Everything is Communicated, Not Comprehended

Kelly Bowker at UXDX Community: Continuous Delivery. Video: https://youtu.be/vMsfg5yIgkM

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

What communication is

[00:00:00] Kelly: I'm Kelly Bowker. I am the director of design at EverQuote, which is an insurtech company based here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I've been here for almost a year now, but I've been working in design for about 20 years. The running theory about 10 years ago was that I was in grad school so that I could run away and start my own circus. While that never happened, I continue to participate in circus acrobatics as a hobby, and my home has become its own circus because I have three small children and a dog. Today I'm going to talk about how everything around us is communicating, even if it's not a smart device as we've become familiar with.

[00:00:42] First off, let's align on what communication is. Communication, according to Merriam-Webster, is a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs or behavior. Also an exchange of information; it's personal rapport; it's information communicated, transmitted or conveyed; a verbal or written message. There are five types of communication, which I will go into in more detail: verbal, what I'm doing right now; non-verbal, what I'm also doing through my body language; written, which you see on screen; also visual; and then what you are doing, listening.

[00:01:23] At the end of the day, or actually the start of the day, we're all on autopilot. What I would like you all to take away is understanding: what are your communication styles, what are your comprehension skills? Where are you strong, where are you weak? How do you observe the world around you? I really hope you take away an understanding of where you communicate verbally. How are those non-verbal cues, like your body language, used when you're disinterested, excited, nervous, when you're tired, when you're bored? Are you a good listener? Does that change over time? Can you write concise and clearly articulated messages?

[00:02:07] Are there barriers to how you communicate effectively, both personally and professionally? Is it part of your job? Maybe you're a copywriter, content strategist, product manager, engineer. Who's your audience? How do they comprehend what you're communicating? How do you comprehend it? These all vary based on our backgrounds, our culture, our education, the language you use, English, Italian, French, Spanish, or visual with sign language. Or, as those of us who are parents know, the visual of our children having meltdowns. All of that leads into our experience, direct or observed: those repetitive cues and patterns that we've absorbed, been presented with, and that have filled our minds and our mental models on how to interpret the world around us.

Verbal, non-verbal and written

[00:02:57] The first two communication types are verbal and non-verbal. Verbal is the words, the caliber, the complexity that we use. Are we speaking at an eighth-grade-and-above level of reading and comprehension? Are we speaking at a sixth-grade level of comprehension? Is that a necessity for the audience, or for ourselves? What's the structure, the order of those words, the length of those sentences? And the intonation: the tone, the pitch, the stress, the cadence. Am I talking faster because I'm really nervous, or am I slowing down and trying to tell a story so that you can immerse yourself and understand what I'm trying to communicate?

[00:03:39] The environment impacts how we communicate those non-verbal cues: the facial expressions, the posture, the eye contact, the hand movements. The physical closeness is also non-verbal, which we are more used to personally with friends, family, pets. When it happens in a non-familiar relationship, it can trigger responses and questions like, "Why is this person so close to me?" They're a close talker, for those of us who are familiar with Seinfeld. But sometimes it's also forced, for those of us who are used to public transit and being in crowded metros and trains and buses.

[00:04:20] Then in the professional area there are those passive cues in the communication type: the business seniority of the peer in the room trying to communicate something, their experience, their role, the time that they're spending with me, the time it takes to do the communication. And then also the channel. Is it digital, is it physical? Is it in person, is it over Zoom, is it virtual in some manner, is it over the phone? How do those environments, that ecosystem, impact the effectiveness of what we're trying to communicate and what we're trying to comprehend?

[00:04:58] Thank you. The next communication type is obviously written. I have my slides here; I also have my notes in front of me. Our goal for written communication is to avoid confusion, embarrassment and also legal jeopardy. We have footnotes, we have the idea of contracts we sign: yes, I agree to cookies, no, I don't agree to cookies. Something we need to be more aware of is that in this digital age our messages live on, perhaps in perpetuity. What's the risk of that?

[00:05:33] When you're writing, remember: write well, write with intention, review it, evaluate it against intent and the desired perception by your audience, now and in the future. We obviously don't always have time for that, or the foresight to think about what we want to be perceived as in the future. But if we're all a little bit more diligent in how we're communicating, what we're communicating and why we're communicating it, hopefully our end goals can meet the value that we're trying to get across, and the comprehension on our audience's side can move more in our direction, as needed and as appropriate within the space or the product or service that we're trying to share.

Visual communication and active listening

[00:06:13] With visual, we can anchor to the idea that it's pictures, it's movies, it's billboards, it's ads. But it's more than that. The lighting in my room is visual. It can be dark, it can be color-toned, it can change, and those colors imbue a certain type of information. If I'm going to go to a nightclub and listen to jazz, the lighting of the space is communicating that it's supposed to be relaxing and I'm supposed to be paying attention to the stage. Similarly with movie theaters. Whereas when my children go to school, the lighting of their rooms needs to be bright and airy so that they can observe and hear and see and engage with their classmates and their teachers.

