(1) My Understanding of Communication

I understand communication to be an exchange between 2 or more different users. There are many forms of communication around us on a daily basis: man to man, man to several others, man to computer, phone to man, device to device, etc. The part of the exchange that makes a successful transfer of information is the feedback given from the retriever of information.



For instance, if a visually impaired, older individual were to attempt using a microwave and she pushed the buttons for 3:00 (3 minutes) - there are a few ways that the lack of feedback from the said microwave that would make this instructional form of communication an ineffective one.

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For one, if the buttons do not have some form of kinetic feedback (where the buttons sink in when pushed) she might push a number more than once to "ensure" that what she wants is typed in correctly.

Well then, she could just see that the timer does not say 3 minutes, right? If she's visually impaired and the screen of the microwave is very tiny or possibly dimly-lit, this form of feedback is not reliable enough for her.

There also might be lack of audible feedback as well; a beep to suggest a button has been pressed - or even a voice to say which button has been pressed would be helpful in this scenario so she knows that the microwave has received the information that she wanted to pass onto it.