee analogy make it easier to understand?