ride ourselves on being great communicators. We go to extreme lengths to communicate with users in a language they understand, enabling them to engage with our messages and feel like they’re part of a story we built just for them. Yet, we do a poor job of communicating with those whom our work requires us to talk to every day—and we need to, and can, get better at it.
作为设计师，我们以杰出的沟通能力而自豪。我们以用户理解的语言和他们进行交流，使他们了解我们的信息，对我们的设计风格感同身受。然而，对那些工作需要我们每天与之交流的人们，我们的沟通工作仍然有所欠缺.我们必须，也可以做到改进。
In fact, as much as we consider ourselves designers, significant parts of our working hours are actually spent communicating with one another. At least, mine are. Here’s a list of tasks I perform on a typical workday:
事实上，我们只要认识到自己所处的角色，，与人交流是我们工作的重心。至少，我就是这样做的。以下列出了我一天中的工作清单：
Log onto IRC (the way people at Canonical—the company behind the Linux operating system Ubuntu—communicate with anyone who’s on the clock) and greet my colleagues.
登录在线聊天系统，和我的同行打招呼。‘
Check my e-mail; reply to some, save some to deal with later.
检查我的邮件：回复一些，另一些稍后处理。
Log onto Basecamp; check my to-dos, update some notes, and comment on a hot thread.
登录 Basecamp；检查我的行动计划，更新一些记录，评论一条热帖。
Make a quick phone call to my manager to get the daily update and clarify priorities.
与我的上司进行简短的电话交流，获取每日的工作和重点工作。
Log onto Onotate, a tool we use to provide feedback on designs and wireframes; read feedback I received on my designs and provide feedback on others’.
登录Onotate，对设计和线框图进行反馈；同时也对别人的作品进行反馈。
Do a bit of designing based on feedback and planned tasks; upload them again for quick reviewing.
根据反馈进行设计并制定行动计划；上传作品并快速检验。
Meet with my team via Google Hangout to discuss a particular ongoing project.
在谷歌上与我的团队讨论一项正在进行中的特别工作。
Reply to the e-mails I left for later.
回复那些未处理的邮件。
Do some more designing.
再做一些设计。
Sound familiar? Whatever your specific situation, I’d bet much of your days are spent communicating with other people, too: talking, writing, being silent, smiling, frowning, asking, answering, listening, and, at worst, yelling.
听起来很耳熟是吧？无论你从事何种职业，我敢说你的大部分时间都得与人沟通：交流，写作，沉默，微笑，皱眉，回答，倾听，甚至是大叫。
Good communication skills are what allow us to sell our work, justify our decisions, and stand behind our positions. This (along with doing good work) is how we gain the trust and respect of colleagues, bosses, and clients—something every design professional aspires to. And it’s why all these little pieces of communication we constantly deliver are so important.
出色的沟通技巧需要我们宣传工作，做出正确的决断，坚持我们所处的立场。做到这些（与出色的工作表现）我们就会赢得同行，老板和客户的信任与尊重。
So what’s so hard about communication, and how can we get better at it?
所谓冰冻三尺非一日之寒，我们该如何培养良好的沟通技巧？
Digital communication
数字通信
We hate our inbox, but don’t know what we’d do without it. We have chats on Skype. We have back-and-forth conversations on Basecamp. But most of these communication channels don’t really satisfy us, make us feel better, or dissipate our concerns. On the contrary, they often seem to make us even more anxious about work. Why is that?
我们烦透了收件箱里的信息，却又不知道如何处理。我们用Skype聊天。我们在Basecamp上你来我往。但所有这些交流工具并不能真正地满足我们的需求，反而会放大我们的工作焦虑。为什么呢？
People need human contact and interaction to flourish.
人们需要与人交流来愉悦自己的内心。
Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell calls the interactions that makes us happier “human moments”—being in the physical presence of someone and having her emotional and intellectual attention—and argues that not having enough of them can lead to oversensitivity, self doubt, rudeness, and worry.
心理学家爱德华 哈洛韦尔称之为“人类时刻”——实际存在于人的感情和知识关注——并且提出这种因素的欠缺会造成过分敏感，自我怀疑，冲动易怒和焦虑的不良情绪。
Why? Because digital communication makes us miss all the benefits that come from communicating to while being in someone’s physical presence:
为什么？因为数字通信剥夺了我们与人沟通的内心满足感。
This sounds incredibly familiar. All you need to do is think of Twitter.
听起来是这么回事。你只要想想推特。
Hallowell explains how the human moment increases the release of hormones that promote trust and bonding, which are at lower levels when you’re not in the presence of another person. These hormones make us less prone to worrying or overreacting.
