What We Do
We produce media, such as illustrations, animations, videos, websites and interactive apps.
Our goal with all the media we produce is to give the user a genuine understanding of the concept, or research, portrayed.
Check out our favourite creations here.
Why We Do It
Fundamental research has intrinsic value. We want people to be excited about research, not just because it might improve their lives, but because they feel part of the journey of discovery.
Therefore, for us, sharing research effectively requires more than just creating the thought that “clever researchers are doing important things”. It means creating the thought that “ahh, wow, I get it”. It requires situations where someone can ask “hmm, but what if this happens?” and find out the answer, ideally themselves.
Our Niche
Our role is to bring a researcher’s vision into reality by first understanding their vision clearly and then:
- Finding the best studios and designers for the job,
- Advocating for the researcher in negotiations with the designers,
- Consulting on the science to aid the designers without taking up the researcher’s time, and
- Managing the overall project, to let the researcher do the research and the designer do the designing.
At Effective Research Sharing we are all researchers with long research careers behind us, so we get the science and we know what researchers want. Our model of having researchers being the advocates, consultants and managers for a project, means that the researcher’s interests are always the top concern. And, because of this model, we are also always free to find the best designers for the job, not just whoever is available in-house.
Our Favourite Creations
The Hunt for Dark Matter web app
The Hunt for Dark Matter depicts the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, and shows how we use this to find where dark matter is in the universe. The app starts with an interactive tutorial and ends with a puzzle game that is a cross between Battleships and Minesweeper. The user's goal is to find hidden dark matter by carefully observing its effect on nearby galaxies.
Having an engaging puzzle game forces the player to think about what they've learned and put it into action. If they haven't learned and really understood how dark matter gravitationally lenses the images of galaxies they cannot win the game.
Testing has shown us that when people race through the tutorial too fast the existence of the game forces to go back and replay the tutorial at a slower pace, to gain the knowledge required to solve the puzzles. They then come away with a genuine understanding of gravitational lensing.
The Hunt for Dark Matter was funded by grants from the European Research Council, The Royal Society, La Caixa and CNRS. If you're funded by any of these agencies, you can fund a similar project about your research!
Te Ao Marama video with Stated Clearly
It is very difficult to make a video about new research that actually achieves what the researcher wants it to achieve. Firstly, if the video is to achieve anything, it needs to actually be watched. But, it also needs to give the watcher some genuine understanding of the new research. The problem is not just making a video about research engaging enough to keep someone's attention, it is also convincing people to start watching the video in the first place.
Jon Perry at Stated Clearly is rare in that he can achieve this feat. He produces videos that educate a large number of viewers, successfully, about modern research topics.
We worked with Jon to produce a video for the Te Ao Marama Centre for Fundamental Inquiry at Auckland University about their research. The video covers the differences between DNA and RNA, and what this means for their possible primordial origins. It is everything we expected from a channel like Stated Clearly: engaging, interesting, accurate, and effective at conveying the concepts Te Ao Marama wanted conveyed.
Tens of thousands of people now know about Te Ao Marama and their research, and have a better understanding of the possible origins of these essential molecules for complex life.
Our Favourite People to Work With
TestTubeGames
Andy Hall at TestTubeGames is irreplaceable.
Somehow Andy manages to be capable of understanding very complex physics concepts, and able to programme games and engines to simulate the complex physics in a web browser. And, on top of all of this, he can design games and experiences that are fun and engaging and require the user to really think about the science to advance.
His game Velocity Raptor simulates special relativity in a 2D web game. The game happens to be a lot of fun, but also requires the player to really think about special relativity in order to solve the puzzles and complete the levels.
When we first saw VelocityRaptor we realised we have to help make more of this in the world.
There are many other excellent games and ‘explorable explanations’ at Andy’s site, giving the player a genuine understanding of the Higgs particle, electromagnetism, gravity, why astronauts ‘float’, and how a swing works (not how most of us think!)
Stated Clearly
Jon Perry at Stated Clearly fills a niche on YouTube that is occupied by very few others. There are very cool, very popular science YouTube channels that aim to inform, or amaze, you about things you will immediately be excited about. But not many of them get deep into the details of the underlying science, and current research, while remaining popular. Jon manages to cover a topic like the difference between RNA and DNA, and their possible origins, articulating all the details with careful illustrations, and still emerge with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Jon won’t rest until he thinks he really has dissected the topic well enough that he can State (and visualise) it clearly in the final video. He is a perfectionist on this front and it shows in the high quality of his videos.
Sayo Studio
Nicolle Fuller and the team at Sayo Studio produce visually stunning illustrations and animations, depicting and explaining science content. They care deeply about visualising science, and getting the minor details right, while not losing anything in the visual appeal – a very tough tightrope to walk.
They are great at taking a researcher’s idea and vision for a graphic, or animation, and not just implementing it, but improving it too. After anyone else would have said “good enough” they will carry on, trying to get the project closer to perfection, while still getting everything done in a timely manner.
