To express well, choose the right medium

Summary
This is the third article in the series of twelve articles “XII Perspectives to High Performance QA”, outlining interesting & counter intuitive perspectives to high performance QA aligned on four themes of Language, Thinking, Structure & Doing.

The prior two articles of ‘LANGUAGE’ theme outlined how communication approach, language style and sentence construct & type play a key role in activities we do. Here we explore the role of medium to finally expressing the thought/idea well, to act on it. A loose frictionless paper medium is very suited for early stage ideas whilst a strict template/tool is more suited for capturing ideas fully and clearly.

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So, what is the role of medium?

The last article focused on ‘communication approach’ that outlined three approaches — descriptive, prescriptive and visual, one of which is probably more suited in a given phase of problem solving. Remember thoughts/ideas germinate in our mind which we express using a medium, like a sheet of paper or a tool/template that is really unstructured vis-a-vis unstructured.

If the ‘impedance’ between the thought and medium is not matched, then the expressive power gets greatly diminished. So, the medium matters!

So, what are the various media of expression?

When we express something that is in early stages of formulation, we can do this quickly and refine continuously when we adopt a unstructured approach to expression, that is most often the pen/pencil and paper. This lends itself to stay creative by being able to express without any boundaries in terms of how I arrange my text or better still, use pictures.

When the thought germinating out of language is clear and crystal, it may be more suitable to express in its entirety without loosing any information, that is best done by using a tool/template, a structured approach to expression.

So how do these all connect ?

“Ideas germinate and bubble, enabled by language style, connecting to form thoughts that coalesce, and aided by the approach turn into reality, finally expressed via the medium.”

So, what medium of expression suits what communication approach?

When we adopt a descriptive style of communication approach of thoughts/ideas that are at early stage of conceptualisation, it is constantly refined to bring out the clarity and the low impedance medium of expression is simply ‘paper’ i.e a unstructured medium , which is free flowing. Here you may choose to write sentences in any direction, connect them pictorially, liberally use colours embellish using pictures/mind-maps/sketch-notes. What we are really doing is using our creative right brain to express the problem better and help refining it to clarify.

What are examples of these? Well a mind map of system landscape connecting the various elements likes users(persona), system entities (features, flows..), environments and attributes is one. Jottings of ideas, potential issues, questions/clarifications, ideas, flow pictures are some others.

When we are reasonably clear of the solution (prescriptive approach) , then it is probably better to capture the detail and entirety of ideas/thoughts using a structured expression approach of tool/template. Here the key objective is to focus and ensure clarity is captured in its full glory, undiminished. This is best done by using a well formed template in case of a paper medium or a software tool in the digital medium.

What are examples of latter? Well a simple spreadsheet, specialised tools for outlining scenarios, bug reports are some of the examples.

In the visual communication approach, depending upon the maturity of thought, paper may be first choice before committing to a tool medium. If the visual communication approach is used to ideate, then the paper medium is more suitable. If the visual approach is a representation of rich facts, then a tool is more suited as the medium of expression.

Summary

The medium that we choose to express our thoughts that emanate from our language driven thinking is key to expressing well. Good expression is key to being clear and ensuring clarity in communication to others.

Any friction that can impede the free flowing thoughts is very unwelcome, hence the medium of expression plays a vital role in the final transformation of thoughts to actionable ideas. A loose frictionless paper medium is very suited for early stage ideas whilst a strict template/tool is more suited for capturing ideas fully and clearly.

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CLICK HERE to read the previous article
“Three communication approaches to brilliant clarity”