哈洛韦尔阐释了人类时刻是如何刺激荷尔蒙的释放，促进人与人之间的信任与纽带。 当我们独处时，这种心理满足就会降到最低。
Digital communication removes all the cues that mitigate worry. As more and more people work like I do, alone from home offices, without much face-to-face interaction, it’s important that we’re aware of this both in ourselves and others.
数字通信无益于我们缓解焦虑。越来越多和我从事一样工作的人们，远离面对面的交流.
So what can we do about it?
我们该怎么做？
One answer comes from 37signals, which hires great talent regardless of geography and encourages others to do the same. In their bookRework, founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson report that meeting in person is important for remote teams.2
37signals，那家不拘一格录用人才的公司给出了一个答案。在该公司的bookRework中，公司创始人杰森弗莱德和大卫海因梅尔汉森说亲自出席会议更能促进团队之间的合作。
I work remotely from my home in Belfast, but I meet with the rest of my team in our main offices in London at least once a month. Then, not only do we have lots of meetings and face-to-face discussions, but we also make time to grab a cup of coffee, have lunch, and basically just interact casually—something that simply doesn’t happen when you have to type out everything you want to say.
我在贝尔法斯特离家很远的地方工作，但我每个月至少有一次去伦敦总部参加团队会议.我们不仅进行大量的面对面讨论，还利用咖啡和午餐时间闲话家常——在键盘上敲敲打打的聊天是远远达不到这样的愉悦。
Other teams within Canonical are fully distributed, and they tend to meet every few months for about a week at a time. This is usually when a project is getting started or nearing launch, because close interaction and immediate answers are so critical during these times.
其他的团队各有分工，他们每隔几个月就要见面讨论大约一个星期。这种情况通常都是在一项工程刚开工或临近尾声的时候，因为这段期间必须建立密切的互动和做出果断的决定。
The phone used to scare me, but since becoming a remote worker, I actually hope people will pick it up to ask me something instead of writing an e-mail. And even better than that are tools like Skype and Google Hangout. My team tries to have at least one “hangout” every week, sometimes every day of the week. Regardless of what you’re discussing, relating expressions, gestures, and a space to faceless e-mails or IRC messages will make a difference.
我一度很畏惧电话铃声，然而自从我成了一名远程工作者，我真的很希望人们给我打电话而不是发邮件。甚至Skype 和 Google Hangout也可以一并取代。我的团队尝试着每周聚一次，有时一周天天聚会。不管你在讨论什么，表达，手势和千篇一律的邮件或IRC信息有着明显的区别。
While many good things come with working from home, such as no commute and being able to truly focus on a task, moments of loneliness inevitably assault me every now and then. This makes it critical that both parties—the remote worker and the main office—try to make those at a distance feel like they’re part of something.
在家工作好处多多，不用与人接触，也可以专注于工作，我的身心难免被孤独感所困扰。在这样的情况下，远程工作者和公司总部必须感到双方紧密相连不可分开。
Even if you’re not working remotely, it’s very likely that someone you or your company works with is, or will be soon—which makes it crucial for healthy communication that you consider how to create bonds and develop trust without interacting every day.
感情动物
Emotional creatures
当你和人交往的时候，记住，你交往的不是逻辑的动物，而是情绪的动物，充满偏见的动物，受到骄傲和虚荣激发的动物。——戴尔 卡耐基《如何交朋友和影响别人》
Human beings desperately seek approval, dread condemnation, and thrive on appreciation and encouragement. Not you or I, of course—all the others.
人类竭尽一切地寻求认同感，恐惧谴责，期待他人的赞赏和鼓励。不光你和我，人人都如此。
One key point Carnegie makes is that people are prodigies at rationalizing their decisions and actions. From the most merciless criminals to devoted grandmothers, we all tell ourselves—and others—that it’s not our fault.
卡耐基提出了一条重要的观点，亦即人们总有办法为自己的决定和行为开脱。冷血的罪犯也好，无私的长辈也好，都会对自己和别人说，这不是我们的错。
The problem, of course, is that as professionals we must be accountable for our own shortcomings—as Andy Rutledge makes clear in his bookDesign Professionalism:
以专业的角度来说，我们当然必须为自己的错误负责——正如安迪鲁特里吉在他的《设计的专业性》一书中所清晰阐述的。
But our irrationality isn’t all bad. Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University who writes about behavioral economics, has noted several experiments that prove that humans will work harder when their efforts are acknowledged and their work is appreciated and meaningful than they will for financial gain alone.3
可是这种不合理也并非完全是错的。杜克大学的行为经济学家丹 亚雷利教授，在他的作品中引用了一些实例来证明那些被认可的人们工作会更加卖力。工作价值被肯定的满足感，更甚于金钱的鼓励。
It’s normal for irrationality, emotions, and cravings to influence our behavior in the workplace. Understanding this is the first step to communicating with colleagues. When you see that someone feels discouraged, you can quickly offer a few positive words. When you need to make a point in a meeting, you can avoid remarks that would blame others—remarks that only make people uncomfortable and create animosity. If you do need to point out a mistake, you can choose to do so in private, and also communicate that you trust your colleague to do a better job next time.
