User Communication (cont.)

In a previous post, I began a discussion about communication. That post focused on errors in communication in the first 2 portions. This post will focus on errors that arise on the tail end of the communication process (parsing through and extracting info from the transcription, and extracting the original entity's meaning).

As before we'll use examples. This is a three-step email that I sent to a doctor that needed help sending a message with a link to a mailing list. Apparently this greatly differs from sending an e-mail to a regular person somhow. Here's what I wrote:

1) Create a new e-mail message to "list@domain.tld" (no quotes). This address will then forward your message to the people on the mailinglist. This forwarding action happens automatically behind the scenes and requires no actions on your part.

2) Type the body of your e-mail as you normally would. The link that needs to be placed in your message is shown below. Feel free to copy-and-paste it into the message.

http://server.domain.tld/path/to/page.html

3) Hit send.

For some reason it still couldn't be done. What is it about the above that's difficult to understand? Based on what I said, could you send a link to the mailing list in question? Please leave any appropriate feedback.

My last example in this thread is a conversation that I had with a recently hired supervisor. I was trying to explain what happened behind the scenes when a submit button was pressed on one of our patient registration forms. After discussing the database save and the other web component that displays what is recently entered, I moved on to the printouts and how I would like to replace these with an email message. This is because the print subsystem keeps losing the ability to communicate with the printer in question. This is also going to be worse when I move the server into our network's DMZ. At this point, I noticed a funny look on her face.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I don't understand a word you just said," was the response she mouthed, inaudibly.

Now, I know she knows what a database is (After all, her first question to me when she joined our team was "Why don't you just use SPSS for all your databases?"), so I tried to get in her head and figure out what caused this misunderstanding.

"I just don't understand why all that happens before the user submits the page," she finally told me.

"Before?!" I asked.

Apparently, the past tense and the fact that "the information entered" was used wasn't enough to clue her in.

"It doesn't happen before, this happens after." I replied.

"Oh, ok, it makes sense now."

I started this thread with four steps, but one thing this whole experience has taught me is that context matters most in communication. If you can't transcribe your idea in the appropriate context, your message has no hope for success.

User Communication

It's been a while since I posted...

I want to share some interesting communication examples I have experienced over the last few months. First, a quick refresh. The task of communication requires the following steps to occur:

0) An entity must conceive an item they wish to communicate (usually done in their mind).
1) This entity must transcribe this item into a medium that can be understood by others (e.g., print, video, web, etc.).
2) Another entity must parse through the medium and extract the transcription (i.e., read, watch, surf).
3) This entity must then extract from the transcription the original entity's meaning.

Now, some people will say you need another "confirmation" step where the second entity confirms with the first as to the true meaning of the message. You could also go into a long diatribe which covers understanding. However, I just want to focus on these four things.

Our first example was picked up during a bioinformatics symposium. This was a note left in my hotel room from the maid. Here it is below:


Now, what did she transcribe (write)? Is it "all or the Plug in ale being use behind to T.U"? WTF does that mean? This has got to be a problem between steps 0 and 1. However, thanks to the extracting abilities my informatics background has taught me, I can decipher further. Here's what I think she originally conceived:

"All of the plugs behind the TV are being used"

Now, I was able to come to this conclusion because of the context of the note. It was placed on top of the power supply I had left in the room. I had also disconnected a plug for a lamp so I could power up the supply. However, this conclusion is radically different from what was transcribed (in haste I hope) on this piece of paper. What conclusion would others arrive at without that context? What did you think it said? Many just gave up and pointed out the idiocy of this person. My wife made out the words "plug in" and "behind" and joked that she was requesting butt sex. I think though this is a good example of how delicate the communication process is. It's amazing how the same sequence of words can mean different things to different people. Sadly, this person forgot that when you write something for another person to read, you need to write it in a way so the other person can understand.

Example two is a alphanumeric page I got from our receptionist. I can't digitize the screen so here's my transcription of the message she left (minus the identifiers):

MAY TWO PRINTERS WHERE I AM WANT PRINTER FOR ME.

Yeah...she wants a printer? Unfortunately for her, I don't have any. Here's what her page really meant:

The two printers where I am won't print when I use a certain program.

The only way I figured this one out was with a face-to-face. Now, I did start off by asking what she wanted a printer for, but she didn't catch the jab. But how in the world can you extract the original meaning from that?

What I'm trying to convey is that communication is very much a two-way street. You can't just jot down anything quickly and expect someone to "get it." You have to know your audience and use terms they can understand (and/or terms that are syntactically valid for the language you are using). Hopefully, this post has made you more aware of this fact and you'll strive to produce better messages.

