• Picture Of Broken Telephone Jack
• Pass The Message Sample Phrases

How to Play Chinese Whispers. What are good Christmas Chinese whisper phrases? WikiHow Contributor. Community Answer 'Rudolph rode on Santa's red sleigh.' This game is also known as Telephone, Grapevine, Broken Telephone. I need funny and silly and LONG (8 word minimum) Telephone game phrases for a 3rd grade classroom!? I am planning a fun culminating activity for a unit plan on primary and secondary sources. My creative juices are tapped. Anyone who uses inappropriate terms (this is for a third grade class remember) will be flagged as inappropriate.

As with the broken telephone game, information is altered with each handoff. The resulting approach includes a lot of rework and escalating project costs due to combinations of the following:

• Use cases don’t properly represent customer requirements.
• UI/UX design is not consistent with the use cases.
• Incorrect test cases create false bugs.
• Missed test cases result in undiscovered bugs.
• Developers build features that don’t meet customer needs.

The further down the broken telephone line the original requirements get, the more distorted they become. For this reason, UI storyboards, test cases and code typically require a lot of reworking as requirements are misunderstood or improperly translated by the time they get to the UI and testing teams.

How Can We Reduce the Broken Telephone Effect?

The good news is that there are some reasonably simple changes to processes and deliverables that will decrease the broken telephone effect. The following techniques share the goal of reducing handoffs and translations.

Interview the customer with cross-discipline teams

One method is to involve the BA, UI/UX and quality assurance people directly in the elicitation process with the customer. You can even make a case to include the lead developer as well. Having all disciplines represented during the interview process lets each party hear requirements directly from the customer, reducing the reliance on BA documents alone. An equally important benefit is that each discipline brings a different perspective, which can lead the interview process down different paths of conversation and requirement gathering.

Picture Of Broken Telephone Jack

For example, the QA resource may ask more questions about the requirements related to edge or error conditions than the BA or UI/UX resource. Putting a UI/UX member in front of the customer will provide a chance to understand features that are frequently used to manage the cognitive load of the end user.

Combine and evolve use cases, UI mockups, and UI storyboards into an integrated deliverable

Another approach to reduce the broken telephone effect is to avoid creating use cases, mockups and storyboards as separate deliverables by combining them into one “integrated deliverable.” To create an integrated deliverable, start with the use case and attach UI mockups to each step. This automatically creates a UI storyboard that has the same steps (including main and alternate flows) as the use case, and means they don’t get out of sync. Also, since the UI mockups are attached to each step, you know they will be consistent with the purpose and requirements outlined in the step.

Often, new requirements or changes to existing requirements emerge, and if your storyboards and mockups are separate from the use cases, the original use cases are not updated. This creates confusion for your developers, testers and stakeholders. Combining your use cases, mockups and storyboards into one integrated deliverable makes it much easier to keep all three in sync, dramatically reducing the potential for conflicting requirements.

The integrated deliverable approach encourages collaborative and combined authoring and review of use cases and UI/UX design by your BA and UI/UX teams, resulting in more accurately defined and understood requirements.

To bring this concept to life, here’s an example that starts with the use case defined by the BA or product manager, without any mention of UI-specific requirements.

Use Case: ATM Cash Withdraw

The steps with the Y-shaped symbol are steps with alternate flows.

Alternate Flows

When the UI/UX team starts attaching UI mockups to each of the steps, a UI storyboard is created that uses the same exact main flow and alternate flows as the use case. A UI storyboard expressed in terms of a main flow and alternate flows has the benefit of reducing the number of traditional linear storyboards. If you were to create traditional UI storyboards for each of the unique paths through the use case above, you’d have 11 in total, with duplicated steps across them. UI storyboards with main flows and alternate flows reduce rework and errors that pop up in linear UI storyboards.

You can do this in Word by inserting UI mockup images created in a different UI mockup tool, but keeping the UI mockups up to date in the will become time-consuming and error-prone. Products such as PowerStory (a plugin for PowerPoint) make this easier by enabling you to combine use case steps with UI mockups to create UI Storyboards.