对认同感的渴求自然而然地影响着我们的职场表现。理解了这一点，你就迈出了职场人际关系的第一步。当你看到有人垂头丧气，你就可以走上前去鼓励他。当你在会议上发言的时候，你就可以避免一些苛责性言论——让人不自在从而怨恨你。如果有人犯了错误，你可以选择私下里谈心，并且使对方觉得你相信他下次会改进。
Considering others’ feelings might not sound like your top priority, but it’s important to understand that the faintest insight into how we actually think, what motivates us, and what makes us disagreeable will only improve communications and, in turn, influence the responses and value we receive back.
做到换位思考可能不那么容易，但是我们必须学会洞察别人的真实想法，了解别人的内心好恶，这不仅会改善我们的沟通能力，还会赢得别人对你的尊重。
A shared vocabulary
一种共享的词汇
As designers, one trap we typically know how to avoid is assuming that a user understands our jargon. Yet we do this to everyone else around us: other team members, clients, and people in our company who aren’t designers. When these people don’t seem to care about what we’re doing, we write them off and say, “they don’t get it.”
作为设计师，我们千万不要以为客户听得懂我们的行话。我们往往用行话和身边所有人交流：我们的团队成员，客户和公司里的非设计师。每当这些人被我们的话摸不着头脑，我们就会嗤之以鼻：“一群外行人。”
It’s a lot easier to blame other people than to admit the obvious: We don’t really know how to get our point across in a language those different from us will understand.
我们真的不懂得怎样用别人听得懂的语言来表叔自己的观点。承认这一点要比责备他人难多了。有时我们甚至对此一笑了之。
Sometimes, we can even have a laugh about it.
几个月以前，我的工作组与公司里的另一个重点开发工作组合作搞一个项目。尽管我们事先准备了很多说明性文件，包括各种研究和发展步骤，我们还是感到对方团队不太能跟得上我们的主旨 他们时不时地呈上一些“已完成的线框图”之类的东西。
A few months ago, my team was working on a project in conjunction with another, more developer-focused team within the company. Even though we had prepared several documents illustrating the project plan, which involved various research and discovery steps, we felt this other team didn’t completely grasp our role, as they’d occasionally send us things like “finished wireframes.”
我的反应和大多数设计师一样：我没有理解设计行业的准则。
My reaction was the same as most designers’ would be: I brushed it off as failing to understand the discipline of design.
我错了。另一团队的成员甚至解释说我们的计划说明充斥了大量“IA card sort ”之类的词汇，而他们对此一窍不通。如果我们想要客户买进我们的产品，我们必须使用通俗易懂的语言，正如迈克蒙泰罗在《设计是一门工作》中所说：
I was wrong. A member of the other team eventually explained that when we showed them research plans filled with words like “IA card sort, ” that meant nothing to them. If we wanted everyone’s buy-in, we had to do a better job at explaining our jargon, as Mike Monteiro explains inDesign is a Job:
你不仅是一名设计师，也是一名专业的交流者，你要找到与客户交流的正确方式。当你说客户“听不懂”，你可能就是在说，“我无法表达我的观点。我是一个无能的设计师。请把我所有的客户都带走吧。”
It’s funny because it’s true.
很幽默的大实话。
We want people to care about design as much as we do, but how can they if we speak to them in a foreign language? It’s important that, as we do with any user, we find a shared vocabulary and empower everyone else to become evangelists for our cause.
我们希望人们多多关注我们的设计，可我们若总说外行话又如何指望他们听懂？我们必须找到一种共享的语言，并在设计行业广为普及。
Once we took the time to actually define all of those funny words in our research and discovery phase, we turned the other team into advocates for design—people who, armed with a shared vocabulary, can and will spread the word of design within their own networks. In this case, that network was extremely important to us: other developers within the Ubuntu community whom we desperately wanted to engage with in our design process.
一旦我们花时间斟酌我们的报告语言，其他团队就会拥护我们的方案——使用共享语言的人们可以将设计语言在网络上广泛传播。在此种情况下，该网络对我们尤为重要：Ubunt社区其他的开发者。
All this takes work, yes. But aren’t showing and communicating what design is all about?
