6 ms·

How do you tell a non-technical person that they can’t understand?

26 points by ricg 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
> How do you tell a non-technical person that they can’t understand? This is unbelievably presumptuous, narcissistic and smacks of technological elitism. You don't know whether or not the client can understand -- all you know is you're unwilling to explain it to him. If you don't want to get along with clients, if you're willing to take the risk of alienating them, take this article's advice and tell your customers, "You can't do that, and you also can't understand why -- trust me." If you do want to get along with your clients as well as grow your business, try this instead: "Well, our system can't do that at the moment, but I appreciate your making this suggestion for future improvements." Maybe it's a polite lie -- so what? You've empowered the client, made him feel as though you care about his needs. You've avoided opening an emotional exit door the client my well choose to walk through.
- verelo 14y ago
  Couldn't agree more. > "It’s not that the customer is “stupid,” nor that given enough time, training, and explanation, couldn’t eventually understand it all fully. But sometimes the customer just has to trust the vendor." If the vendor cant explain a problem / solution, i would have a lot of trouble trusting that they have a true grasp of the actual problem.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  >This is unbelievably presumptuous, narcissistic and smacks of technological elitism >In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. (From what you can't say). Mayhaps you can apply those labels, but you skipped the crucial part -- is it true?
  - lutusp 14y ago
    >> This is unbelievably presumptuous, narcissistic and smacks of technological elitism > Mayhaps you can apply those labels, but you skipped the crucial part -- is it true? As to "presumptuous", the author assumes a priori that the client can't understand an issue, not doesn't understand it but might comprehend an offered explanation. That's how presumption is defined -- an assumption in advance of any effort to gather facts. As to "narcissistic", well, yes, absolutely. The author places himself and his peers in an elite, entitled group, qualified to gauge the limited understanding of lesser beings and pass judgment on them, rather than try to explain something that might help his clients and his business. As to "elitism", yes again -- the author sees himself and his associates as belonging to an anointed, superior technological priesthood, able to say to the unwashed masses "trust me" with a straight face. Any questions?
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      Yes, one. Is the original statement true?
run4yourlives 14y ago
I would love to know the specifics behind this post, because it seems so very, very, wrong. One of the comments nails it best: unless you are breaking the laws of physics, you can make software do pretty much anything... the real question is whether that is a net benefit. "They want to use our software or customize things in ways that are technically impossible" What the hell does that even mean? Perhaps the reason the tech can't communicate to the non-techy is that he can't communicate, period. Does it mean they're using the software for something it wasn't intended to be used for? Are they looking for a feature that isn't coded? Are they looking for support for something you aren't interested in supporting? Not much is 'technically impossible' when it comes to businesses and software these days. What there are in abundance however are a lot of misguided applications.
- dpatrick86 14y ago
  Perhaps "practically" impossible is closer to the mark.
- aplusbi 14y ago
  There are countless examples of "technically impossible" requests on the daily wtf and clients from hell. A good example is when the client wants you (or your software) to do something that involves access to other companies' infrastructure or to every computer in the world. For example, "make our website the default homepage for everyone." or "remove our competitors' links on Google."
  - randomdata 14y ago
    Your examples sound rather easy, relatively speaking, to accomplish technically, but are certainly legally dubious. In fact, it seems most things that are "technically impossible" come down to social issues and not technical issues at all.
    - VLM 14y ago
      Technically and legally / morally acceptable and simple. The financial cost however would be unimaginably spectacular. Simply buy your competitors and shut them down, and create a simple 1e8 price range deal with some well known browser devs to make your page the home page. Lack of communications ability could be an issue. Oh you didn't REALLY mean everyone's computer in the world you just meant in this office. Oh you mean the top adwords link on google not search results. Well...
gruseom 14y ago
It's a dangerous habit to call or think of anyone as "a non-technical person". Life is not binary; people do not come in discrete categories; these are merely labels we impose on ourselves and others, and once you stick a label on someone it's hard to see them otherwise. You're bound to the judgement you've made and will tend to block out any information that contradicts it – such as the fact that they can understand things, if clearly communicated.
bunderbunder 14y ago
How do you tell a non-technical person that they can’t understand? You don't. You explain by analogy. If you can't come up with a good analogy, it's probably for one of two reasons: Perhaps you don't really understand it all that well yourself, in which case you should find somebody who understands it better to do the explaining. Or perhaps you just have a hard time coming up with analogies in general, in which case you should find someone with better communication skills to do the explaining.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  I agree. And you, on the software side, will often be surprised that you "don't understand" what the user wants or needs in an equivalent way. Of course, sometimes your software is just mired in the legacies of bad decisions past, and it really is useless to explain (all you're doing is trying to communicate what "spaghetti code" means), because nobody is going to come out more enlightened on either side.
- BruceIV 14y ago
