Blink and Digital Communication

April 26, 2005 | 10 Comments

Ever since I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how people communicate online and how easy it is to have your message lost when it’s turned to bits and bytes. If you’ve not read Blink, I urge you to do so. It’s an easy and thought-provoking read.

I finished it up a few weeks back and have been tossing it around my brain ever since. It’s all about inter-personal communication, snap judgment and mind reading and it shares all sorts of illumination stories about how we make decisions and interact with each other.

What it doesn’t do is get much into how we interact digitally. Here we have a writer that is able to give me a sense of him and his message within the first few paragraphs. But he’s a writer, and very good one, by trade. And he should know how to help put a clear picture in one’s mind quickly as he wrote the book on it. But what about the rest of us? What do people think when they read our e-mails, our posts and our Instant Messages?

He talks about the concept of “thin-slicing” which is “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow ‘slices’ of experience.” The Web is the ultimate playground for thin-slicing. Your average Web user thin-slices everything they see and it’s just soooo damn easy to move on to something else. The same goes for e-mail, etc.

All of this creates some unique challenges for the digital communicator. All we have are narrow slices of experience and quite often the pattern doesn’t do a good job of reflecting the person or situation behind it. We’re usually missing some essential clues due to the nature of digital mediums. The clues may be there, they’re just different to what most of us are used to.

Digital Mind Reading

Malcolm talks quite a bit about how our subconscious picks up on subtle clues when communicating with people. Things like vocal inflection and micro-expressions.

Whenever you’re talking with someone you’re picking up so much more than their words. I don’t think it’s all that different when communicating digitally. The difference is the clues.

One of the examples in the book deals with how packaging effects how people taste things. For some odd, yet totally proven reason, the visual appearance of a Mountain Dew can, for example, influence how we perceive the taste of Mountain Dew. It doesn’t make a whole lot of obvious sense, but it’s true.

When your communication via a Web site, for example, your audience doesn’t have the benefit of seeing your face or hearing your tone of voice. All people have is the “thin-slice” and it’s usually based of a pattern that might not be accurate. I think the Web, for example, conspires against us here. After all people are so used to wading through crap that when they see a with quality content, for example, unless those clues present themselves quickly, they’ve chalked it up as another dud and moved on.

To communicate well you’ve got to manufacture these clues for them. Your design, the words you choose and your writing style all help (or hinder) this. Malcolm does this in his book via his tone and his storytelling style. He probably put a whole bunch of work into making sure he’d developed a connection with his reader on the first page.

But hey, digital communication is new to most of us and frankly most of us weren’t really prepared to deal with it. That, and we’re not all professional writers. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from this and improve the way we communicate on- and off-line.

As well, the technology is changing and should in many ways help us out. Rich media, and things like podcasting and video blogging for example, provide digital modes of communication that open up a whole bunch of avenues to help you communicate.

Having said that, textual communication is here to stay and I think will be the primary way people communicate digitally for a long while.

The Text Generations

I was lucky enough to be able read an advance of Gerry McGovern’s new book and in it he talks about (don’t quote me on the exact words!) the “text generation.” Young people today communicate with text way more than I ever did. I’m in my early 30’s. When I was in high school I didn’t even have an e-mail address! Or a cell phone. Or iChat. I learned to type on a manual for crying out loud!

People over a certain age might be ill-equipped for online, text, communication. I know it fails me often enough, and I’ve had lots of practice! I was taught proper English and frankly that doesn’t always work online. There isn’t enough emotion in it. Look at the Oyayubizoku (thumb-tribe) — they can convey all sorts of emotion using shorthand text on a cell phone. Heck, “texting” isn’t that new a word!

I’ve been “asked” why I adopt a conversational tone and why I use so many parenthesis in my writing. Well, I never thought about it until recently, but part of the reason is that I want to convey my personality through my words and put a “face” on my site. I’m still not very good at it, but I think the idea is sound.

Your site, your design and your content are a reflection of you as a person, or your company, or your brand—like it or not. It’s not one of these things, it’s all of them.

This kind of textual communication is a new thing. We’ve got lots to learn. Digital communication is new as well. If you pay attention to how older generations communicate with each other it’s mostly verbal. They’re not all that comfortable with things like e-mail. I know of a few higher level executive types (mucky-mucks) who don’t read their own e-mail. Rather they have an assistant print it out and read it to them. To reply, they dictate back and have the assistant take care of the delivery.

These people would much prefer to just call you or arrange a face to face meeting. And there is something we all can learn from that, even if they aren’t the best communicators either. ;)

Face to Face

Have you ever noticed that it’s much easier to communicate digitally with someone you’ve met in person? I have. That’s not to say that I’ve not had some great conversations with people I’ve never seen before, only that once I’ve actually met someone the picture and pattern to their communication is much easier for me to read, which in turn makes it easier to understand any subtleties they may have in their message.

Heck, even seeing Gladwell speak at SXSW helped me better understand many of the themes and messages within his book. And he is a very good writer who has a remarkably clear voice and “visual” tone. I bet it took years to develop that and his message, to me anyway, was still made clearer once I’d seen him and added those “clues” to my picture and pattern of him.

Bottom Line?

I’m not sure if there is much we don’t already know here. Reading Blink just drove home even further a few core best practices when it comes to Web design, writing and digital communication:

• Content is of the utmost importance. Half-assed content will reflect badly on you, your company, and your brand.
• Style, tone and manner will dictate how your readers, users and customers picture you. With digital communication it’s important to try and develop an personal connection in all your writing. I’ve found that a conversational tone works well. Honesty and knowing when to admit your mistakes helps as well.
• When writing for digital delivery be sure to keep it clear and easy. It doesn’t always have to be short, but it needs to be easily scannable and clear.
• Inject emotion into your writing when you can. This help the reader get to know you.
• Know your audience. As I can attest to, it’s easy to miscommunicate when people can’t see your face. If you know your audience you’ll be better equipped to do so.
• If applicable, design is important and if done well and appropriately can work to make a good impression in a reader’s mind.
• Get face to face with your audience if you can. I think this is especially true for bloggers. Go to meet-ups, etc. and meet the people who read your site. If nothing else, that way, when you screw up, you’ll be more likely to be forgiven.

It takes a split-second for someone to make a judgment on your Web site, your blog post, your e-mail. Anything you can do to help the receiver better understand your message is in your best interests to do.

Filed under: Web General
Keyword Tags: blink malcolm+gladwell online+communication digital+communication writing

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