What are some helpful communication tips you have put into practice (especially when it comes to explaining technical topics to non-experts)?
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Director of Technology Strategy in Services (non-Government)8 months ago
A lot of my audience is non-technical — they’re business leaders — so I tend not to use any jargon or acronyms at all, unless they’re well-understood. I try to explain technology using metaphors to keep things simple. That does take practice to get it right. Your metaphor needs to make sense to the audience and should be clear and consistent, otherwise you could confuse the issue.Senior Enterprise Network Architect8 months ago
Keep it simple; find out what they are interested in and try to create a metaphor in their framework. Don't worry about technical accuracy - you typically need to convey a concept, not exactly how it works - getting caught up in a technically accurate metaphor is just as bad as trying to explain it with technical language.CISO8 months ago
I had to write a post in a corporate newsletter about phishing. I first started with an analogy of a person receiving a message from the head of state. Would he or she really be the recipient of such an e-mail? I then explained why and then gave a few technical explanations and warnings.Senior Executive Advisor in Software8 months ago
Keep it simple and do not use technical jargon. Try to ELI5 (explain like I am 5) if possible. I love visuals and that helps the reader process the information their way. if sending an email, avoid long paragraphs, and instead use bullet points to outline the important information. Use real world analogies. VP of Engineering8 months ago
A few points that may be useful:- Understand the audience. I usually try to gauge what they already know, so I can tailor my explanation to an appropriate level of depth and breadth.
- For users who have very little exposure to the concepts, I try to use analogies and examples from the real world. These need not be perfect.
- If possible, show and then explain. A demonstration, or hands on experience goes a long way.
- Avoid jargon. After all, the goal is not to show expertise but to facilitate understanding.
- Be patient, be approachable. Encourage questions. Check for understanding if possible.
For example ...
"GPT is an advanced neural network-based model, leveraging deep learning techniques and transformer architecture for natural language processing. It employs extensive pre-training on diverse datasets to generate contextually relevant, syntactically coherent text."
vs
"GPT is like a sophisticated digital brain, trained by reading a huge portion of the internet. It understands and generates text, similar to how a skilled writer might, but it's all based on patterns it has learned by reading the internet. This is more advanced than simple voice assistants, able to create detailed and coherent responses, articles, or even poetry, by recognizing and mimicking the way humans communicate."