  Agreed. It just takes time to explain how any computer system works (at least at a high level). One of my friends asked me once "what is code?" after I came home from work - I spent two hours talking with him, and at the end he had a rudimentary understanding of how source code, compilers, operating systems, and graphical user interfaces work. He made a reference to compilers months later that showed he remembered and understood. Also, sometimes tech people are pretty ignorant too - I had to explain what a hash table was to my project manager once.
- jerf 14y ago
  Now, try an experiment next you do that. Explain by a completely inapplicable analogy, one that is logically coherent but does not apply to the problem at hand. You win if your listener calls BS. I win if they don't. You're probably not explaining anywhere near as much as you think. You're just making soothing noises until they are no longer willing to pursue the matter. You might as well be honest about that fact with both yourself and the client, as suggested in the blog post.
jpdoctor 14y ago
> You’re going to have to trust your doctor. Good god this is bad advice, especially in the US which is nowhere near the top in world rankings for quantitative medical performance like longevity or infant mortality. The first thing you do is get multiple opinions. Without any further info, you have a 25% chance that you are relying on some clown who was in the bottom 25% of his class. I swear many of those guys are just throwing around treatments to collect $$.
- ScottBurson 14y ago
  Agreed. And contrary to what the OP said, it is entirely possible to educate oneself about a specific medical condition, given only some basic knowledge about biology and biochemistry. There are plenty of resources out there. Coming up with possible alternative diagnoses for one's symptoms is a bit harder -- that's really what you're relying on the doctor's expertise for -- but even that can be done.
- glomph 14y ago
  'you have a 25% chance that you are relying on some clown who was in the bottom 25% of his class' Please tell me this is a joke.
- lotsofcows 14y ago
  Well, of course they are. You have an insurance based health system. Every time you go to your doctor they order every possible test so they can claim it, plus their mark up, against your insurance. How did you think the USA manages to have simultaneously the most expensive and least efficacious health care in the first world?
jchung 14y ago
The key failure of this post is that it uses the wrong analogy. You may want your client to think of you as a doctor, but right now they think of you as a magician.
kvprashant 14y ago
If you can't convince them, confuse them eh?
dean 14y ago
I deny the premise of the OP's doctor analogy. Given a rare liver disease, and the amount of information available on the internet, and access to doctors to ask questions to, a motivated learner could become quite proficient in understanding how the liver works and how it is affected by a specific disease. The patient does not have to become a doctor to do this. A doctor has to learn many, many things to become a doctor. Whereas the liver disease sufferer only has to learn about one thing. It is easily possible for a lay person to learn enough about their condition to have a meaningful "technical" conversation about it with their doctor.
- quasque 14y ago
  That would only work if the learner is so motivated that they spend months poring over medical and biology textbooks to understand enough background, and then learn how to read scientific papers and interpret studies for statistical significance, to get up to date on the latest research. And of course they also must have the aptitude to do all that, to get to the point where they can start meaningfully questioning the doctor's recommended course of action. Otherwise, they're still just going to have to trust the doctor.
heathlilley 14y ago
Kobayashi Maru If you can't find a solution, change the problem. I have had great success in re-working the requirement when something seemingly impossible has been proposed by a user. IMHO, this is because what makes something impossible is usually an additional (and often negotiable) requirement. Sure there are still times when this won't work either, but it should help reduce that number.
burke 14y ago
Wrong question. If you can't simplify or analogize enough to explain something technical, you don't understand it well enough yourself. Sometimes I'll tell people "It's kind of abstract and will take a while to explain. Do you still care?"
websitescenes 14y ago
The best approach that I have found, at least when making websites or creating a CMS, is to really dumb it down. Don't think about how you would like it to be, because it will almost always be too complex. Beyond making software super intuitive, make sure it's extensible enough to adapt to customer needs. Pretty much anything is possible but if your client is consistently asking for stupid things then I think it's time to find a new client.
analyst74 14y ago
Different people are looking for different answers, and a non-technical person rarely wants a detailed technical answer. "Will I be able to do X?" "No, because that's technically impossible." or "No, our product doesn't support that feature yet." or "Well, you could, but it's not a documented feature, and you risk losing everything you did during next upgrade." or "Yes, but it will take several more months of development and associated cost." Generally, the asker will be satisfied at this point, because now they understand enough of the problem to make an informed decision.
alxndr 14y ago
Post doesn't even try to answer the original question. > ...how do I basically tell [the customer] “You can’t understand this. You have to trust me” without sounding like a prick? The post concludes with "you have to tell the customer to trust you".
snuze 14y ago
This reminds me of Richard Feynman answering a question about magnets. I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with. Transcript: http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_wh... Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM
EA 14y ago
Don't say: "Do you understand?" or "Do you know what I mean?" Instead say: "Did I explain that well?" or "Am I making myself clear?"
Millennium 14y ago
You don't. You start by explaining from a high level, working your way down to lower levels as requested until the client comes to their own conclusion that they can't understand. This takes longer, but keeps you from being the bad guy.
davidmcb 14y ago
The premise is predictably arrogant and self-serving. It simply means that YOU lack the intellectual capacity, emotional intelligence, and command of language to produce a coherent explanation for that person. IOW - it's YOUR failure, NOT THEIR'S.