In the following screen shot you will see that PowerStory adds a panel specifically designed for creating main flows and alternate flows of use cases, and associates the steps in these flows with typical slides in PowerPoint.

As before, the steps with the Y-shaped symbol beside them indicate an alternate flow. When you hover over the icon you can view and enter the alternate flows associated with that step.

PowerPoint is an extremely powerful tool for creating UI Mockups that can support more UI design ideas than typical wireframe mockup tools, especially with plugins like PowerMockup and Microsoft’s upcoming storyboarding plugin.

Write use cases and UI storyboards with testing in mind

Test cases typically include a “user action” followed by an “expected result.' If you spend a little more up-front time defining which steps are “user actions” and which steps are “expected results” when creating your use cases and UI storyboards, you can save your testing team time. Use cases are well suited for this approach by defining the principle actor for each step. Any step where the actor is a system should be classified as an “expected result” step for the test case, and any step where the actor is an end user should be labeled “user action.”

One of the test cases derived from the combined use case defined above is shown below, following the rule that a step with an end user actor is an action and a step that has a system actor is an expected result.

Automate the creation of your test cases directly from your use cases

Using tools that will automatically generate test cases from your use cases and UI storyboards will save you a significant amount of time and money typically spent by your testing team creating manual test cases. In the context of this article, it also eliminates a handoff and thus mitigates the broken telephone effect. When QA teams interpret requirements and translate them into test cases, they might misunderstand requirements and create faulty test cases and/or miss requirements and their corresponding test cases.

Key Points to Take Away

Developing software requirements, UI designs, and test cases can mirror the broken telephone game we all played as kids. Every time we pass information on, it gets changed and misinterpreted, leading to increased project costs and the delivery of the wrong solutions to your customers. Following the steps outlined above, you can reduce the broken telephone effect and follow a more streamlined process to clear and lucid product development.

Don't forget to leave your comments below.

For those who are not familiar, broken telephone, also called Chinese Whispers¹, is a game in which one person whispers a message to another and the message gets passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group.

Errors typically accumulate in the retellings so that the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from the one uttered by the first.

Pass The Message Sample Phrases

It's human nature; we're imperfect. But there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's what makes us beautiful. It's why we invent and play games like broken telephone.

But now everyone--you and me included--is playing a very grown-up game of broken telephone. And we play it every day. In this adult version of the game, the whispers can be dangerous and the game is much bigger.

We can whisper something to anyone anywhere on the planet and they can then whisper that message to someone else, anywhere else on the planet.

By participating in the social web and using modern communication tools--cell phones, text messages, social media platforms--we're all participating in a global game of broken telephone, transmitting messages from one person to the next at the speed of light.

But what happens to our message as it gets transmitted? What happens when we retell something we've heard and then people start whispering our version of the story to others around the web, emailing it, tweeting it, and texting it?

What makes this adult version of of the game dangerous?

To find out, let's first start with a little history.

How Disinformation Killed my Grandfather

Cigarettes are a classic example of how false information can be dangerous. Many of us can relate to this particular example because it happened recently enough in history that our parents (or ourselves, if we're old enough) had first-hand experience with mass-exposure to false information that was propagated for financial gain.

There was a time when cigarettes were advertised as being good and healthy for you, a time when doctors would come on to the television and tell you what brand of cigarettes they smoked.

There was a time in very recent history when doctors would tell you that cigarettes were perfectly safe, even for moms and babies.

Today that just sounds ignorant and stupid.

But why? Why does that sound ignorant and stupid now? What makes us so much different than the people living fifty years ago? What reason did those people have to question the doctors? What reason did they have to doubt the people who appeared to know more than they did?

That's just it. They didn't have any good reason to doubt them.

The difference between fifty years ago and today is that now so many of us know the truth. Now so many of us have heard stories or have family members, as I do, who have died of cigarette-related diseases.

Now the truth about cigarettes is louder than any amount of false information and now even the people who continue to smoke cigarettes accept the reality of that truth.

How History is Repeating Itself

In 1953, members of the tobacco industry hired the firm Hill & Knowlton to help counteract findings that suggested cigarette smoking led to lung cancer.²

Just think about that: the tobacco industry was openly and legally paying a business to spread false information that would guarantee more sales of cigarettes to people would later die from lung cancer, like my grandfather did when I was growing up.

