• hark@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    1 year ago

    The skill of removing as much ambiguity as possible is valuable. This includes ambiguity derived from loopy brain. Prepare to still be amazed by wild interpretations, but minimize what you can. One tip is to reduce message complexity and clearly separate concepts (in this case, the greeting and the actual instructions).

    • vladmech@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I get that, and I’ve had a reminder of an old failing at explicit communication to end users on my desk for 5+ years to help keep me grounded, but come on… In what interpretation other than Yoda giving instructions would an English as their first language user think ‘hey hey!’ was the username I was providing? It’s out of frame, but the previous three sets of IMs I’ve sent this user started with hey hey! hey hey! and hello hello! so it’s not like this was even a one off weird greeting for them (I should probably mix it up a bit more but what can you do)

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          1 year ago

          I had to screen share with a user yesterday because he couldn’t find the print button on the print dialogue.

          It was right there. When I remoted onto his computer his cursor was about four pixels away from it. It even said “Print”.

          No idea how he managed to mess that up.

      • Someology@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        It is almost as if OP was expecting their customer to have attended elementary school or something.