Cues. Feedback. Validation.

 

As a kid I played this little game at school we called ‘telephone line’. Twenty kids were hurdled up into a circle. One kid started by whispering a sentence in the ear of his neighbor, so the other kids couldn’t hear what was said. The neighbor would say the same sentence to his neighbor, and so on, until the sentence was ’round circle’. The fun of the game was comparing what the last one had heard with what was originally said.

In a normal setting it didn’t come close.

Now try to imagine how this would work if the children didn't all speak the same language.

What would happen if instead of whispering they needed to express themselves using sock puppets?

The end user tells the department head, who tells the business analyst, who tells the consultant, who tells the system architect, who tells the developer, what is needed.

Que?

And the end user is in the US, the developer in India, and every one else somewhere in between.

QUE?!!

You get an email from someone you have never met before, offering you thousands of dollars. He needs to get millions of dollars out of his country and would like you to help him. For a nice fee of course.

Do you trust the sender?

Why not?

Why do you think some people still fall for this kind of spam?

Why do you trust a team member you have never met, never worked with and can't see face-to-face because he is at the other end of the globe?

I think we have a process to communicate in an online context where face-to-face communication is not possible, trust is not established before, and our channel is unprotected from noise.

Cues. Feedback. Validation.

We pick up social cues from our conversation partner and match this with our preconceived ideas. If he uses the word "awesome" a lot, he must be a surfer.

Dude!

In step two we exchange information, you get feedback on the image you have of the other person. Some cues are filled in. New cues arrive.

With validation we need to establish a first hand experience with our conversation partner to validate our perception.  In pure online communication validation is the key problem.

These phases are inspired by how online dating develops between two people.


In an online setting we need profile descriptions. Head shots. Short descriptions of "Self".


Earlier this year I wrote on this blog "How Social Media Solves Communication Problems."

Guess what? Guess how it solves communication problems?

By filling in the blanks, providing cues about your conversation partner that you can use to construct a mental image.

And by facilitating feedback. Interact and get those cues clear.


Cues. Feedback. Validation.

Bas de Baar is a writer who draws about people in transition. He loves to make visual maps and travel guides for the collaborators of our brave new world.