26 points by ricg 14y ago

> How do you tell a non-technical person that they can’t understand? This is unbelievably presumptuous, narcissistic and smacks of technological elitism. You don't know whether or not the client can understand -- all you know is you're unwilling to explain it to him. If you don't want to get along with clients, if you're willing to take the risk of alienating them, take this article's advice and tell your customers, "You can't do that, and you also can't understand why -- trust me." If you do want to get along with your clients as well as grow your business, try this instead: "Well, our system can't do that at the moment, but I appreciate your making this suggestion for future improvements." Maybe it's a polite lie -- so what? You've empowered the client, made him feel as though you care about his needs. You've avoided opening an emotional exit door the client my well choose to walk through.

verelo 14y ago
Couldn't agree more. > "It’s not that the customer is “stupid,” nor that given enough time, training, and explanation, couldn’t eventually understand it all fully. But sometimes the customer just has to trust the vendor." If the vendor cant explain a problem / solution, i would have a lot of trouble trusting that they have a true grasp of the actual problem.
tomjen3 14y ago
>This is unbelievably presumptuous, narcissistic and smacks of technological elitism >In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times "indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. (From what you can't say). Mayhaps you can apply those labels, but you skipped the crucial part -- is it true?
- lutusp 14y ago
  >> This is unbelievably presumptuous, narcissistic and smacks of technological elitism > Mayhaps you can apply those labels, but you skipped the crucial part -- is it true? As to "presumptuous", the author assumes a priori that the client can't understand an issue, not doesn't understand it but might comprehend an offered explanation. That's how presumption is defined -- an assumption in advance of any effort to gather facts. As to "narcissistic", well, yes, absolutely. The author places himself and his peers in an elite, entitled group, qualified to gauge the limited understanding of lesser beings and pass judgment on them, rather than try to explain something that might help his clients and his business. As to "elitism", yes again -- the author sees himself and his associates as belonging to an anointed, superior technological priesthood, able to say to the unwashed masses "trust me" with a straight face. Any questions?
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Yes, one. Is the original statement true?

