The art of concise, effective communication

Alright, let’s start off this module on principles. We’re going to look at both core skills principles and CSS authoring principles to get everyone on the same page during this module. The first thing we’re tackling is how to communicate concisely and effectively.

In context of this coursepermalink

Let’s have a quick reminder about the project team on this Bloom barista academy project. The project team is as follows:

1. You, the front-end developer
2. A designer
3. A client stakeholder who is mostly in communication with the designer and not yourself

Let’s give a little more information about our designer colleague because that’s who our communication is with. Her name is Gabriela Gonçalves and she lives in Goiânia, Brazil. She’s a very experienced creative designer who moved into web and UI design 3 years ago.

Her knowledge of HTML and CSS is very limited but her knowledge of design is exceptional. Her English is also very strong.

I know you, dear reader, could be anywhere in the world right now, but so we’re all singing off the same song sheet, we are in the UTC timezone, which means Gabriela is 3 hours behind us and we get around 3 hours of crossover time each day.

Async, remote communicationpermalink

Sticking with our context, async communication is critical. In fact, it’s critical even if you work in the exact timezone or office as each other.

In the design studio I run — at the time of writing — we are a team of 4, all based in the UK. Our primary mode of communication is Slack. Async communication is critical for us because even though we’re all in the same timezone, we all work completely different schedules to each other with no real set hours. We also work with clients all over the world.

For example, there was a period where we had clients in India, the UK and Arizona in the USA, running at the same time with stakeholders based in Boston, USA and Panama, but also a freelance developer based in Hong Kong. Pretty spread out, right?

With this timezone spread, getting written communication right is really important. Here’s some quick principles:

1. Keep things short. There’s no need for filler content so get to the point.
2. Don’t ask for too much. If you ask multiple questions/ask for multiple pieces of information, it’s likely you won’t get the answers you want.
3. Presume people are busy. This is especially the case when dealing with stakeholders and people in positions of management.
4. If a request blocks you, you’re asking too late. Effective planning and scheduling of your workflow will surface things you need to know, well before they block you.
5. Absolutely never make it personal. If you make it personal, you’re going to upset folks and get their backs up. It’s unnecessary and breaks down relationships.
6. Be descriptive and don’t presume prior knowledge. I can tell you from working with some of the smallest and largest organisations in the world, that folk’s knowledge of stuff is spotty at best. Don’t presume people have the same level of knowledge as you do on specific elements of the work either.

Chat apps like Slackpermalink

Don’t be a “hi” guy! Let me show you what I mean.

Let’s break down what’s wrong here. Firstly, we’re presuming that Gabriela is both online and staring at her messages, which almost certainly will not be the case. Just sending “Hey” can be a source of anxiety too, because when someone sees that, they might worry that they’re in trouble or quite rightly, get pissed off that they’re being distracted. You’re almost definitely going to distract them with this approach because they’re likely going to be sat waiting for you to continue.

Here’s a better way:

The difference here is huge. First of all, we’re being descriptive, we’re not asking too much and we’re also presuming Gabriela is busy. That’s 3 principles checked off right there. Oh, we kept it short, which makes that 4. Not bad!

We’re also keeping the tone neutral and not personal and finally, we’re working in advance of when we need information, therefore checking off all 6 principles.

The main thing though, is Gabriela knows you’re going to thread out your notes which you’re not expecting an immediate response to. This means she’ll probably add a quick todo item to her list to get back to you and importantly, carry on with the work she was focused on.

There are times when you need a quick response to critical information though, I get that. There’s a way to do it wrong and there is a way to do it right.

All you’re doing here is panicking people. Even if you are extremely stressed, you should never project that on to other people. You can get urgency from people without doing all of that too. Let me show you how.

See how much more productive that is? We’re not attacking Gabriela here, but instead, being descriptive, not asking too much, and offering help. This then becomes less “you have done this wrong” (not making it personal) and more “there’s an issue, but it’s quite trivial to fix and I’m here to support”.

In the prior example, Gabriela could have easily and understandably felt attacked. Whereas here, we’re communicating urgency, but making it rightly, a team issue. Sure, it’s Gabriela that’s going to need to work out new colours, but by offering tools and testing support, Gabriel will feel supported.

Emailpermalink

Alright, let’s wrap up this lesson with my favourite communication medium and everyone else’s least favourite. 😅

Aside from the relentless amount of emails we get on a daily basis, there’s a real problem with email in the sense that people fill them with absolute cruft.

Let’s take the same context from before about colour contrast.

Notice all of the cruft in that email? Sure, it’s nice to talk about your weekend, but not in an important email. Remember, people’s inboxes are generally rammed full of messages, so be a good colleague and make yours concise and effective. Also please, I beg, either hugely shrink your signature or get rid of it completely! At least, only feature it when you’re emailing someone you’ve never emailed before for the first time.

Let’s rework it:

Notice how it’s exactly the same as the ‘better’ message example from earlier? That’s the point I’m making here: just because it’s an email, doesn’t mean you need to fill it with useless content. Treat emails much like messages — especially internal email — and you’ll do lots for reducing folk’s overwhelm.

Another important point here is that you’re more likely to actually get a response instead of Gabriela marking the email as unread, and then carrying on with what she was working on.

Wrapping uppermalink

That’s a quick run-through of communication techniques. We’ll dive into more of this stuff later on in the course as we work through design iterations and plan out our work. The main takeaway here is tweaking your communication style can have a huge, positive impact.

That’s the whole purpose of this course. Making adjustments to how you do things across the board is going to translate into a much better end-product. It’s all important and all intrinsically connected.

Next lesson

Giving and receiving feedback