[00:06:57] The imagery of movies associated with sound, those patterns, those movements, all of the feedback notifications that we get: those are visual communication cues that we have been trained on, consciously and subconsciously, for what we expect. The color of a button being red, the color of a button being gray, communicates whether it can be interacted with, whether it's an error or warning: don't pass go, or you can't interact with this. At the same time, there's also around 20% of our population that can't understand what color is trying to convey. So we need a combination of different communication types in order to be most effective in our messaging.

[00:07:49] Last, not normally considered a communication type, is active listening. I learned the listening triangle from my grad school professor for a negotiations intensive, Moshe Cohen[?]. He wrote a whole book on the value of negotiations called Collaborative[?]. So this is from him. I've used it effectively within research, sometimes effectively with my children, but definitely very effectively within my professional career.

[00:08:19] The reminder of this is: provide your full attention to the other party. The other party can be a static report, it can be a book, but you are not going to be able to fully comprehend, to fully take in and evaluate the knowledge you're getting, if you don't give it your full attention. Sit with the information you've taken in, and evaluate or question yourself: how am I interpreting what's being communicated to me? Is it effective or not? Would it get value through additional artifacts, through graphs, through pictures, through sound? How can I get the most out of what I'm trying to take in from the other party? And then when it is a two-sided conversation, or a three-sided conversation with a group of people, communicate back what you think they're trying to tell you. Sit with that, and then communicate back and say, "I heard you say this, and this is how I'm interpreting it."

[00:09:14] The common example I like to work with is: say you are the manager of a hotel, and the owner of the hotel comes stomping into your office and says, "We need two pools." Manager A is like, "Okay, I'm being told I need two pools. I'm going to go to the planning board and figure out how to get a second pool." Manager B is like, "Wait, why is he telling me I need two pools?" So you sit with it: "Okay, we have a pool. What about the current pool is not meeting your expectations? Why are you running in here with this expectation and this desire, this order, to have a second pool?"

[00:09:49] Through that conversation, going around and around the listening triangle, you learn you don't actually need a new pool. He places high value on the business clientele, who spend more money and who are more frequent than the family clientele. So you don't need a new pool; you need very clear pool hours. You need a sign, you need rules, you need behaviors to change, and you get that through aligning on communication.

Everyday examples

[00:10:16] We're going to play a little game. I normally run this as a workshop, so virtually we'll see how it does. A physical example: you have a traffic light, and I'm getting told that it's green. From the patterns that we grow up with, even if I am red-green colorblind, I should have learned by now that, at least in most of the world, not Japan, the bottom circle is green and that means go. But the traffic's not moving. So what do I do? I lean on my horn. I am now giving a physical cue to my car that it then needs to give an audible cue to the rest of the environment around me.

[00:10:55] Eventually traffic moves, and I see there was an accident. Luckily nobody's severely hurt, but the person who had the accident was a cyclist. Their helmet is giving them a non-verbal cue that it is now damaged. They have to take that information in and make a decision. Do I go get a new helmet? Do I potentially have a concussion? Do I need to see the hospital? They are trying to make heads or tails of all of this feedback, all of this information swarming into them through a non-verbal communication cue.

[00:11:29] Next. I love ice cream. I have children, but even if I didn't have children I'd love ice cream. This one has a written communication type. It has a non-verbal communication: here's the flavor, here's the cone, here's this physical object. You are then getting feedback of a successful experience from the child the person hands the ice cream to, because they're happy, they're smiling. Unfortunately, at some point the ice cream drops, and then you're getting verbal, visual and non-verbal cues to understand that they are sad. That is your cue to engage with them and figure out how you can comfort them. Could you try to find out how to get another ice cream? Or do you move forward, because you can't get ice cream? These are the ways you take in all of this information unconsciously, because of the patterns and experiences we've had, in order to figure out how to move forward and have a successful end.

Design as intentional arrangement, and using diagrams

[00:12:30] All right, putting it in the professional space. As I said, I'm a director of design. I've worked as a product manager, I've worked in a variety of industries. But at the end of the day, whether I'm leading a team, doing the design work, or partnering with product and partner strategy, the point I always anchor to, to communicate to my peers, my stakeholders and my leadership, is that design at the root is the intentional arrangement of things to create a better experience and outcome. That could be the arrangement of my desk and my space in my house. It could be the arrangement of a workflow, of content on a page, the arrangement of a radio ad against other ads and communications in preparation for a sale or open enrollment, because we work in insurance, and other things like that. It's understanding the ecosystem and the order of operations, and placing those in a way that's accessible and that makes the entire experience better for the business, because that's the business's goal, but also for the end user.

