Developing the web

The trunk

Noémie Lemaitre — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 10:08:52 +0000

At a wedding party in Germany, it’s usual to spend the time between dances watching or doing sketches. These performances all relate to aspects of the bridal couple’s lives and involve costumes, singing, parodies, and inevitably lead to laughter among the guests.

The idea for Bettina and Stephan’s wedding’s show came up easily, since Stephan is a forest official: wood had to be involved. The German expression “Nägel mit Köpfe machen” which means “to fish or cut bait”, to decide something and just do it without fiddling – and literally “to make nails with heads”) seemed very appropriate for choosing the person you want to share your whole life with.

So we decided to organize a duel: the couple would have to hammer nails into a trunk. The one who would need the lesser amout of trials until the nail would be fully into the log would win. Afterwards, the guests would be allowed to follow their example and compete against each other throughout the afternoon, aside the main stage.

First we needed a trunk that was big enough to stand on its own, and high enough to allow adults to hammer on it without bending down. It should still be light enough to be hauled up into a vehicle, and later somehow transported into a hall. We found one quickly at a neighbor’s (hey, we live in the country!), sawed the best part and took it home.

The log showed natural and man-made scars, patterns and holes. Seeing them, I decided to make the most out of this setting. Decorating the trunk would make it more interesting during the hammering pauses.

I wanted to carve symbols of love and brand their outlines to provide an effect of perspective. It was also important to leave the trunk in its natural state; it should stand for forests and their wild beauty. Etching went well, but finding a source of fire was more of a problem: I was working outdoors and a light wind would blow off every candle’s flame. Finally, I was given a soldering iron, which did the job, even though the pencil could have been smaller.

After a few hours of work, I could count the following elements

an owl (test design), standing for wisdom and long-lasting love
two places with small hearts
one bigger heart-shaped part with entangled rings, symbolizing marriage

I enjoyed the process a lot and I definitely have to buy the right tools to make more

10 tips to work from home successfully

Noémie Lemaitre — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:56:37 +0000

During my career I’ve been working as an employee, going to work every day, and also as a free-lancer, working from home. It’s time to share a few insights on the topic.

1. Give it a try
First of all, you’ll never know if working from home could be an option for you if you don’t try it out. Talk to your boss. What about beginning with one day per week during a “test month”?

2. Prepare the space
Depending on the nature of your work, you’ll like to set up a defined space, and consider the following.

Dedicated place with appropriate infrastructure (this is probably not your bathroom)
Noise management: Do you like it silent? Avoid the street side of the appartment.
Organisation of supplies: Have you got all the materials you need at hand?

3. Eliminate diversions
Find out what’s happening at your house when you’re not there. Is the phone constantly ringing? Could you spend the whole day reordering a messy household? Are your cat’s friends visiting around the clock?
You’ll have to find solutions to prevent the distractions from invading your work day. Some may be easy to get rid of (like muting the phone), some may require you to elaborate more (like convincing the cat to poker only on weekends).

4. Stay focused
Once you’ve taken care of the surroundings, you’ll be confronted with your worst enemy: yourself.
Your own pet peeves can get in the way, from procrastination to hyper-activity. This is the rule: Your private mails may have to wait in your inbox until the end of your work day, and you won’t be able to repair the television until Saturday.

5. Follow work habits
The difference between “work” and “work from home” should basically remain the location. If you usually begin your work day with reading (work) eMails at your workplace, then simply do the same at home. Keep your work habits if they’re empowering you; drop them if they’re not.

6. Structure your work/time
Plan ahead, organize your schedule, manage your tasks. Nothing new. At home, it’s more likely that nobody will remind you to get specific things done; make sure you’ll still do them.

7. Keep track
Know what you’ve achieved at the end of the work-at-home day. A short list of completed tasks and topics worked on should be a good investment. You can use this information to verify how you’re doing and compare it to your feelings if unsure, and to show your boss how much more efficient you are.

8. Don’t think about it too much
Don’t obsess over the topic. Theoretically, you won’t experience anything else than you always do on a normal work day. Only the weighting differs.

