A better alternative to face-to-face communication? (1/3)

Photo by Anne-Sophie Beaudoin

• He replied that he wondered whether the conditions would be good, given the above-zero temperature.
• I took that to mean he did not feel like it, but did not dare tell me. So I asked what he would like to do instead.
• He replied that he did not know.
• I then told him he only had to say so if he wanted to do nothing at all!
• He replied that he was not saying he wanted to do nothing, but was simply expressing his doubts.

I let my guard down and realized that Mathieu's remarks really were just questions. In fact, I had misread his non-verbal cues: I thought he was closed to my suggestions, when he was simply a little sluggish, as developers normally are when they emerge from their bubble after 4 straight hours of coding. He was therefore not in the ideal frame of mind to receive suggestions from a slightly overenergetic girl who had just woken up after 9 hours of sleep and had a large coffee (a heavily fictionalized story inspired by real events).

Communication between two people who share their daily lives, know each other inside out and have an incredible bond of trust can sometimes be difficult. So what about communication between two people who barely know each other? Without a doubt, communication is a more complex science than we sometimes imagine.

Breaking down communication

To make sense of it, we can very simply break down communication from one person (let us call her Line) to another (let us call him Jean) into 5 distinct steps (adapted from an article on the UserLike blog)

1. Line wants to tell Jean something
2. Line expresses her thoughts in words (and possibly through various non-verbal cues)
3. The message is transmitted to Jean
4. Jean interprets the words (and non-verbal cues)
5. Jean reacts to what Line wanted to tell him

Although this process seems fairly straightforward, there are many ways it could go wrong:

1. Line may be intoxicated and want to say the wrong things to Jean
2. Line may be in a state in which she expresses her thoughts poorly
3. Line may seem apathetic and convey non-verbal cues that do not reflect the intended message
4. Communication may take place through an unreliable medium. For example, a video call in which the sound or picture frequently cuts out.
5. If Jean thinks Line is not being completely transparent, he may try to read "between the lines" and imagine information that was never conveyed.

And this list could be very, very long! How can we make sure communication works well despite all these possible snags?

Synchronous communication

Nature has done a very good job here. The most natural way humans communicate (and the only one they used for tens of thousands of years) is two-way face-to-face conversation. The cycle mentioned above happens very quickly in one direction and then the other. This gives the participants frequent opportunities to check their interpretation, correct their message, express empathy, and so on. These are the benefits of synchronous communication, in which all the steps mentioned above happen at approximately the same time.

Asynchronous communication

But we no longer communicate exclusively face to face. A very long time ago, we invented writing. Although historically only a small number of people could read and write, this invention was a turning point. It allowed us to carry out steps 1 and 2 at one point in time, then steps 4 and 5 at a later point, possibly much later, and often repeatedly. This was the beginning of asynchronous communication.

We have come a long way since that initial invention: mail, the telegraph, fax, email, and so on. These are all mechanisms for asynchronous communication. The benefits are very real: the participants do not all need to be available at the same time to communicate. The written form allows us to read, reread, show others, keep something for reference, and so on.

But there are drawbacks too. With these mechanisms, the communication cycle is often very slow. Take Jean writing a long message to Line:

1. Jean has to think longer about what he wants to say
2. Jean takes time to write his long message.
3. Transmission is faster or slower depending on the medium used, and the message may not even arrive
4. Line receives the message and has to find time to read it. She may skim it, because Jean tried to be as clear as possible, so he wrote a lot of words to avoid leaving out important details.
5. Line has to take time to think and properly digest the message she received. She may not have time to reply now. She may tell herself she will reply later, but she could forget!

And the slower this cycle is, the harder it is to sustain a conversation, the more likely it is that a communication will be lost or not handled as it should be, and the greater the risk of misinterpretation, because unlike a live conversation, it is difficult to correct or confirm how the message has been interpreted.

A hybrid solution

Around thirty years ago, another form of communication emerged, and its popularity has exploded over the past 10 years: instant messaging. It is a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous communication. Messages are lightweight and transmitted quickly, as is customary in face-to-face discussion. And if both participants are available at the same time, the conversation happens almost naturally.

We believe the success of instant messaging in all its forms (SMS, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal) is no coincidence. The lightweight communication process, the obvious ability to sustain a conversation and the option to add a little non-verbal expression (emojis, GIFs, etc.), combined with the advantages of asynchronous written communication, make an appealing cocktail for almost everyone.

In the context of healthcare collaboration, however, we can ask the following question: are these advantages really desirable for the various stakeholders? Is instant messaging an appropriate communication mechanism?

To answer this question properly, other aspects of communication need to be considered, and that is exactly what we will do in part 2 of this series!