Stop with the Jargon
Have you ever been to a hospital? Or watched ER, for that matter. When doctors and nurses talk to each other about their cases, they start spouting off these phrases that I won’t ever understand (nor do I really want to).
The local PCT advise the CPA when passing ADHD clients with PTSD to CPN’s from the CMHT.
Yeah, I really don’t care what that means. As long as they’re getting their job done, go for it. But if they need to talk to me about that sentence, they had better not expect me to understand it in those terms. They need to relate to me. Speak MY language.
So why do so many of us web folks start swinging around these stupid acronyms when talking with clients?
Once the XHTML and CSS are finished, we can PHP and MySQL the back end and then add AJAX for speed. Or would RoR be better?
Clients don’t care. Unless they specifically bring up a technology, don’t bore them with jargon. Relate to them. Use terms like ‘Interface’, and ‘Functionality,’ words they can grab ahold of and bring back to their supervisors. They need to understand the scope and deliverables of a project, not the technology used.
Sure, there may be some technical requirements for a project, but get those out of the way in the beginning, and don’t speak of them again. At a hospital, would you rather hear a bunch of letters spouted off at you, or a simple ‘We’ll do everything we can to help you.’?