- mail-type communication has the disadvantage that the load tends to be concentrated on a specific person.
2018-10-09
- Difference between Email-based communication and [Shared space type communication
In e-mail-type communication, the exchange is shared only with those who explicitly put it in the addressee’s name.
In the figure, Mr. B asks Mr. A a question, which Mr. A answers.
The exchange is not shared with Mr. C and Mr. D on the same team.
Therefore, Mr. C and Mr. D may ask Mr. A the same question in the future.
The workload is piled on Mr. A to either unearth and forward past responses to Mr. B or write new sentences.
On the other hand, in shared-space communication, there is a place (space) where information is shared with everyone on the team.
When Mr. B posts a question to Mr. A in this space, Mr. A is notified that the question is “addressed to him.
At this time, Mr. C and Mr. D of the same team are also notified as “posts not addressed to me.
When Mr. A responds to Mr. B, the response is notified to Mr. B as “writing to me”.
Mr. C and Mr. D are also notified that Mr. A has responded.
This information sharing will curb future questions from Mr. C. Mr. D. to Mr. A. and prevent Mr. A’s burden from piling up.
- 1: Remember my answer to Mr. B. No need to ask questions.
- 2: I forget the answer to Mr. B, but I search the shared space myself and discover past answers to Mr. B before I ask the question.
- 3: A question is addressed to Mr. A, but before the busy Mr. A can answer, Mr. B and Mr. D, who have free time on their hands, unearth past answers.
- 4: Mr. A unearths past responses to Mr. B or writes new sentences Only in this case 4, the burden on Mr. A is the same as for internal e-mail-type communication, and in the remaining cases the burden is distributed.
Therefore, mail-type communication has the disadvantage that the load tends to be concentrated on certain people.
Conversely, Shared Space Communication has the disadvantage of increasing the total amount of notice. To solve this disadvantage, “Notification to myself” and “Notification not addressed to myself” are separated, and the former is given priority in processing. There is no increase from internal e-mail type communication if it is just “notifications to me,” and the communication burden is reduced in the long run by the suppression of questions from Mr. C and Ms. D. The spare time created by the reduced burden is used to read “notices that are not addressed to me” and to engage in gentle information sharing.
In the case of a system that cannot separate “notifications addressed to me” and “notifications not addressed to me,” the
- ‘It’s going to drift away in the chat room, so send it to me by email so I can search for it…’
- Don’t chat in the chat room for communication.” see: Self-expression and overflowing of notices. Phenomena such as the following occur.
relevance - Shared text communication increases learning opportunities. - Shared Space Communication - It takes courage to write in a shared space. A place for sharing.
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/メール型コミュニケーションのデメリット using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.