The Communication Experiment

A twelve year old ran a communication experiment on me at a science fair.

She assembled a simple 8 piece model

by snapping together several pieces of differently shaped plastic pieces.

There were squares, triangles, circles, and rectangles

all sticking out in different directions,

but it was a simple model.

My task was to communicate the model

to another person verbally

and have them reassemble it.

I used colors, shapes, and angles in my instructions.

When we compared the finished product,

there was only a 20% resemblance.

This was a great exercise that illustrated

the fallacy of verbal communication.

People don’t see what you see.

The more you explain with words,

the greater the divergence in mental models.

Try this exercise with your team

to highlight this fallacy.

A lot is lost in hand-offs of good ideas

from product managers to dev teams, for instance.

Whenever possible, bring in a simple model or metaphor

so people can at least anchor their mental models with yours.