run4yourlives 14y ago

I would love to know the specifics behind this post, because it seems so very, very, wrong. One of the comments nails it best: unless you are breaking the laws of physics, you can make software do pretty much anything... the real question is whether that is a net benefit. "They want to use our software or customize things in ways that are technically impossible" What the hell does that even mean? Perhaps the reason the tech can't communicate to the non-techy is that he can't communicate, period. Does it mean they're using the software for something it wasn't intended to be used for? Are they looking for a feature that isn't coded? Are they looking for support for something you aren't interested in supporting? Not much is 'technically impossible' when it comes to businesses and software these days. What there are in abundance however are a lot of misguided applications.

dpatrick86 14y ago
Perhaps "practically" impossible is closer to the mark.
aplusbi 14y ago
There are countless examples of "technically impossible" requests on the daily wtf and clients from hell. A good example is when the client wants you (or your software) to do something that involves access to other companies' infrastructure or to every computer in the world. For example, "make our website the default homepage for everyone." or "remove our competitors' links on Google."
- randomdata 14y ago
  Your examples sound rather easy, relatively speaking, to accomplish technically, but are certainly legally dubious. In fact, it seems most things that are "technically impossible" come down to social issues and not technical issues at all.
  - VLM 14y ago
    Technically and legally / morally acceptable and simple. The financial cost however would be unimaginably spectacular. Simply buy your competitors and shut them down, and create a simple 1e8 price range deal with some well known browser devs to make your page the home page. Lack of communications ability could be an issue. Oh you didn't REALLY mean everyone's computer in the world you just meant in this office. Oh you mean the top adwords link on google not search results. Well...

gruseom 14y ago

It's a dangerous habit to call or think of anyone as "a non-technical person". Life is not binary; people do not come in discrete categories; these are merely labels we impose on ourselves and others, and once you stick a label on someone it's hard to see them otherwise. You're bound to the judgement you've made and will tend to block out any information that contradicts it – such as the fact that they can understand things, if clearly communicated.

bunderbunder 14y ago

How do you tell a non-technical person that they can’t understand? You don't. You explain by analogy. If you can't come up with a good analogy, it's probably for one of two reasons: Perhaps you don't really understand it all that well yourself, in which case you should find somebody who understands it better to do the explaining. Or perhaps you just have a hard time coming up with analogies in general, in which case you should find someone with better communication skills to do the explaining.

crazygringo 14y ago
I agree. And you, on the software side, will often be surprised that you "don't understand" what the user wants or needs in an equivalent way. Of course, sometimes your software is just mired in the legacies of bad decisions past, and it really is useless to explain (all you're doing is trying to communicate what "spaghetti code" means), because nobody is going to come out more enlightened on either side.
BruceIV 14y ago
Agreed. It just takes time to explain how any computer system works (at least at a high level). One of my friends asked me once "what is code?" after I came home from work - I spent two hours talking with him, and at the end he had a rudimentary understanding of how source code, compilers, operating systems, and graphical user interfaces work. He made a reference to compilers months later that showed he remembered and understood. Also, sometimes tech people are pretty ignorant too - I had to explain what a hash table was to my project manager once.
jerf 14y ago
Now, try an experiment next you do that. Explain by a completely inapplicable analogy, one that is logically coherent but does not apply to the problem at hand. You win if your listener calls BS. I win if they don't. You're probably not explaining anywhere near as much as you think. You're just making soothing noises until they are no longer willing to pursue the matter. You might as well be honest about that fact with both yourself and the client, as suggested in the blog post.

jpdoctor 14y ago

> You’re going to have to trust your doctor. Good god this is bad advice, especially in the US which is nowhere near the top in world rankings for quantitative medical performance like longevity or infant mortality. The first thing you do is get multiple opinions. Without any further info, you have a 25% chance that you are relying on some clown who was in the bottom 25% of his class. I swear many of those guys are just throwing around treatments to collect $$.