9. Don’t give up
Working from home may not turn out the way you expected at first. Persevere! Practice and generation of habits will help you consolidating the building.

10. Be productive
Keep the productivity techniques you’re already using when at your company; they probably fit also at home, since you’re doing the same work.
Important: Working from home should have more advantages than going to work elsewhere. Thus it’s supposed to enable you to be more efficient. (Otherwise you may be better off at your workplace.)

Suggestions?

Would you like to work from home?
Are you already? Have you got tips to share?

The mutation – Part 2: Being a pain is part of the job

Noémie Lemaitre — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:43:22 +0000

This is the second part of a serie dedicated to one of my biggest career moves. I started at my current company as a web developer and, after a few years, I was given the opportunity to become a UX designer. I’ll turn the spotlight on some major differences I noticed during the progress of my mutation.

I recently had a meeting with our Testing department, and the thought came up again: within a company producing software, User Experience and Testing persons are both strongly dedicated to a product’s quality. Of course, developers are, in the best case, too. Still, as my friend Liz, our former UX analyst, often reminded me when I was a web developer:

You are not the user!

Fighting my brothers

Representing the user within a company means getting into lots of work-related battles.
My first ones were against fellow developers. My programming colleagues weren’t “us” anymore, facing challenges together under the banner of the code. It was “the users and me” against “them”.

In my developer role, I had to evaluate the feasibility and the cost-time factor of features; my response to the “strange requests and utopian feature designs” of our UX person was often “No”. Depending on the technology, I was able to provide one or more alternatives that would also work.
As a UX designer, I was suddenly in the position to ask my former crew for these strange features. That’s when I faced the infinite – and worth being admired – willpower of developers (resembling that usually attributed to dwarves in fantasy stories). That’s when I had to make use of my own programmer strength against them. Not yet painful, but highly interesting: I was confronted with replicas of myself, knowing maybe more than I should about the technical background (“Did you create a class for that? You did, right?”).

Knowing that friction breeds greatness, I carried on with convincing and winning my developer colleagues for my new cause, the user’s experience. It surely was a positive aspect that we’ve all been working closely together for years.

Fighting authority

When I dealt with our principal stakeholders (mostly from Management) as the user’s advocate, I had to

admit that I was being even more a pain,
cope with the fact that I probably always would, in this position.

I had to accept it as an important part of my job.

I told my bosses “I have to disagree once again” and “I don’t think we should do it like that” many times.
Was I going too far? Should I just have shut up instead?

Time gave me the answer: Hell, no!

Pointing out at dust piles under the carpet is the first part of what I’m paid for.

The second part is to elaborate the best way to clean them.
I learned that the messenger delivering bad news wasn’t likely to be shot at if she stuck to reality and objectivity.

The path

While continuing being a pain, I pushed my coworkers into thinking harder, developing great ideas to overcome the issues I revealed on their way. I see myself as a sort of trainer, helping people generate great usable software and shaping our path to success.

What about you?

Do you believe you are a pain in your job? Why?
How do you manage to keep a healthy balance between being a pain and still go on well with your colleagues?

The mutation – Part 1: Busted myth: The paperless office

Noémie Lemaitre — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 20:05:53 +0000

This is the first part of a serie dedicated to one of my biggest career moves. I started at my current company as a web developer and, after a few years, I was given the opportunity to become a UX designer. I’ll turn the spotlight on some major differences I noticed during the progress of my mutation.

Paper blessings
I discovered the benefits of sketching long ago. Sketching complex ideas has always helped me understanding and communicating them. A sketch is also a good way to make sure you’re on the same page with your interlocutor when discussing rather theoretical subjects. When it comes to remember a concept’s unwritten details, I haven’t found a better help than a sketch yet.
I’ve seen accurate memories swept away by nicely formatted digital meeting minutes. I’ve also seen the very same piece of – in the meantime worn-out – paper with a drawing on it travel through a whole company, from the employee who generated the sketch to the boss making a decision based on it. On the other hand, I’ve witnessed inefficiency due to the disappearance of paperwork, and great confusion due to its ambiguous relation with time.

