Divide Until Trivial

Posts Tagged ‘assumptions’

Assumptions are probably the single biggest barrier to good communication. The problem is, that we all assume things, and then don’t bother to check the details. This happens everywhere, and all the time. We all do it! The problem with assumptions is that they leave details unsaid. In a great number of cases, this leads to someone doing something they don’t need to do (over-working), or something being missed entirely.

As a trivial example, imagine you asked me to paint your bathroom. If I assume that your bathroom is about the same size as mine (quite small), and that you want it painted like mine (a light creamy colour), then I might be able to give you an estimate for the cost of the work. I happen to have some of that cream paint left over, so I can do it cheaply for you. Now imagine that when I come over to do the work, your bathroom is bigger than my entire house, and you actually want it painted blue. Clearly, my original estimates are going to be completely wrong. Now I either need to do lots of work without getting paid, or we need to agree that actually you want it a creamy colour instead of blue, or you need to pay far more than you expected.

All that’s a pretty obvious problem. A lot of people would intuitively be able to look at the decorating “problem” and work out that size and colour are important details, so we’d be careful to point them out. However, there are of course all sorts of other details about decorating we don’t intuitively know, and so won’t think to pass them on. When problems get more complex, we don’t have the same amount of intuitive knowledge, so we don’t know so much about the solution, and we don’t know which details are important.

What we can see from all this is that the recipient of our information makes assumptions because we (the sender) make assumptions on their behalf, and probably do so without thinking about it. We unwittingly direct our audience to formulate incomplete conclusions in a way that we want them to. We’d probably be happy a that point, merrily believing that everyone had all the information they needed, and that everything was well managed. The odd thing is that this exuberance is often sub-consciously passed on to our audience, so they probably also think they have all the information they need. It’s only when they start looking at it in detail that they’ll realise they don’t know nearly enough.

The point here is that bad assumptions lead to bad things happening. As the sender of information, we need to be careful about what we assume the receiver knows, doesn’t know and needs to know. As the receiver, we need to be careful about what we assume about what we’re being told, and we also need to be sure to evalute what we’re being told carefully, and not to “add” to it with our own imagination. In short, we’ve got to be careful not to project ourselves into the actual content of what’s being discussed.

I’m sure everyone that’s used the Internet a fair amount will be familiar with this sort of error message:

Please enter telephone number in correct format.

I was just given this message when leaving feedback at the TFL website. It’s a fairly classic example of poor usability, but actually, that failing is because of poor communication. As usability experts will tell you, not only should the web form have an example of what you want people to type into it, but the error message must actually add something to the interaction.

Let’s think about that in some more detail: The web form should have an example of what’s required. This is really a way of giving the user the information they need up-front. That means the user doesn’t need any knowledge a priori, they can just use the form immediately. Having no example present means the user must already know how to use the form – if this is the first time they’ve used it, then they have no way to do this.

Secondly, let’s think about the error message. Clearly, if you’re going to tell someone that they’ve done something wrong, and that they need to re-do it, then you need to tell them what was wrong, how to fix it, and optionally why it was a problem for you.

Website usability aside, these same principles apply when we communicate. We always make assumptions about other people’s knowledge, but the trick is to assume the right things, and not assume too much. We also need to make sure people have all the information they need to be able to do whatever it is they want to do.

To try to give some context, imagine you’re working on a problem with a couple of other people. You think you’ve got the seeds of an idea, but need some of the gaps in your knowledge to be filled in by your team mates. That means you need them to do something for you, which means you need to ask them to do it. Here’s where the communication skills come in: you need to give them all the information they need to do the job. If you give them too little information (you assume too much), then they’ll either completely fail to do the task, or else not do it to your satisfaction. If you bamboozle them with details (you assume to little) then you slow down the process of actually working, and you’ll probably confuse them into working over-precisely. In other words, you need to communicate just right.