做到这些需要努力，是的。但是展示和交流难道就是设计行业的全部？
Building a narrative
能说会道
We like to create stories for our users—narratives that are engaging and compelling, that delight them and make them feel like they’re part of something. We want them to feel invested in us, our products, our sites. We want to bring them along on a journey we carefully curate.
我们乐意给客户编故事——有吸引力和说服力的故事，可以激励他们感同身受。我们希望他们投资我们的产品和网站。我们希望将他们带上我们精心安排的旅程。
We think, “If I were this person, what would I want to feel once I land on this site? What would I be thinking? What would make me stay?” We consider their point of view.
我们想着，“如果我是这个人，当我登录这个网站以后会有什么感受？我会有什么想法？促使我留下来的理由是什么？”我们站在客户的立场去思考。
Then we step into a meeting and expect everyone to consider ours.
接着我们就举行会议，力求人人站在我们的立场上。
Instead of showing your work to your colleagues with a few mumbled words and a shrug and expecting them to get its sheer brilliance, it’s important to involve them from the start, making everyone feel invested and part of the solution. Map out the future you see in front of you, and make them walk the same journey.
别指望靠你那些晦涩不明的行话和漫不经心的态度就能使客户读懂你那了不起的创意。重要的是让他们从头至尾参与其中，协助解决问题。让他们与你共同展望触手可及的美好前景。
My team is responsible for the design, build, and maintenance of Canonical’s main websites, but we also have some involvement with several other peripheral sites—for example, consulting on design or providing front-end development. Because we’re called the “Web Team, ” we’re generally the first to hear about problems with any of these other websites, too—even though we don’t manage them.
我的团队负责设计，建筑以及主要网站的维修，可我们也参与一些其他的外部网站——比如，设计方面的咨询或提供前端开发。因为我们被称为“网页团队”，我们通常也是第一时间获知其他网站上的一些问题——虽然我们并不经营那些网站。
Instead of quickly dismissing those complaints, I find it a lot more interesting to try to understand where they are coming from. Why do they think something is wrong? What would a better solution look like for them? Clarifying what our responsibilities are and explaining the obstacles my team is facing at that particular time (such as too few resources, impending release deadlines, or technical constraints) also improves the conversation.
我们没有对那些抱怨置之不理，而是乐于寻找问题的根源。他们为什么否定？有什么好的解决方法？弄清我们的职责所在，解释这些只是特殊时期的特殊困难（比如资源紧缺，迫在眉睫的发布日期，或技术限制）同样改进我们的交流方式。
Sharing a vision for where we want to be in a few months’ time and how they will benefit from it brings other teams along. And when everyone participates or at least understands the process, they’ll also better understand how and why you got there.
共同展望几个月之内的美好前景，他们会鼓舞其他的团队。当每个人都参与或者至少理解了设计过程，他们也就会更好地理解你的设计。
Final words
最后的话
We know we need other people to do our jobs well. But we often say this—to ourselves and to everyone else—without taking the time to truly listen to, be inspired by, and understand the reasons behind others’ words or actions. We desperately want everyone to understand our motivations, to see that we’re upset and tell us something positive, to listen to us and marvel at our wisdom—yet we rarely bother to reciprocate.
我们总希望他人很好地完成我们的工作。可我们常常这么说话——对我们自己和其他人都如此——不去花时间倾听，不体谅别人。我们不顾一切地要求别人体谅我们，照顾我们的情绪，倾听我们，赞扬我们的聪明才智——我们却做不到礼尚往来。
We already have the right tools to communicate with one another effectively. We just need to put the same effort into communicating with colleagues as we put into communicating with users. When we truly understand our colleagues and respect their needs, we will build stronger, more trusting relationships within our teams and organizations—and better design because of it.
人们无法相处是因为他们害怕彼此，他们害怕彼此是因为他们彼此不了解；他们彼此不了解是因为他们不和对方交流。
Footnotes
——马丁 路德 金。
Belfast-based Portuguese web designer and author Inayaili de León is Lead Web Designer at Canonical—the company behind Ubuntu—where she focuses on establishing and evangelizing the brands’ visual direction online. Through her blog and articles for sites like 24 Ways and Smashing Magazine, she has established herself as an advocate of clean, semantic HTML and CSS. Inayaili is a member of .net Magazine and Smashing Magazine’s Expert Panel, and the author of Pro CSS for High Traffic Websites (Apress, 2011), a book that explores the challenges of working in large teams on websites that receive considerable traffic. She loves cats and naps.
我们已经掌握了正确而有效的沟通技巧。我们只需要拿出与同事交流的用心去与用户交流。当我们真正做到了理解和尊重我们的同事，我们的团队和组织之间将会建立更坚固的信任纽带——我们的工作也会因此而趋于完美。
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