Developer A – “Is this the new one or the old one?”
Developer B – “I don’t know exactly… I thought this was the new design, but there’’s no date on it.”

Developer – “I’ve implemented it according to this spec” (waiving with spec in the air)
Designer – “Oh… I see you’ve got the old one.”

In my daily work as a web developer, I used sketching to simulate the interaction between flexible and fixed GUI components, to visualize hidden amounts of padding and to identify others’ CSS classes (before Firebug was born). I remember those “” and “” written on top of boxes while I was learning HTML tables; later I drew the same sketches to explain how to build those tables. I’ve been strongly reminded of school while defining a container’s coordinates relatively to a button’s edge on the x and y axes of the stage.

So it was obvious to me that I’d never even want to reach the paperless state at my desk some of my developer colleagues seemed so eager to achieve and preserve. Still, I sometimes wondered why Liz, our User Experience Analyst at the time, was surrounded by all sorts of sheets. She was carrying a bunch of them at any time, she took a few of them to every meeting and basically never left her desk without a pen and a piece of paper. (The latter being an advisable habit.) The possible explanations I had in mind went from a little almost-messy tendency (sorry Liz!) to the widely spread desire to keep useless stuff instead of throwing it in the bin. I imagined a better system could have helped her managing her growing piles of paper, and I thought that 2 months of good ol’ GTD would probably have gotten rid of both the cause and the consequences of the “paper problem”.

That was until I got her job.

Holy sheets
When Liz left the company, I inherited a big shelf full of heavy-packed folders, additionally to the digital files. Survey questionnaires and results, annotated screen captures, ideas, user research protocols, paper prototypes, user flows in big format… were things I could call mine. (Nobody else had a claim on them anyway.)
I was focused on interaction and technology, principally working towards Development, rather than towards customers and stakeholders. Thus there was still hope that I wouldn’t succumb to the paper flood Liz had had to fight.
I placed the first paused interaction design ideas for the first 3 features in a folder. My “To do” pile grew exponentially, almost none of its parts ever becoming a “Done”. I had to divide it, so that every feature would be isolated. I discovered I had better keep my files ready to grab and to present at any time, due to the spontaneity of the internal meeting schedule.
I had to answer the question “What is the current concept state of feature XYZ?” precisely and shortly, without fiddling with unsorted sketches. Oops.

Suddenly I saw myself doing exactly what Liz had sometimes done: rummaging through the depths of a single concept’s printed history, desperately seeking an answer. When asked a question, I had no more time to build and trigger a search statement in my brain or to foster the code later.
So additionally to providing the latest document containing the (agile) design decisions on demand, I had to know them, together with the pros and cons enunciated during the last meeting.

Taking notes, until the paper catches fire
Fortunately, I never lost the habit of taking notes while attending work-related gatherings. I see taking notes closely related to sketching, helping connect memories to tasks and concepts.
In the past, I wrote important things down, like

info (“Boss will be on holiday from 12 to 20.08″),
own tasks (“Find a way to reduce the framework-generated row heights before Friday”),
or to immediately capture my thoughts about a specific topic (“Create a component inheriting from WindowInfo including a new button ‘Save’ → WindowEdit“)

Although I’m not keen on writing down meeting minutes (who is?) and make sure they’re coherent, I can do that too. I can extract everybody’s next tasks and communicate them adequately.
The new challenge was now to simultaneously

present design concepts
moderate ensuing discussions
document decisions and steps in-between; make them fit into a time plan (“Place a single dispatch status at once in Release 1″, “Place multiple dispatch statuses at once in Release 2″)
keep track of generated ideas, ranking from small improvements for currently discussed functionality to unrelated killer features
provide solutions and ideas on the fly
record references and resources related to one topic (“Talk to Mara about the archive, then organize a meeting with Michael to discuss the technical possibilities”, “Look at the file ABC.pdf at part 3 for requirements for new tracking functionality”)
identify my own to-dos, which are not necessarily dictated by the discussion’s outcome (“Redefine the interaction and generate a high-fi prototype to convince boss next time, but first get real data from the database from Oliver”)

I no longer could talk confidently about the code that I knew every part of, like you know the rooms of your house and their contents. Instead, I had to struggle to keep people focused, to advocate the user’s rights and to deal with the what-ifs in real-time.

