I haven't been this irritated in a long time. Come on brain, connect the dots! I can do something really cool here but what exactly
1 - people not used to WFH find in-person comms easier than online comms
1 - people not used to WFH find in-person comms easier than online comms
2 - what's missing in online comms is the "kinetic chain" of body language, eye contact, timing, tone, negative spacing all of which are the ineffable 90% of the comms iceberg, with words being the effable 10%
3 - basic hermeneutics holds that people can never communicate 100% of what they mean, in words or any other way, and rely on the listener to fill in the gaps.
4 - people who rely on the ineffable 90% to close the gaps in their comms for the listener feel anxious when remote
4 - people who rely on the ineffable 90% to close the gaps in their comms for the listener feel anxious when remote
5 - people who are happy with the efficacy of text for comms have usually derisked their comms so that misinterpretation is not an existential threat
6 - people who are good at design are good at listening for what is unspoken and guessing correctly at the meaning in the gaps
6 - people who are good at design are good at listening for what is unspoken and guessing correctly at the meaning in the gaps
7 - in the age of cv19 and post we will have far less access to that 90% of ineffable comms on which deep + easy design and decision-making is based
8 - I predict we will enter a time of bad design and bad decision making by people who do not compensate
8 - I predict we will enter a time of bad design and bad decision making by people who do not compensate
9 - compensation may take many forms but the fundamental constraints which it must balance are a) must not rely on people being explicit about what they want 2) must surface agreement across stakeholders and witnesses Ω) must be native-remote
10 - example of this happening serendipitously today: a professional tester logs into TestIO or Applause, reports a software bug on a function that was never explicitly defined, and the company LOVES the report
11 - how did the tester know there was a problem? By picking up the cues from the incomplete information they had and making an extrapolation and expressing it in such a way that they filled in the blanks for the company asking for testing help
12 - this requires a skill of metacognition that is honestly rare so a solution that relies on it will have a niche or be open to abuse, will have to balance across those criteria as well