But that's all behind us now, right? We live in a more informed and more civilized society and the truth is everywhere, right? With all that we know, we couldn't possibly let stuff like that happen again, right?

Wrong.

In 2009, members of ANGA (America's Natural Gas Alliance), a lobbying organization for the gas industry, spread $80 million in funds across several agencies, including Hill & Knowlton (yes, the same firm hired to spread false information about cigarettes in the 50s), to try and influence decisions on the process of gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing.³

But here's what we know: Gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing (also known as 'fracking') release toxins into the local water supply that have known adverse health effects. These include neurological, pulmonary, gastroenterological, dermatological, immunological, hematological, endocrinological, reproductive, and genetic illnesses and abnormalities.⁴

I can't even pronounce all of those, but I bet they're not good for me.

Environment-related cancers can take 15 to 30 years to develop, so many of the negative side-effects won't even be seen until it's too late, just like the negative side-effects for cigarettes.

But you have nothing to worry about, right? You don't hear much about fracking so it probably won't effect you, right?

If you think you're safe, check Fracking Across the United States to see if your water supply (which comes from all directions) may be tainted and slowly killing you and your family (and certainly poisoning the water supply for future generations).

(By the way, it has also been found that Hill & Knowlton employees modify Wikipedia articles, so beware of the links I reference in this essay.)

Companies with a financial interest in spreading false information are still paying big money to ensure that such information remains the status quo and they'll continue doing so as long as it's more profitable than allowing the truth to become the norm.

Blatant lies by 'industry experts' who are paid to say what they're told to say? Lies and false information being openly touted as truth? It's still happening today. And with the Internet and social media, it's happening faster than ever.

And we might be helping.

Whispering to Millions at the Speed of Light

Lies outpace the truth whenever those lies have more backing them than the truth. Today, in a world driven largely by financial interest, there is a lot of money supporting false information.

The people in charge of spreading that false information (who may not even be aware the information they're tasked with spreading is false) recognize that you are their greatest asset. They recognize that you are their greatest communication tool.

What do we know about spreading information (false or otherwise) to large groups of people? We know that sensationalism is king, that if something is shocking, or affects us emotionally in some way, we're far more likely to share it with others.

We are incredibly emotional creatures. We release emotion by expressing and sharing it with whoever will listen. If we're not careful, what we share can stray from the truth. This is most likely to happen with things that make us angry or upset.

Take for example the recent news that two US Marine Harrier jets dropped bombs onto the heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

On Twitter, two of the people I'm following, Ross Hill and Anne Wu, tweeted a link to the news article along with their own sub-140-character summary (i.e., a whisper in the global game of broken telephone):

Ross Hill tweeted, 'USA actually bombed Australia's Great Barrier Reef this week' and Anne Wu said, 'the coral reefs are dying yet the US is still bombing them.'

In both cases, it sounds pretty bad, right? It makes you angry that the worlds largest military is doing something as blatantly stupid as dropping bombs on a harmless reef in the ocean. Damn the military!

But hold on. Let's check our facts, shall we?

If you read the article, you'll discover that what actually happened was a training mishap:

US Navy Commander William Marks, of the 7th Fleet Public Affairs, said the jets had planned to drop the bombs on a range on Townshend Island, but that was foiled when the range was not clear.

After several attempts, the jets were running low on fuel and could not land with the bombs they were carrying.

So they dropped the bombs because it would've been too dangerous to land on the aircraft carrier with the bombs still attached. OK, that's understandable. But the bombs exploded in the ocean and destroyed precious coral reef, right?

He said each bomb was jettisoned in a 'safe, unarmed state and did not explode'.

OK, so nobody 'actually bombed' anything and nobody 'is still bombing them'. There was no explosion and it's unlikely that any reef was harmed at all.

Sure, leaving the bombs in the ocean will certainly be harmful to sea life, as they would corrode and leak harmful chemicals into the ocean over time. But the military is not doing anything about that either, right?

