Communication Exercise

[00:00:00]
>> So I have three little examples here. I give you a little context sharing, a little bit. Not too much, I said less. One of these is a technical project. So convincing your company to switch to frontend frameworks. So you're pitching moving from Backbone to Solid.js. Those are JavaScript frameworks, I don't actually care if you know what they are.

[00:00:20]
One is much older, one is much newer. Solid is very cool if you haven't played with it. So you're pitching this to the VP of product, the CEO, and the VP of engineering of a 5,000-person engineering company. And this is the pitch to convince them to change frameworks.

[00:00:37]
I gave them some reasons there, and I wrote a pitch here. And what I want you to do, either mentally or preferred writing it down, cuz writing it down will help you drive understanding, I promise. Write down what's wrong with this approach, and if you have time, rewrite it to be something better, okay?

[00:00:56]
Another pitch here is you're gonna pitch implementing a A/B testing tool. If you're not familiar with what A/B testing is, is you show one user one experience. So let's say this is signing up for Netflix. And this one says, sign up now. And you're pitching experience B, or you're showing them to another demographic of users.

[00:01:17]
Sign up flow B, which says click here for free Netflix, I don't know, something like that. And you show them to 50% of your users sees one, 50% of your users sees another. And then now, because it's random sampling, you can prove this one actually works better than this one, right?

[00:01:34]
That's an A/B testing tool. So the people you're sending to this memo are the engineers who are going to be actually working on it. And this is for them to gain enough context and ask questions to be part of your project kickoff. Here's your goals. Here's the pitch.

[00:01:47]
Same thing. What's wrong with this approach? How could you make it better, Okay? And last one here, you are adding a social share button to a classifieds app. A classifieds would be like Craigslist, right? You're convincing a group of stakeholders, mixed engineers, product managers, and designers that you want them to pick your design of a social share button over another one proposed by a third-party design agency.

[00:02:13]
So this is gonna be an email where the people weigh in, decide whether they're gonna choose your design or not. So here's the primary reasons for doing that. Here's your pitch. And, [LAUGH] first of all, I hate myself for writing that. Secondly, please identify with what is wrong with it and how you can make it better.