Expanding
When I was a web developer, I usually came out of a meeting with a few next actions. Now, I fill 5 or 6 pages with all kinds of subjects of different nature. Afterwards, I can’t just program and commit the solution to mark the task as “done”. (By the way, I had to drastically reduce my expectations concerning a job being “done”, since an information architect’s job is never really “done” or “finished”.)

As time went by and my field of activity grew, the little and bigger features had to find their place within different encompassing so-called “projects”. I added colored labels to my first suspension file folder and got a second one for support. I’ve banned the paper monsters – like these printed sheets resulting from the testing of some print functionality – into separate folders on the new shelf I had to find. I keep the really big features (the ones that wouldn’t fit in the suspension files) in their own folders. I can’t get rid of many layout trials on paper, since we may need the wisdom they showed us later. Of course, I could digitalize them if I had lots of spare time at work.

Conclusion
What I’ve learned: cope with the fact that the User Experience Designer’s position includes paperwork. If I don’t sort the papers on my desk on time and meticulously, I’ll be submerged by waves of sheets within a short time, losing tracks, tasks, and time (and thus money). I need solid methods, an established and reliable system and the appropriate infrastructure to manage my job efficiently.
…So basically, it’s a bit like programming within many projects, in different languages and with lots of commented code

5 random facts about me

Noémie Lemaitre — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:24:06 +0000

Exactly what you always wanted to know…

I’m able to write with both hands
At the age of 10 I decided that writing with my right hand “only” was not enough. I taught myself how to write with the left one. Today I regularly switch the mouse’s side, together with the primary and secondary buttons. I don’t notice differences anymore while working with image editing software.
I’ve got a green thumb
Plants just don’t die around me
I dream in 3 languages (at least)
French, German and English are all mixed up: people in my dreams are very skilled and change their language in the middle of a sentence. It becomes funny when old french friends can speak german perfectly at once.
My favorite drink is water
Plain water, without bubbles. I’m not afraid of asking for water from the tap, regardless of where I am.
I like reading before going to sleep
I enjoy the experience a lot but I just wish my fingers wouldn’t always get that cold during the winter.

CeBIT 2011 in Hannover

Noémie Lemaitre — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:24:50 +0000

I felt like a pilgrim – a mix of awe and expectation – as soon as I knew about my coming to the CeBIT this year. I’ve never got the occasion to visit either the CeBIT itself or its host city Hannover before, and I’ll give you a quick report.

Preparation
I spent a reasonable amout of time gathering information about exhibitors and products I’d like to see using the online tool myCeBIT. I subscribed the newsletter and took a look at the mobile website of the fair.

Voyage
Despite a strike of the train workers on the day of my departure, I had no problem travelling from Ulm (south of Germany) to Hannover (north of Germany) on Friday 5^th March.

Accomodation
I got a room at the Hotel Plaza in the city center and I’m totally happy with this choice. A special mention goes to the breakfast buffet, which offered a vast range of different tastes in a nice atmosphere. They even have waffles during the winter!

CeBIT highlights
Since the media coverage of the CeBIT is pretty high out there, I’ll just pick some personal highlights out of the big memory bag.

On Saturday morning (6^th March) I arrived at the fair after a short trip with the train. Of course it was crowded, Saturday being the last day of the exhibition and also the day most people don’t have to work on. Still, I was amazed at the smooth flow at the entrances and the wardrobe, as well as within the halls. I had absolutely no waiting time. The CeBIT’s organisation team did a great job there!

I discovered the cool post cards containing sound and video from HoneyPearTree.