[00:13:39] How do I go about that? Most of all, I leverage diagrams. Here is an activity diagram example that a former direct report of mine, Hannah, made. She found great success in aligning with engineers and product through using diagrams, because it takes away the bias and anchoring of visual artifacts, where things become very personal through aesthetic preferences. It gets it down to more black-and-white types of decision making: what are the steps, what are the tactical steps, how long does each take?

[00:14:16] The example we used was Jane, who wants a less expensive way to light her business. She has a lot of different options to do that. How did she figure out that she needs a less expensive way to light her business? Through budgets, through communication. Her options are either, "Okay, let me cut back on the usage. I'll change my hours, I just won't use this business space as often." Or, "I'll evaluate different electric providers. Is there a standard cap? Can I get discounts?" Or does she just switch the lighting, in addition to maybe the other two? It's not a one-versus-the-others type of system, but in this example it's simplistic.

[00:14:53] She looks at a different provider, she learns about pricing, and then she has a decision point: is the pricing less expensive? Yes, happy path: I enter my credit card and then the website runs the card. We are skipping over the fact that she would have to do the closing, so she has a comparison decision point, but this is very simplistic given the time here. Or it isn't, so she needs to exit the website and return to the start of that evaluative process: understanding what cues are communicating to her and how she can resolve that situation.

[00:15:36] On our side, our goal is to use those diagrams, those visual artifacts, and that research to communicate to stakeholders and to design the full experience. We're designing those activity diagrams: the processing, those steps, the capacity, the throughput line, understanding what must-have engagement is and what isn't, using those static processes. Do we need to add additional access to different types of support? Is the support automated? Are we using learning models? Are we using live people? Is there a time frame? We have to think about all of this both before and while we release our products and our services and our features.

[00:16:24] As designers, as product managers, we are building ecosystems, we are managing ecosystems. It is no longer the days, early in my design career, when I was designing brochures. It was a static thing, and once it got printed and mailed off I had no more control over how the person engaged with it. I had some, based on how I designed the pamphlets and the leaflets and the pages and the content, but it did not force a way to engage and obtain communication and understand the information and what to do with it. Within digital experiences there are a lot more forcing functions, but there's also a lot more noise. So I encourage all of you to be intentional with this work.

Takeaways

[00:17:07] At the end, what I would like everybody to take away from this, in order to improve both your communication skills and your comprehension skills, is self-reflection. Be as self-aware as you can of your audience: who you're talking to, how you perceive your audience, how your audience perceives you, the content you're providing. The format, the modes of communication: is it written, is it visual, is it verbal, is it non-verbal, is it a light flashing, is it repetitive? The channel: is it digital, is it over the phone, is it over radio, is it word of mouth, any other kinds of areas? The timing, the frequency: do I set a schedule, a calendar, for this communication to go over and over and over? What's the objective? Is there a lifespan to it?

[00:18:03] Also the behavior. There are the physical behavior cues; there are also digital cues. How do we react when we get a message from our boss in Slack or in email at 10 p.m.? Are you reactive? Does it create a sense of nervousness and urgency? Or do you just turn off notifications so that you don't run the risk of that? At the start, you first have to be self-aware of how you engage with the world and how you communicate with the world.

[00:18:29] Next: practice. Practice your writing skills, practice your verbal skills, practice your interpretation. Ask for feedback. Overcommunicate, especially in this digital world where we are more connected but also more separate, given the remote environments, the Zoom calls, the Google Meets, all of these spaces that make it easier to communicate and connect, but which also make us more passive and less engaged.

[00:18:59] Align with your partners, with your peers, with your stakeholders through that listening triangle. Give space and trust to respectfully disagree, in order to then figure out what is okay, or how to gain alignment or compromise, in order to move forward. And document all of the processes going forward, the agreements, so that there's not confusion. Because again, we are overwhelmed with information every single day of the week, every single moment. Without that documentation, you run the risk of repeating those missteps and miscommunications over and over and over again. Thank you.

Q&A

[00:19:42] Host: Excellent, thank you very much, Kelly. It was a really interesting take on, I guess, looking at a bit more of the science behind things like user journey flows. It was great, thank you very much. As I said at the start, if you have any questions, please feel free to post them on whichever channel you're watching this on, and I'll put those questions through to Kelly.

[00:20:06] To get started: one of the things I always think about, and I've done so many courses on being better at active listening and those kinds of things, is that communication is just such a natural thing for people that you don't even think of it as communicating. So I'm never intentional enough when I'm doing it. Do you have any tips or tricks that can make people a bit more intentional, instead of just slipping back into old habits?

