Communication by Design: An Engineer's Guide to Sharing Your Research - Hardcover

Baker, Jack W

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798994527733

Publisher: Coast Range Press, 2026

Synopsis

You don't need to become a charismatic speaker or a gifted writer to be a great communicator. You're already a world-class problem solver. Communication by Design shows you how to apply the systematic design process you already know to your presentations, papers, and proposals, ensuring your best technical work gets the attention it deserves.
Drawing on two decades of experience mentoring researchers at Stanford University, Jack Baker introduces a five-stage, audience-focused design process — Empathize, Define, Brainstorm, Prototype, and Test — and applies it to the communication challenges that define academic careers. From structuring a conference talk to navigating peer review, from designing effective scientific figures to writing a winning grant proposal, each chapter delivers actionable frameworks backed by research and illustrated with real examples.
Whether you're a graduate student preparing your first presentation or an experienced researcher looking to sharpen your impact, this book gives you a repeatable process for communicating complex technical ideas clearly and persuasively.
What you'll learn:

• Why being thorough is not the same as being effective — and what to do instead
• How to structure talks and papers so your core message lands in the first minute
• The design moves that turn confusing figures into clear ones
• How to write scientific papers that survive peer review with fewer revisions
• How to frame grant proposals so reviewers champion your work
• How to give and receive feedback that actually improves the next draft

About this title

About the Author

Jack W. Baker is the William Alden Campbell and Martha Campbell Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, where he has spent two decades teaching researchers how to communicate technical work. He has mentored more than three dozen PhD students and postdocs through hundreds of papers, talks, and proposals, and his workshops on writing, presenting, and publishing have reached tens of thousands of researchers worldwide.
He is Editor-in-Chief of Earthquake Spectra, has served on the editorial boards of five engineering and science journals, and has reviewed thousands of manuscripts — giving him an unusually direct view of what separates research that lands from research that gets overlooked. His previous book, Seismic Hazard and Risk Analysis, was a PROSE Awards finalist. At Stanford, he received the Eugene L. Grant Award for excellence in teaching, and his citation for the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's Shah Family Innovation Prize credited him with "a unique gift in rendering easily understood, even by non-technical audiences, the most intricate of concepts."
He recently served as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

From the Back Cover

Communicate as effectively as you research.
Most researchers communicate by mimicking the dense slides and jargon-heavy papers around them. The result: audiences tune out, reviewers misunderstand, and funders move on. Communication by Design shows you a systematic process to make your best technical work impossible to ignore.
Along the way, you'll discover why your slides are sabotaging your message, why reviewer confusion is valuable data, and why being thorough is the opposite of being clear.
"Brilliant engineering alone does not change the world — understanding does. Communication by Design shows engineers how to translate technical excellence into real-world impact."
Reginald DesRoches, President, Rice University; National Academy of Engineering
"Baker clearly demonstrates why engineers need to communicate more effectively, and more importantly, he explains how to do it. Communication by Design provides specific, actionable advice to improve research communication and is now required reading for my research group."
Ellen Rathje, Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair, The University of Texas, Austin; National Academy of Engineering
"To solve tomorrow's most complex problems, technical skills won't be enough. Engineers must become outstanding communicators. This book shows you exactly how."
Jerome Lynch, Dean of Engineering, Duke University
Jack W. Baker is a chaired professor of engineering at Stanford University, a journal editor-in-chief, and a recipient of Stanford's Eugene L. Grant Award for excellence in teaching. His communication workshops and writing have reached tens of thousands of researchers worldwide.

Edition details

• Publisher: Coast Range Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798994527733
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 238