How might we simplify and translate technical jargon?#

Contributor: Shafir Ahmad, Senior AI Technical Consultant

Communicating with people who are not actively involved in your project can present a challenge. Technical staff such as engineers and developers find it difficult to communicate complex technical concepts to clients, senior management and customers alike. It might even look like you are speaking different languages.

The fact is that many of these stakeholders you communicate with will understand the big picture and high level concepts, but not the intricate engineering details. It is better to keep these details for a more technically inclined audience.

Here are some tips you can use to reach an understanding between yourself and non-technical stakeholders.

1. Know your audience#

Learn about your audience. Find out what their knowledge is on the subject matter beforehand so that you can tailor the information to their needs. During early engagements, it is better to communicate at a level below what you reasonably expect them to know, while being careful not to dumb it down too much such as to cause offence. When in doubt, you could always let them know “If this is something you already know, let us know and we can skip to the next section.”

Additionally, if the level of understanding is different between participants, it would be helpful to target the “least technical person” and while pre-empting the rest of the audience to “bear with me if you already know some of this information”. Do continually observe the stakeholder’s gestures, facial expressions and body language to ensure everyone is following along.

2. Reduce or Eliminate Tech Jargon#

Start eliminating technical jargon and acronyms from your conversations with the stakeholders. Certain terms may not make any sense to the stakeholder, and others may hold a different meaning from the one you commonly use (e.g. NLP = Neuro Linguistic Programming vs NLP = Natural Language Processing).

Try translating technical terms into their equivalents in everyday language. Pro tip: it helps if you understand the technicalities deeply.

Here is an example of communicating with a non-technical decision-maker:

Technical jargon: "We will ship an end-to-end pipeline for you to retrain the model upon data drift in your production system."

Everyday language: "We will share the code and instructions with your technical team to enable them to refresh the model after the solution has been implemented and you have gathered enough new data."

Consider the use of metaphors, analogies and storytelling techniques that will help your audience understand the material.

3. Provide background information, context and education#

Do not assume that the stakeholder knows or does not know certain concepts or terms, or that they understand the context. However, do assume that they are intelligent and will be able to understand if given an adequate explanation. Do translate key jargon and acronyms that are important to the discussion in a way that makes it simple for the stakeholder to understand. Metaphors and analogies are a good way to translate a technical concept into a more familiar context. It could be useful to give a glossary and definitions of some necessary terms.

4. Use visuals to illustrate technical concepts#

While written words and verbal speech are effective ways of communication, working to make the concepts visual can make it more effective. You may have heard the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Research suggest that adding visuals can help increase memory recall to 65% versus 10% from just hearing it. With the use of creative illustrations such as flowcharts, process diagrams, demos, models and architecture diagrams, stakeholders can learn and understand the most technical concepts from these visual aids.

Take care not to overload the visuals, and keep it as simple and uncluttered as possible. Remember to tailor it to your audience as a high level executive may not need an in depth understanding of an architecture diagram, but needs an overview.

Conclusion#

Pro Tip: An excellent way to practice is to try explaining some of your work to your spouse or friend. As the saying goes, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

With just a bit of thought and planning, you can make the discussion more engaging and understandable for the participants. You may need to arrange for additional meetings to provide the participants with the level of depth of understanding they require.

References#