[00:20:40] Kelly: That's a great question. I've been listening to more podcasts lately, because my children are slightly older, so I can handle the continued noise in my head. I was listening to a really great episode on The Diary of a CEO about how we're getting ADHD wrong, and what stuck out to me is that we're distracted all the time, but the primary catalyst for distraction is our own internal need to avoid pain. That was eye-opening. I was like, "Oh, wait. Yeah, I'm trying to avoid pain a lot." I escape into my phone and read articles in order to avoid the discomfort of my children being loud. So I've built those habits subconsciously in order to avoid pain and discomfort.

[00:21:28] It goes back to what I was saying about self-reflection. If you can find time in a day or a week to keep track of those moments where you got distracted internally, you start to recognize the external cues or events that lead to you becoming disengaged. Sometimes it's by accident. At the start of every meeting, especially when I'm solo parenting or something, I remind people, "Hey, I have my phone on. I'm going to get distracted." Even if it's a moot point, it's going to happen, and I apologize.

[00:22:09] It's that more transparent process of being honest with ourselves and with each other if we are inundated with distractions, in order to help create a safer space to have that forcing function to get back on track. Because I think the risk now is, to your point, communication: we just do it, we're on autopilot. If we don't feel more comfortable calling each other out, and calling ourselves out, for when we don't communicate effectively or we don't listen effectively, then it's going to continue down that negative path, and we're going to have less engaged relationships, or less valuable relationships.

[00:22:47] Host: I love that. I love the phrase somebody told me before: they're an experienced beginner. What they meant by that is they have a lot of experience doing something, but they're still a beginner at it, because they've never taken the time for self-reflection, which is how you really learn: how did I do that, what could I do better? And at communication, a lot of us are experienced beginners.

[00:23:13] Kelly: Right. It wasn't really until I started having children that I realized just how poor a communicator I was. I could give my kids, who are elementary school age, and my design team the exact same instruction, like, "Go make a picture of a building," and I would get vastly different results because of differences in skills, differences in experiences, differences in mental models. My team might probe: "What kind of building? Is it eco-friendly? Is it Renaissance? Is it this?" My kids are like, "Oh, here's a house, here's a treehouse, here's a rectangle." That's just absolutely fascinating to me: understanding just how big an impact our experiences and our subconscious frameworks have on our ability to effectively communicate and then comprehend the world around us.

[00:24:04] Host: The other thing that jumped to my mind was when you were explaining using a user journey flow as a tool for communication, because you mentioned so many different forms of communication. I really like the concept of the Amazon six-pager. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but they actively advocated against PowerPoint and visuals, and more for just dense text to cover it.

[00:24:33] Kelly: I have had to write the Amazon six-pager. I have had to write essentially longer ones than that. I was interviewed recently on a podcast where I talk about this: I had to write longer papers when I was a product manager than when I was in grad school. I might at some point get a PhD and write a dissertation, and I love reading; it is one of my favorite hobbies. But I hate reading documents in the professional world. Give me bullet points, give me lists, give me something that's scannable and digestible. Help me understand the meat of this, because there are only so many hours in the day. The longer I have to read, if point A is at the start and point B is three pages down, my effectiveness at connecting those two goes down, because my energy decreases over time.

[00:25:25] I think the act of writing those papers is a really effective tool. But expecting other people to give the same amount of care and time and intention to all of those six-pagers, especially when you think about the sizes of teams and who has to make decisions, falls over pretty fast. So I love PowerPoints, I love bulleted lists. I've used bulleted lists in personal emails and have gotten called out by my mom and my aunts for it: "Nope, this is for fluffy stuff."

[00:25:57] That's where the point comes in: know your audience, know yourself, know your perception of your audience and the audience's perception of you. Because there are going to be times where that's just the expectation of the job and you have to write it. And the act of writing it, I fully agree, helps you get better at articulating the point when you're in the meetings later. Because what is the likelihood that your peers or stakeholders in the meeting, who are there to give a thumbs up or thumbs down or push for more information, have read all of it? They want those bullet points. So that then cements the information in your head more, because you're practicing the content.

[00:26:41] It's all about where you spend your time, where the risk is, and what the expectation is of those who are asking for the communication tool, the artifact, the document. I definitely warn my team about getting into visuals, from a mock-up perspective or an experience perspective, too early. Because then you always have somebody who anchors to something that was a fluffy idea: "Well, where was that star, and the automation and things?" And you're like, "Well, we don't have the infrastructure for it. It's vision work, for sometime in the future." "But we want it now." So you have to play those politics and those battles, and that's why documentation is key. But understanding the usefulness, the utility and the point of that documentation comes first.

[00:27:30] Host: Brilliant. Well, that actually brings us perfectly to time, so I just want to thank you once again, Kelly, for sharing your insights.

[00:27:40] Kelly: Excellent, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.