Next post, we'll look at the other side of the pie. When you have Steps 0 - 1 correct, but something's messed up on steps 2 & 3. I hope you'll join me for that.

Why "If you can't say anything nice ..." hurts development

Come on now, admit it. Your mom/dad told you at some point "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." The thing is, neither had any idea how detrimental this philosophy is to the real world. While I will focus on the harm it causes the development community, you could extend my ideas to any thread of social interaction.

Basically, there are two main reasons why I feel mom/dad should have received a lecture after stating that gem:

1) It instills a mindset into the recipient that speaking your mind is not welcomed in the world.

2) This mindset further expands itself within the recipient so they are no longer able to receive (and act upon) "hostile" criticism.

Let's examine further...

Words have an everlasting effect on children -- it scares me how quickly my 6 y/o daughter repeats things I didn't mean to say. In addition, endless studies (which I won't take the time to quote) have pointed out a correlation between verbal abuse and self-esteem. The contrapositive of that is also true, positive reinforcing words instill wonderful feelings within their recipient.

Because of this everlasting effect, simple phrases become absorbed deep into subconscious behavior and alter a person's persona. Now knowing that, let's rethink what that glorious phrase really means to a child -- I'm not allowed to say anything that isn't nice.

The worst example of this tends to happen to extremely introverted people that hide behind the "No one cares what I think anyway" phrase. Sadly, this travesty of justice keeps these people from reporting problems they see, solutions they've conceived, ideas they've dreamed up, and a whole slew of other items that can help a project achieve its goal.

Some people will say something that isn't nice but feel the pressure to employ that wonderful effect called "sugarcoating" (placing as much "nice" words around a "hard to swallow pill"). I've seen it in plenty of relationships with my users. For example:

Wow, this page is really neat. I like the layout, all the links work, the articles are great. You've really done a good job. However, you misspelled the word "Emmeekaguramookavich" in paragraph 32. Hopefully this will be an easy fix.

Keep up the wonderful work,

Now, for me the above comment has this long drawn out way of asking me to do something. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the appreciation you're showing me, but the first sentence suffices at doing so. As far as how easy a fix would be, don't you think I'm better qualified to answer that? After all, I am going to be implementing it. Finally, are you expecting me to hand you anything but the wonderful acts of work that I create? Not only do these extra words discombobulate the communication effort, I now have to repeatedly skim them over every time I refer to this message for what I need to do. My time is in high demand, so please speed up my ability to help you by not buttering me up.

Then, you get the side of the spectrum where I sit, the one where the person either never heard this advice or (like me) concluded it was full of crap. We're the ones that don't hesitate to blurt out to your face, "This sucks!" and "I wouldn't even feed this to my neighbor's dog." We're also the ones who will then go over every point as to why we came up with our assessment and expect you to fix them. But however, you won't because of my second point.

For example, instead of taking what I said back to your drawing board you'll be labeling me as a jerk because of my "hateful diatribe."

This same thing happened to me at a previous job. I asked a junior developer to create some custom form that would sort by name, allow you to add new ones (and then more importantly resort once they were added/edited). After a week, I got back something that I used and then immediately told him "didn't work" because it didn't do the one thing I wanted (the resorting). When I said these points, he literally called me "rude", turned around, and went back to his desk. Now, I was able to code what I needed by the time he got to his desk, so I didn't push the issue. However, I wonder if my second point about this little phrase was to blame.

Basically, when you grow up in the mind set that "you can't say anything nice," you conclude that there is something wrong with the person saying these "un-nice" words before you actually listen to what he/she is saying. You can see examples on many Internet based threads. The typical pattern is this. User1 says "this module sucks because it doesn't do blah which I really need." This thread will then quickly fill up with replies stating how User1 is a "n00b", "Id10t", how they should "use something that has blah", "code it", "be happy with what they have," etc. While it is amazing that these same people lash out using such un-niceities, the fact remains that until someone comes along that can accept such criticism (and possess the resources to add blah), blah never gets added to this module. The module is further hindered because many of the developers that do have the resources to add blah are probably turned away from working on it because of the aura that now surrounds its request.

It's getting late and I need to wrap up so I'll finish here and ask that "if you can't say anything nice, shout it loudly!"

The Standard of End-User Experience

Recently a lot of people around me were dropping the "standards" word. This might have something to do with the release of IE7, FF 3.0, Opera 9.0.2, etc., who knows. While this is fine and dandy, I would like to know what standard they are referring to. From what I remember from my networks class, there are two types of standards:

• De facto (becomes a standard "by fact or practice" because so many people do it/use it/etc.) IE's "manufacturer-specific non-complaint enhancements" are a perfect example of this. Even though they fit the above quote, they are still a standard because IE and its ~90% market dominance has made it just that.

