Design perspective: serious and reasonable communication

The second part, as mentioned in the previous issue of synergy, although the framework is slightly clear, the process has targeted adjustments, but in the process of doing things, how people deal with or success or failure of the determinants. Good things because bad communication can become very bad, leading to deviations in direction, and bad things due to bad communication may become very "good", hiding the truth and risk, leading to the problem eventually out of hand.

Most of the outside sales of professional books, for people and people communication skills speak a lot, mainly in the street to resist the desire to face, officialdom, or shopping malls of intrigues, thick black concept one-woman never changed. But in our design industry, the way of communication is somewhat technical, and even I can say that most designers hate infighting, and animosities, if the communication has been in a gray zone, then the unspoken rules will be more and more fierce, and ultimately the formation of the industry and personal injury.

So, is there any serious and reasonable communication? From my own experience, there are:

1. The situation of communication

We often say a word, called the Watch, this technology is a very important tool in user testing and usability research, emphasizing the elements of observation and analysis in the research process, and since we are the user experience, why is it not good at using this technology after the change of situation? In fact, in the process of project management, designers and program development engineers, product managers, marketing personnel, bosses need to communicate "different situations and different ways of communication."

communicate up and provide value -when communicating with superior leaders, if you want to make some demands, it is best to prepare the material or work results to prove your value, as the most unwilling to participate in the management of the staff self-management, If a communication process (most of the cases are some meetings) is not prepared, no expected effect, then I suggest you should not first inform the leader to attend, otherwise he can only see you deal with things immature.

Good technical leaders tend to focus on real data and industry trends, and communication is based on the fact that you have solved some problems and found some better solutions, and that these values need to be supported by leadership, and he will be very interested. The least effective way to communicate is to have two technicians arguing in front of the leader, and if you've experienced it, you can think about whether it gives you a positive assessment.

parallel communication, results-oriented -project UI designers and software engineers, web designers and front-end developers, internal members of various departments, this is called the function of the parallel relationship between the communication, the most important thing is the effectiveness of communication. The result of the lack of results is the attenuation of information, which ultimately affects the workload among different people. For example, a change in requirements, if not the first time the team members fully understand, will lead to the last part of the work of the member backlog of a large number of unknown changes and uncertain work content.

In parallel communication, in order to save time and improve efficiency, most people do not like to use the document, and this is the main reason for communication failure, the more closely linked, the work of the rapid transfer of parallel relations members, the more should establish an effective and rapid document iteration system. In order to ensure that in any small changes in the requirements have a clear record, this advantage is not a deadbeat, the second is to follow the context, the third is the workload assessment is very intuitive.

downward communication, the performance of authority -work down the process, encountered resistance is often from the time pressure and the pressure of the project staff, I have said that the department wall will play a great power at this time, if you encounter less down-to-earth team and process, you can see the scene of the enemies. The easiest way to solve this problem is to start the project early that is, the authority of each department and key points of the assessment of responsibility, such as: page implementation must adhere to the page design effect map, code efficiency must not be below the standard of a product, software development must meet the interactive design of the preliminary effect ... To determine a coordinated primary and secondary relationship, supplemented by the scope of resource support, the use of good discourse power to determine things beyond communication.

2. The valve value of the communication

The threshold of communication is the psychological bottom line of communication, the process of each communication will always have a purpose, achieving this will affect the psychological price of each person who participates in the communication, and in general, if you want to identify the valuable part of the communication, you need to answer four questions: your opinion or criticism-"What is useful", "what is useless" , "If you do, what you get", "If you don't, you lose something."

If in the process of communication, what you say does not solve any of the above 4 questions, then what you say is basically nonsense, there is no need to communicate.

There is a truth in communication: the angle determines the degree. We always advocate transposition thinking, but sometimes transposition is not necessary, and is not very objective, the essence of transposition is to find common strategic goals and interests chain, if the strategic objectives between you have a greater difference, then the transposition seems a bit hypocritical superfluous, then the only criterion of evaluation is not compromise, It is to find the right point of contact and the degree of doing things. For example: Regarding the design time and the design quality between the choice, excessively pursues the time and excessively pursues the quality to have the question, plunges into the angle is the quality to cause the crisis, or the time causes the crisis, if the customer says 1 months does not deliver the bill, then you can also pursue the quality maximization? If the customer pays enough for you to use 2 months to complete the design, then you should devote enough effort to face it.

3. The threshold of communication

reduce the number of communications -here is the number of less meaningless communication, some product managers like to do so, to determine the responsibility before the meeting, arranging the current meeting, the delivery cycle before the meeting, quality review before the meeting, anyway, everything is the boss, out of the problem can not blame my product manager's head- This kind of 250 style says good point is the collective effort, say the bad point is for own inability to find a pile of cushion back. All things are done by everyone, so what is your personal value?

Therefore, the meeting is not in the key node is not open, beyond the focus of the key points outside the topic is not discussed, the quality and evaluation criteria are objective, do not need to communicate.

reduce the difficulty of the problem-communication is based on both sides of the communication (or many) can accurately understand each other's intentions, so the process of communication is a dilution problem, the process of solving the problem, the best way is to reduce the difficulty, a development cycle to determine the problem, can be reduced to the developer configuration and project cycle issues, while the developer configuration can be reduced to the number of people and working hours of the calculation of the problem, the number of personnel can be reduced to the problem is not a resource to provide overtime assistance.

Most of the project to promote difficulties, the main problem is the problem of money and a sense of achievement , but a lot of fake noble designers, developers, product managers, is not willing to talk about this direct topic, repeatedly talk about what corporate culture, dedication, process improvement, personnel experience.

I have to tell you, if your members say this thing has no time to do, the subtext is "you're not paying overtime," and if your members say it's risky, the subtext is "You don't give me the money or the position to take the risk," and if your members say it's simple enough to think about it later, the subtext is " This thing is not fun, kill the chicken can not use a sledgehammer, if your members said we slowly, impatient to eat hot tofu, good, he may be ready to change jobs.

Ask a question instead of a phenomenon-most communication summits, if you observe, most people are willing to ask the phenomenon, rather than the problem itself, such as: your marketing department can not always make changes, the product is not finished, why change it? -This statement does not say the crux of the problem, the question is why the marketing department can mention frequent changes in demand? Who gave the right? Who is the customer's request filtered by? Who will bear the cost of modification? Who will be responsible for the bad change? Is it an input problem or an output problem?

Communication to ensure efficiency, you have to communicate before the real problem, around the problem, provide solutions, or communication is like the leader to speak as "Lee, you bring people to study these problems, as soon as possible to give me the results", bureaucratic thinking brings about a reduction in communication efficiency.