Is the art of conversation dying, or is it just different?

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Music and links from this episode

Comfortably loved by Soft and Furious

When the blood driving the self by Soft and Furious

Empowered Ending by Soft and Furious

Line-by-line notes

It’s funny

Talking about the dying art of conversation to a medium of listeners that’s all about conversation

But it’s a topic I talk about a lot to my friends about

And it’s an important topic to designers

The reason it’s important to designers is because so much of what we do is about conversing

We have to have a conversation to sell our design work

To discuss projects, goals and briefs

And countless other parts of our job that require designers to be masters of the art of conversation

But how does this change our job, if the art of conversation is dying

This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

MUSIC

On April the 21st, 2006, the BBC ran an article about the dying art of conversation

In it they spoke to two self styled expert conversationalists about how conversation is changing

They talk about time being a factor, that everybody is busier now

And they talk about old TV talk shows, where they used to have one guest on for an hour, 

and now the same talk shows have five guests in the same time

They talk about how our attention spans are shorter, that we have less patience for chit chat, and that we’re not good listeners

All of which I agree with, but this article is from 2006, 11 years ago

Now, in 2017, the situation is even worse

The rise of so many text-based chat apps: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Twitter and all the rest, mean we’re even more text-baed now, and not conversation based

We’re conversing with each other, but less and less, we’re actually talking to each other

You know, actually looking each other in the eye and saying words

Let’s talk about one final example

In the UK

The good old British Public House used to be the place to find a conversation, every night of the week

Often called Pubs, pubs used to be everywhere across the UK

Any night, you could turn up to your local pub, and talk with people over a pint of beer

They’re used to be 3 pubs within 2 minutes walking distance from my house about 10 years ago

And now there’s 0

Pubs are dying too, and they were one of the last bastions of the good old art of conversation

Lots of people say pubs have lost their appeal in the UK because beer became so expensive at them

But maybe it’s because people don’t like, or aren’t skilled in the art of conversation anymore

Some people even point to the rise in the popularity of podcasts as an indicator that conversation is dying

But...

Maybe I’m wrong with all of this

Maybe all this means is conversation is changing

And there’s big signs that this is true too

WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook Messenger and all those are absolutely thriving

The younger generation spend hours every day chatting to each other over messaging apps

And they’re actually spending longer than even chatting to each other in these formats than anybody ever did face to face

It’s not dying, it’s just different from what I and loads of other people are used to

Whether that’s true, or not, it’s important as designers that we understand how conversation is changing

Whether young people’s conversation patterns are changing or not, it’s vital that designers are excellent communicators

We need to sell our ideas, sell our our work, and sell ourselves every single day

The only way we can effectively do that is through being excellent communicators, and being good at the art of conversation

And then we need to understand all of this

The changing landscape of conversation

Because every design we produce has to communicate something

And if we don’t understand how to communicate

And communicate to anybody, regardless of age

Then we might as well not bother designing anything else

And regardless of all that, even when...