• De jure ("by law") are the standards released by a lawmaking body (in this case the IETF or W3C). "Compliant HTML" fits this category. Please note that IMO RFCs do *not* fit within this category. RFC are Requests For COMMENTS. Standards are based on these, yes; but they aren't in the finalized form that a de jure standard needs to be.

Now, following either one of these is great, but by limiting yourself to just one you are going to eventually run into trouble with the other camp. Take, for example, the "Craptive X" features. Yeah, they are great when you are in the ~90%, but if your not, you know why I chose that name. The opposite is also true, there are websites that are making fully compliant HTML/XHTML/XML/CSS/javascript/etc. However, those sites "render" badly, if at all, in IE. Heck, there are even differences between the ways FF, Opera, render the same "compliant" code.

Now, some developers employ a remark along the lines of "Use another browser" to conceal the fact they can't/won't/whatever make their site work for whichever portion of the surfing population is affected by their shortcomings. There is even an increasing portion of this populous that go out of there way to sniff out these "inferior browsers" and redirect users to the homepage of whichever their favorite browser is. The funny part is that many times, other browsers (and the people who use them) get caught up in the fray and face these stupid redirections even when their tool can display the information coherently.

What I do like are the developers that have the mindset of remembering their end-users. The ones that have found the "Middle Path" and take the time to test out the way their site renders on *all* the different browsers. These are the developers that are worth their weight in Lutetium. For these are the people that remember the only standard that truly matters -- the standard of the end-user experience.

This standard isn't just limited to web-development either. We all know that applications that are actually beta tested are far better than those that were only used by their creator before being released. Heck, ask any interior designer who really gets the ultimate decision on which color scheme to use. Why can't we all remember this?

This standard is important. Does your creation make the cut?

Scalix and Digg

This is the 2nd time typing this. Apparently Windows Movie Maker is causing deadlock problems on my computer...

The other day the below post came through Digg.

http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/Scalix_is_sneaking_Linux_in_through_the_corporate_mailbox

It was talking about an Open Source Exchange alternative. I do want to know how these things stack up, so I checked it out. The article just talked about the e-mail stuff. I want to know more (shared calendaring, contacts, etc.) so I had to check out scalix's website. I came across a link for a "product demo", so I clicked on it. I got the following error message:

"No native WebEx Event Manager is available for your platform."

That's the entire message. No list of supported platforms, contact numbers, or any other information on how to debug, etc. Taking what they said literally. I thought this meant that they didn't support Linux (in my case Ubuntu) and felt that the fact this was an OSS application, it warranted a comment. Being who I am, I felt the need to be sarcastic.

I got a response saying that message "really meant" I needed to install Java. Now, I have a big problem with stupid error messages, especially ones that mean one thing when they say something else. This waranteed another response, and I continued my sarcastic trend by comparing the message to women.

Apparently, my original replier didn't like this (even though I thanked him for deciphering the message for me). Instead he calls me an "ass" and says I'm immature.

Now, I admit being sarcastic is hard to detect over the Internet. Being sarcastic on Digg is no exception, and this is the ideal case to prove that. I should have simply:

1) Asked how to get the webex thing working on Ubuntu and
2) Thanked the person for telling me and wondered why the error message couldn't have helped me further
3) Erased the wondering part, and then said something along the lines of "this is why Linux rulz and all others droolz...blah"

This is why Linux isn't making it. Instead of addressing the valid points I had, the fellow Luser decided to chastize me for pointing them out. Now granted, this isn't the offical "WebEx support center," but it still illustrates a point that's bad in all crappy software. The people writing it praise its good points, hide the bad. Then when someone points out the "man behind the curtain" (in this case the weak points) they attempt to discredit him/her rather than fixing what needs to be fixed, or at least admiting that it needs to.

So, I've learned not to be sarcastic on Digg.

Hopefully developers will learn to produce things that won't lead me to make sarcastic comments.

Somehow, I doubt that's going to happen.

BTW, blogger's auto complete labeling could use some work. It completes a lot more than needed even when I erase what it just put in...

Friday

It's Friday. I'm coming down with something. Spent most of the day working with Beta software. Lots of fun....

Tests and Ubuntu crud

I got my test back yesterday. The score was a 91.5 out of 100.

Evolution crashed on me again a few days back. I had bug buddy go through and do its thing. At the end I had it CC a copy of the bug report e-mail to myself. Guess what? I never got a copy. I'm pretty sure bugs@gnome.com (or whereever it goes) didn't get a copy either. Let's hear it for Bug Buddy.

My friends are convincing me to dump Ubuntu and switch to Fedora. They are supposed to be releasing FC6 soon. I might give that a try. What I really want is something that works.