Push verses Pull
Back in the day, when the internet was just getting started, we talked a lot about the push or pull model. Did users want to have information pushed to them or did they want to pull it. Email is classic pull. Facebook and Twitter are push, it is pushed in your face.
Most restaurants that I go to in china have at least one wait staff who is using a translation app. I use google, set up to work in download mode as I do not have wifi in most situations. My classic use is “Cold Beer?”. I have that phrase at the ready and can show it quickly. I had to add cold after getting a warm one while on a bus ride around WuHan lake. Remember the old blue screen of death that windows used to post after it lost its mind? Google translate has a mode that I prefer where it puts white Chinese characters on a blue background and you hold the phone in horizontal mode to show the reader.
I’m not must of a fan for the app. It has a mode where you can read the menu. You put the Google app in camera mode and it shows you the menu in English. Maybe I am mis-using it, I should pick one phrase and let it concentrate on translating that instead of this panning mode. The panning mode does not give taste results.
But here is the real kicker! I always type in the English phrase and show the Chinese characters. That is not what they do! They speak Chinese into the phone and then have it speak English to you. Little Fish, the house manager, more go-for at Wendy’s September Inn in Wuyuan was the classic user with this. He had almost no English. With my show you the character method, you can go back and read the first character after you get to the last and have no idea what I am saying. With their use of the speaking, I can’t do that! I can’t go back and rehear the beginning of the sentence to try to put a different spin on it. I get only one chance. A great example where you want PULL, not push. I want to be able to go back and repull the audio, but I cannot. The phone is in their control. Where as if they were showing me text, I could go back and read from the start. They do nothing, just show me the ext and allow me to control how I need to process it.
Maybe you can think of other situations where this “Give the receiver control” applies. It certainly is working in online education where the user gets to choose when to go back and review or research something instead of the teacher just pushing it out in the way he/she thinks the leaner should acquire it.