ScottBurson 14y ago
Agreed. And contrary to what the OP said, it is entirely possible to educate oneself about a specific medical condition, given only some basic knowledge about biology and biochemistry. There are plenty of resources out there. Coming up with possible alternative diagnoses for one's symptoms is a bit harder -- that's really what you're relying on the doctor's expertise for -- but even that can be done.
glomph 14y ago
'you have a 25% chance that you are relying on some clown who was in the bottom 25% of his class' Please tell me this is a joke.
lotsofcows 14y ago
Well, of course they are. You have an insurance based health system. Every time you go to your doctor they order every possible test so they can claim it, plus their mark up, against your insurance. How did you think the USA manages to have simultaneously the most expensive and least efficacious health care in the first world?

jchung 14y ago

The key failure of this post is that it uses the wrong analogy. You may want your client to think of you as a doctor, but right now they think of you as a magician.

kvprashant 14y ago

If you can't convince them, confuse them eh?

dean 14y ago

I deny the premise of the OP's doctor analogy. Given a rare liver disease, and the amount of information available on the internet, and access to doctors to ask questions to, a motivated learner could become quite proficient in understanding how the liver works and how it is affected by a specific disease. The patient does not have to become a doctor to do this. A doctor has to learn many, many things to become a doctor. Whereas the liver disease sufferer only has to learn about one thing. It is easily possible for a lay person to learn enough about their condition to have a meaningful "technical" conversation about it with their doctor.

quasque 14y ago
That would only work if the learner is so motivated that they spend months poring over medical and biology textbooks to understand enough background, and then learn how to read scientific papers and interpret studies for statistical significance, to get up to date on the latest research. And of course they also must have the aptitude to do all that, to get to the point where they can start meaningfully questioning the doctor's recommended course of action. Otherwise, they're still just going to have to trust the doctor.

heathlilley 14y ago

Kobayashi Maru If you can't find a solution, change the problem. I have had great success in re-working the requirement when something seemingly impossible has been proposed by a user. IMHO, this is because what makes something impossible is usually an additional (and often negotiable) requirement. Sure there are still times when this won't work either, but it should help reduce that number.

burke 14y ago

Wrong question. If you can't simplify or analogize enough to explain something technical, you don't understand it well enough yourself. Sometimes I'll tell people "It's kind of abstract and will take a while to explain. Do you still care?"

websitescenes 14y ago

The best approach that I have found, at least when making websites or creating a CMS, is to really dumb it down. Don't think about how you would like it to be, because it will almost always be too complex. Beyond making software super intuitive, make sure it's extensible enough to adapt to customer needs. Pretty much anything is possible but if your client is consistently asking for stupid things then I think it's time to find a new client.

analyst74 14y ago

Different people are looking for different answers, and a non-technical person rarely wants a detailed technical answer. "Will I be able to do X?" "No, because that's technically impossible." or "No, our product doesn't support that feature yet." or "Well, you could, but it's not a documented feature, and you risk losing everything you did during next upgrade." or "Yes, but it will take several more months of development and associated cost." Generally, the asker will be satisfied at this point, because now they understand enough of the problem to make an informed decision.

alxndr 14y ago

Post doesn't even try to answer the original question. > ...how do I basically tell [the customer] “You can’t understand this. You have to trust me” without sounding like a prick? The post concludes with "you have to tell the customer to trust you".

snuze 14y ago

This reminds me of Richard Feynman answering a question about magnets. I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with. Transcript: http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_wh... Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM

EA 14y ago

Don't say: "Do you understand?" or "Do you know what I mean?" Instead say: "Did I explain that well?" or "Am I making myself clear?"

Millennium 14y ago

You don't. You start by explaining from a high level, working your way down to lower levels as requested until the client comes to their own conclusion that they can't understand. This takes longer, but keeps you from being the bad guy.

davidmcb 14y ago

The premise is predictably arrogant and self-serving. It simply means that YOU lack the intellectual capacity, emotional intelligence, and command of language to produce a coherent explanation for that person. IOW - it's YOUR failure, NOT THEIR'S.