This is a guest blog post by Dave Willenberg, LEED AP
When most people think about technical communication, their first thought is about how engineers communicate with other engineers.
What almost nobody considers, though, is how we communicate with… not-engineers.
And yet, it’s a HUGE part of what we do:
Our version of fun usually requires a multi-zero’ed budget beforehand; however, there’s no guarantee that whoever’s signing the checks has any technical background.
There’s a very slim chance that they’ll sign your expenditure request unless they understand at least the basics of what you plan to do, so now, it’s your job to somehow lay it all out.
In a webinar for ECC not too long ago, I highlighted a technique that I call ‘Inverse Explanation’ – a technical communication trick for clearly explaining technical processes to non-technical people.
It’d be a good idea to get up to speed on that before we continue – I’ve laid it all out and included some examples in my Medium article here.
All caught up? OK – let’s rock.
[Read more…] about Inverse Explanations – Part 2: The Danger of Linearity
Remove communication from engineering, and what are you left with?
