Principles of Effective Communication

Principles of Effective Communication

  Visual

    Visuals can provide a foundation for discussion and keeps the audience more interested in what they are looking at. They are helpful to people who maybe have an hearing impairment and therefore avoids problems

    Conciseness

    Get to the point and make your words count so that the listener does not loose interest in what you are saying, similar to preparation but it is just being aware that you do not get side tracked and begin talking off subject, this can cause problems.

    Relate

    Use personal experiences to strengthen the bridge for your first meeting this allows the conversation to be more personal and interesting, this will also make it hard not to think of things to talk about as it is easy to think of past experiences.

  Listen

    Find out the experience level of your audience so that you don't use words or phrases that the listener may not understand due to not having experience in what you are talking about, understanding early the level of experience of the other talker helps and makes it easier to communicate effectively.

  Basics

    Use basic/standard English this avoids any confusion to people whose first language may not be English/language spoken, but not only this if you use slang words that the listener may not have experience in.

  Preparation

    Stay one step ahead of your audience so that the conversation does not draw to a halt making it difficult to continue communicating so preparing, preparing for all the above is also really helpful as it makes it much easier rather than doing it on the spot when talking to someone,



Communication Barriers

There are many different barriers when communicating, which can effect the way you communicate making it more difficult. An example of a possible barrier is when you are talking to someone who uses jargon, this basically means when they use words which are over complicated and make it much harder to communicate effectively. 

Emotional Barriers

There are barriers that occur when someone is at an emotional time, therefore preventing them from communicating and expressing their self. An emotional barrier is usually caused by subjects not do with the subject or the person talking and is a barrier that is very hard to avoid if it happens while communicating.

Lack of attention

If the audience isn't interested in what you are saying then it is likely they will lose attention and not begin to listen to what you are saying, meaning if you were to for example ask them a question they wont know the answer due to not paying attention previously. Another occurrence that is caused from lack of attention is when there is a distraction near by such as a loud noises that distract your audience therefore causing them not to listen completely.

Differences in perception and viewpoint 

A very common problem when communicating is people having different views from each other therefore causing conflict between the two causing them to not really get anywhere as they are just arguing between each other.

Physical Disabilities

This can be a problem if the audience has a speech or hearing disability causing them not either be able to understand what you are saying therefore making it hard to express, or if they have a problem speaking causing you to not being able to understand completely what they are saying.

Language Barriers

Another problem is communicating with someone from a different country due to the different languages it can become very difficult to communicate exactly what you mean to the audience, way around this can be difficult such as needing a translator.

Expectations

It is common that people will have certain expectations when coming into a conversation but when it is different to what is expected it can stagger communication a bit and make it more difficult to express what maybe you were expecting to before the conversation began.

Cultural differences

Communication will be very different in different cultures this can make it difficult if you communicate with someone who is from a different culture as expressing different emotions can be taken differently from other cultures.

Methods to avoid problems
A way you can avoid problems with people who having a hearing impairment include doing things such as writing down the information you want to convey this will help them understand much easier, also if you know sign language this will help a lot and make it easy to communicate with someone who struggles to hear, if you don't have any experience with sign language then you can hire an interpreter to explain to them.

You can also use interactive aspects to make work easier for people who may have problems with vision such as have the normal size text but have a button of some kind to enhance the size of the text so that it is much easier to see, also for people with problems with colour blindness they could have a button to turn on a colour blind mode this would avoid problems with the colour being hard to see. Keeping ahead of the problem is important too such as not using fast flickering images this should avoid problems with people who have epilepsy.

Elephant Design Standards include:
Readable font - I make sure to use basic fonts such as Arial that is very clear to see
Header and footer - Using header and footers to mark that I have made the file/product as well as using the footer to add copyright and other.
Elephant on the front page - Having an elephant on every slide of the ELP is very important as it keeps it consistent and adds a brand to the product
Aims and objectives - Having aims and objectives at the beginning of the ELP is important and I use to this to inform the user what the product is about
Variety of interactions - I try to use different styles of interaction to keep the ELP's fresh and different for example using drag and drops
Instant Feedback - Instant feedback includes having a survey at the end of each ELP so that I can find out thoughts on the ELP
Show me try me quiz -  I always try having a quiz near the end so that I can test the user if they have been reading the ELP 
Introduction video -  I use the Elephant Designs intro at the beginning of all my ELP's so that when users use that ELP they know who made it adding a branding to the ELP.
Learning theories -  I try to use different styles of learning so that it is fresh and can adapt to different interests people have when it comes to learning. For example using audio sometimes and video to make it interesting to different audiences.
Spelling and grammar - I use F7 spell check on all my ELP's as well as asking for feedback so I can get ones the spell check does not catch
Consistent Design -  Keeping consistent colour is important for me as it looks very professional.