The US Navy is considering how to recover the bombs, which were dropped in a 'deep channel' about 16 nautical miles south of Bell Cay, off the Capricorn Coast between Mackay and Rockhampton.

[...]

'The safety of personnel and the environment are our top priorities,' Commander Marks said.

I'm not picking on Ross or Anne here at all. I just happened to see their tweets and I just happened to click through to the article to read what actually happened. (It seemed too unbelievable to me that the bombing was intentional.)

Their tweets led me to these thoughts on disinformation and helped me link the old game of broken telephone with something that's happening daily in modern adult life. They helped me recognize just how easy it is to spread false or misleading information when the message we're sharing is something sensational.

What led me to take this whole thing more seriously and write this essay was what happened next.

A few days after I saw Ross and Anne's tweets, I happened to see that the WikiLeaks Twitter account had also tweeted about this 'bombing' incident:

The WikiLeaks tweet reads, 'US fighter jets bomb Australia's great barrier reef.'

The BBC article, linked in WikiLeaks tweet, is different than the one that Ross and Anne shared, so I thought that maybe some new information had surfaced that proved the military was intentionally bombing the reef (WikiLeaks is, after all, known for leaking information).

Let's read and find out. The BBC article is short; it's only three paragraphs. Here's the second paragraph:

The two planes jettisoned four bombs in more than 50m (165 ft) of water, away from coral, to minimise damage to the World Heritage Site, the US navy said.

It's almost laughable how accurately the opposite message is being conveyed by a simple tweet. Except it's not laughable, because the WikiLeaks Twitter account has 1.9 million followers and 185 people retweeted that misleading message.

If each of those people who retweeted the message only had 100 followers (which is likely far below the real average), that's an additional 18,500 people who saw WikiLeak's tweet just from those retweets, an additional 18,500 people who heard a whisper because 185 people thought the message was worthy of sharing, a message that was quite different from the truth.

The article linked in the tweet by WikiLeaks had three paragraphs, a grand total of 74 words. How many of those 185 people who retweeted and shared the WikiLeaks message actually clicked on the link and verified the facts for themselves?

I'm sure neither Ross or Anne meant any harm by their tweets and I doubt that any of the 185 people who retweeted WikiLeaks meant any harm either. I also doubt any real harm was caused (the military can probably handle a little criticism).

However, Ross has 5,679 Twitter followers and Anne has 717; that's potentially 6,396 ears they whispered their misleading messages into. That's not even mentioning the 1.9 million WikiLeaks followers or the exponential effect of the people who retweeted WikiLeaks.

Whether any harm was done in this particular case is beyond the point. The point is that we're all participating in a global game of broken telephone and that we're all, myself included, responsible for what we share.

We need to be more careful.

Share Responsibly or Don't Share at All

What if the Internet was around when cigarettes were being marketed as 'good for you'? How many funny or sensational tweets containing cigarette-promoting ideas would've been retweeted, unknowingly contributing to the future death of millions?

We are the media now and that makes each one of us a media transmitters. Messages spread with our help. If someone in a game of broken telephone refused to pass along a message until they were certain they had it right, the truth would have a greater chance at survival.

Only we can stop the perpetuation of fabricated information. Unless we all start accepting this responsibility we risk assisting those who are pushing misinformation for their own agenda.

If you're going to share something, please, check the facts.

Recognize the power you hold in your hands as you communicate and share online. Recognize that when you share things today you can reach billions of people, not just those in your immediate vicinity or those who you know, but people all over the planet.

When in doubt, do what I do and leave it out. It's far better to share silence than to risk sharing false messages that could harm people.

If you don't know the facts, share questions instead of sensational assumptions. My dad always used to say, 'when you assume, you make an 'Ass' out of 'U' and 'Me'.'

Assume nothing. Reject sensational attention-seeking. The truth will always be more durable and long-lasting than hollow sensationalism.

Share the truth. Fix the broken telephone.

1. Wikipedia: Chinese Whispers↩

2. Wikipedia: Hill & Knowlton - Tobacco Industry↩

3. Wikipedia: Hill & Knowlton - Fracking and the Gas & Oil Industry↩

4. Catskill Mountainkeeper: Health Impacts of Fracking↩