I had fun tracking the CeBIT Twitter-Spy and almost caugh him once. Hunting, armed with a cellular phone in the middle of such a big exhibition, made the serious side somehow spicy. Talk about triggering the play instinct… (Am I ready for Geocaching nao?)

I was a pleasure to meet the big fluffy fox (alias Ludovic Hirlimann) at the Firefox stand. Firefox stays my favorite browser; I’m using it since a bunch of years and I still love it

While I was having a special glance at eReaders, I noticed there were always many visitors around stands selling… books.

The german magazine com! was giving away tons of software DVDs, magazines and mobile phones for free throughout the whole day.

Sightseeing
Unfortunately there was no time for a guided city tour for my first time in Hannover. That’s why I chose to buy the brochure “The Red Thread”. It provides information about lots of noteworthy locations in the town, all linked with a red-colored line on the ground. Following the line was a nice way to explore Hannover on my own, and I’ve found many interesting places to take pix. (Stay tuned to my photoblog to see them.)

In conclusion, I can say it was a great weekend and recommend the CeBIT and the city of Hannover.
If you’ve been there, how was your experience?

Managing cooking recipes in the modern household

Noémie Lemaitre — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 09:35:45 +0000

I recently had to decide on the future of an expanding collection of cooking recipes in my household. Here are the topics I considered.

The current situation

I own a few cookbooks, either I bought them or they were gifts. They all have different formats.
When I want to cook something special that isn’t in the cookbooks, I search the internet for a recipe. Then I tend to print it for later use.
If I happen to find an interesting recipe in a magazine, I cut it out or copy it.
I try to keep those sheets within a folder, ordered alphabetically.

The problem

Apparently I’m not fast enough to process the papers waiting to be copied and/or sorted.
The drawer where the cookbooks and the papers are stored is crowded.
To find a recipe involving potatoes and mushrooms, which can be cooked in less than 45 min, I have to rely on my memory, indices in books, an arbitrary alphabetical categorization, as well as going throught loose sheets.
The experience can be frustrating, especially if I have no time to recall and ponder.

The solutions

Solution 1: Optimize the system in use

It should be possible to optimized the current process to get more satisfaction out of it.

How

Order the sheets in the folder in categories like appetizer, main dish, dessert, etc., to better target the appropriate direction at first.
Convert every recipe found in a book, a magazine or online into a page in the cookbook folder. Rather quickly and methodically.
Store the unprocessed stuff somewhere else than in the drawer, where there would be only “finished” recipes – those which are already cut out, pasted, copied, ordered.

Disadvantages

Searching
- If I only have some potatoes and mushrooms left at home, I still have to go through the whole “Main dish” part of the folder to find a recipe.
- If I just desperately want to eat goat cheese, regardless of the combination, I’ll have to go through the whole cookbook folder.
Handling
- I will have a bunch of unproccessed recipes waiting for me to manage them before I can use them. I probably will postpone the work until the next Christmas holiday. (And then I’ll have something better to do.)
- The paper formats are all different, and some won’t fit nicely in my folder.
Scalability
- If I’m given 3 more cookbooks as presents within the next 6 years, I’ll have to get a second folder.
- I could scale to the “Desserts folder”, while the “Main dish folder” will grow and the contents soon will need even more folders. After 10 years, I’ll have an entire shelf filled with cookbook folders. In the kitchen.

Solution 2: Go digital

While the current system still can be digitalized without having to request a 3 months leave from work, it is important to take a look at the possibilities.

How

Digitalize all the recipes that are on paper.
Have a system to store them.
Enter new recipes directly into the system.

Possible implementations

Use a native system, e.g. a cooking recipes management software to install on a computer.
Use a script that already covers most of the functions I need, e.g. Maian Recipe.
Use a Wiki or Wiki-like CMS.
Design and create an own system. (With 2 techies in the house, this is an option I can consider without flinching.)

