Programmer/Client Communication

       Well, I am sure we all know that from a clients perspective, programmers speak gibberish.  Well from the programmers perspective, the client usually underestimates the amount of coding it will take for their "simple idea".  It is simply a language barrier!  I have realized recently when I talk about events, my current client thinks of the events they are scheduling; not logged web events such as I am describing, such as successful log ins (in the transfer they thought the site was broken because there were users having trouble logging in, which was actually password related and I was explaining that the event log clearly shows most staff members were successfully logging in); this leaves them confused because none of what I talk about is an option when they add a new event.  There have always been translations made to overcome the barriers created by the various languages of this world, so why is this so difficult?  Maybe because this barrier exists in all languages?  For me, this begged to question, what would the average person understand in a programmers field; the answer was dominated by nothing.  Great...
     
       So maybe the client doesn't really need to know about what I am doing, and to get the best information possible, I will get them to tell me, in their words, what they expect to have happen when they log into the website, and what they expect a visitor to have happen when they visit the site in writing, like two short stories.  From those tales, I can decipher whether the client needs user accounts, shopping carts, internal email, determine database structure, etc... etc...  Then I can talk to the client on their terms; i.e. in order to achieve this desired affect, you will need "this".  At that point, even though "this" is a programmers term, the client can associate it with the layman's terminology eliminating the problem.  I am sure there will always be the one who just wants to keep asking why and what does that mean, and for that there is no "quick fix" so to speak; they need to go to school for it to understand further.  However, for the majority of clients, this seems to eliminate the major issues multiple long meetings could not.  Plus as an added benefit, you hear how the client will be using the functions they will need, providing a basic layout structure for the site.  This has saved me so much time, and given my clients peace of mind throughout their sites development process.  I hope it will save you the same time and stress levels.  Good Luck to both the client and programmer!