Designing for better communication. And calm.
The world is witnessing a true black swan moment. We are required to keep the physical distance. Remote collaboration. Reduced mobility. The world pauses. The unknowns build up. New opportunities appear. And as we are trying to respond normally to an abnormal situation, written communication perhaps has become more important than ever.
Badly written e-mail or instant messages damage communication and as consequences — damage productivity and mental well-being. It triggers anxiety. And anxiety is contagious quickly spreading through organizations.
What’s wrong with communication?
More than seven decades ago Claud Shannon, an author of information theory, gave the world his gift of quantifying communication of information. Shortly after that, the Shannon-Weaver model of Communication was created. Also called the mother of all models, it summarized the key concepts of communication.
This model has had a multitude of variations until today. The variation that I have found the most simple and applicable in human communication is Scott Berkun’s mentioned different stages of messages –
Transmitted > Received > Understood > Agreed > Acted upon
If there are issues in written communication, it’s probably because there’s something wrong in at least one of the stages.
Too ambiguous
My graph theory professor in undergraduate studies had a tendency to berate natural language as evil due to its ambiguity while praising formulas for being more effective. While at that time I had a different opinion (I was longing for more humanity in an engineering context), I went on appreciating effective communication.
Particularly, Blaise Pascal’s quote being sorry for not making his letter shorter has remained in my mind as a reminder about the time and energy required to make written communication more concise, direct, and effective. Also, Edward Tufte (a pioneer in the field of data visualization) offers the data-ink ratio principle as a guide in minimizing stuff that doesn’t convert the value. To always think about the proportion of graphic ink (or pixels) devoted to the non-redundant display of data-information.
Natural language is not evil. It’s just could be more effective in certain contexts. For some of us, who are predisposed towards anxiety, whenever communication is ambiguous, we assume first the negative interpretation.
Let’s compare two examples and try to speculate what happens when a group of recipients gets a long, well-meant e-mail?
I would bet on the example on the right-hand side as being more concise, straight to the point providing healthy constraints (e.g. deadline, ground rules) thus — more effective in regards to getting feedback from the group.
The more ambiguous the conversation is, the more likely the resolution will not be reached. And the mental energy spent on it will go to vain. Much time and energy would be spared if we as authors and initiators did better at clarifying the goals — what’s expected of the conversation? Is it a status update or a brainstorm on problem statements or solutions? Are we trying to reach a shared understanding? Are we trying to reach a decision? Or are we just bonding? What’s expected from the participants and when? And why should you care?
Broken conversation flow
It may be possible that messages are concise and straight to the point enough, But still make the communication more complicated than it should be.
Consider the instant messaging episode below.
Especially if low trust situations, there’s a tendency to bombard the recipient with messages before she has even properly processed the messages. In combination with an excessive tone about the sense of urgency is damaging communication.
Scattered attention
Sometimes asynchronicity of en e-mail is a much calmer, gentler option. You don’t get overwhelmed by every channel notification. Or the urgency to answer right now. As Bart Lorang (CEO of FullContact) has observed, there is nothing much you can do with the direct messages — you can’t forward them, CC people in, file them away, or add to the to-do list. And most importantly — email is a much healthier communication option comparing to instant messaging because it provides a time to process ideas.
Consider the comparison below.
Remember the Super Size Me documentary directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock who in a 30-day period ate only junk food. As a result, he had 13% body mass increase, increased cholesterol, and experienced mood swings and sexual dysfunction. Couldn’t the same be applied to information quality?
We have limited cognitive bandwidth. Each message we decide to deliver others depletes their cognitive abilities and therefore — decision making and self-management. The more scattered, ambiguous our messages are, the more work others have to do processing it.
We can respect that on a personal level. But is it enough?
The same could be said about traffic — we can “try to respect” other drivers, but if that would work, we didn’t have traffic control — lanes, traffic signs, traffic lights. Could it be, that to be effective at written communication, we also need better tools that seamlessly guide us in respecting others?
Better tools shape behavior
Fast backward to 2006, when Twitter was officially launched. Arguably, the embedded constraints (limited set of characters) organically guided the users towards removing the redundancies from their bursts.
In 2009 Google Wave was introduced. The ambition seemed to be the reinvention of e-mail. The core idea was creating documents from real-time conversations. And in that way reduce friction in getting the substance out of collaboration. While I believe that there was a well-meant idea to make communication less scattered between many different tools, the project was discontinued and open-sourced.
In 2013 a popularity was gained by Mailbox — a refreshing e-mail client. While it was bought by Dropbox and later discontinued, it introduced several innovations from an interaction design perspective that still last today. Swiping gestures (archiving, snoozing) improved the flow for dealing with e-mail messages. And guided the behavior towards zero inbox. And better calm.
Around that time Slack was released reviving many IRC-style features (innovation in spirals). It did a great job of making communication easier by consolidating it in one place. However, natural conversations can easily sidetrack and this is something that was lacking here, inducing anxiety.
Four years later, in 2017, Microsoft Teams and Twist app were released. The main innovation seemed to be threaded discussions. Conversations often start organically, unexpectedly. Threaded discussions was an attempt to keep them structured in the relevant context and thus, reduce the cognitive effort to process them and increase the likelihood to resolve them.
At the same time, Basecamp is being marketed as a calmer communication platform focused on teams and projects. What’s interesting here, the communication is channeled in just three, simple directions — company, teams, and projects. And perhaps, since this choice has been made (where should my message go?) — you as the user can direct your limited cognitive capacity in making other, more important decisions. We are used to the abundance of choice in our culture. But each choice has a significant price tag on our cognitive capacity. No surprise, psychologist Barry Schwartz calls out too much choice having paralyzing effects on humans making as more dissatisfied.
Better tools ahead
Calm, focus and privacy have returned to my focus on the urgency and notification-driven digital communication. Perhaps innovation does happen in spirals and we are just returning to what’s forgotten. Just in a new quality. Like the feeling of a carefully crafted letter or a text message in pre-text explosion era.
Here’s what I need modern communication tools help me achieve –
Less ambiguity
🎯 Perhaps twitter-like constraints are a way to go. They make designing words more carefully — thinking of how others will receive the message. Just like traffic rules do not compromise the rights to personal freedom, I believe there is a place for healthy constraints when it comes to interaction with others. We are wired to take the path of least resistance. Meaningful and healthy constraints have a potential to improve the quality of communication.
Better conversation flow
💬 Timing, tone of voice, rhythm, effective resolution, rights to privacy— it goes without saying that emotional intelligence helps in written communication. I would love the tools that would help me be in check of my emotional intelligence — gratify when I do good, and couch when I do not. Perhaps there’s a place for gamifying the conversations to help get better at them. There is and should be a place for fun (e.g. Mailbox).
Focused attention
⛳ Google Wave attempted to document conversations for users. Slack and Ms Teams are trying to seamlessly integrate tools in one ecosystem. In hope to reduce friction in switching between different tools and information formats. The attention is attempted to be focused through threads (e.g. Ms Teams, Twist) or predefined channel structures (e.g. Basecamp).
Perhaps the modernized version of e-mail (Hey) will succeed in bringing a breeze of fresh air in communication tools.
But one is clear to me — cognitive bandwidth is a limited resource that is often neglected when it comes to communication at scale. There’s a need to design tools that respect the natural dynamics of mental capacity. And in that way, communication in organizations will become more productive, fun, and enjoyable resulting in smoother processes and better mental well-being.