Disadvantages

Entering data into a digital system is not neccessarily as easy as placing a sheet of paper into a folder. It may be formatted correctly for the program to accept it.
There are many programs on the market and there are nice ones, but a native system is very binding. I’d like to separate my data pool from any interface, to be able to use it as I see fit. (I may want to publish an eBook about cooking some day, right?)
Enhancing an existing script which I haven’t coded myself can be a pain. The cookbook project should keep a fun factor.
While I love to design a database’s architecture, I don’t like parsers. Sentences like “Honey, if you don’t get the parser to work I won’t be able to cook dinner today!” are definitely not in the scope of my relationship.

The choice

I decided to give MediaWiki a chance.

Advantages

Entering a recipe, either typing it or pasting it from another source, is pretty easy when you’re familiar with Wikis (I am).
A library takes care of image handling. (Yes, I’m getting lazy!)
The search function fits my needs.
The system is scalable.
It’s free and it’s open source.

Now, how do you manage your cooking recipes at home?

Got laid off? Part 1

Noémie Lemaitre — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:53:07 +0000

I have made a habit of coaching friends who just got laid off to help them get a job. So let’s see what you can do to recover quickly in a similar situation.

Get legal
If you’re a german resident, for example, you’ll have to contact your local employment agency to inform them about your new status. Be quick! You may be penalized if you miss the date (e.g. diminution of unemployment pay).

Get up
You’re at the beginning of a new career: it’s called job-seeking and it’s full time. Getting up every weekday at 8 o’clock seems fair.
Convince yourself you won’t be able to think smart while talking on the phone when you just got up. Imagine your boss-to-be on the line, begging for an interview, and you just sound sleepy, desperately trying to wake up your dreamy brain. That’s not how you want to be perceived.
Apart from that, you’ve got plenty of things to do. Start early enough.

Get dressed
I mean it. Every weekday. Get out of your night/slacking clothes and choose day clothes without holes, loose threads, or stains. You won’t show up for an interview in your favorite worn-out sweatsuit. And this interview could take place sooner than you think. Maybe today, maybe even in 2 hours!
I assume I also don’t have to go over the benefits of an established washing routine, right?

Get pretty
During the last months or years, you may have selected pieces from your wardrobe while thinking “Come on, it’s only for the workplace, it’ll do”. Well, now it’s time to dare using “the good ones”. And while we’re at it: Do “the good ones” still fit? (Hint: Probably not. Second hint: If they fit, they’re out of fashion.)
Nice clothes for interviews are a very good investment. You will also need them for your new profile picture.

Be a model
You need one or more resume pictures of yourself, and they should be younger than a year. Depending on the field where you’d like to work, you can select an option from the professional photo taken by a photographer, to a good shot with an acceptable digital camera. Notice that the result is usually worth it and the professional pictures really look more… professional.

Now we’ve got some basics covered. We’ll look at the paperwork in the second part of the serie. Stay tuned!

The advantages of being a team of one

Noémie Lemaitre — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 19:31:06 +0000

For many UX professionals, it’s a nightmare to work alone. They feel isolated and are desperately seeking company and exchange. While lots of benefits usually come in mind when thinking about team work, I’d like to take a look at the positive effects of being one team in one physical person.

Less meetings
I tend to reduce meetings to a minimum since I believe most of them are wasting my time. I have nothing against a good brainstorming session or a longer project kick-off gathering. (Preparation, moderation, and documentation are keys to a productive meeting and should be provided.)
Sitting numbly in a poorly aired room with 9 other people, everyone knowing the others are bored except for the two who are vividly fighting over the choice of a button instead of a link, is definitely not efficient.
The reflection process occurs quicker when you’re arguing with yourself – hopefully. In most cases you will be able to make a decision at the end, enabling you to go on with the next step.

Less communication
Since you are both the sender and the receiver of the information you communicate, the loss of information on the way from your brain to your colleague’s brain is minimized. Explaining complex ideas occurs rather seamlessly inside your own head. Although you may need to write down things for yourself to understand them better, you’re still lucky you don’t have to make them fit into your co-workers vision of the world.

More standards
No-one messes up your files!
It also means you can establish standards, templates and whatsoever you need for your daily work, without having to share, discuss or justify every change.
You manage your team’s image in the broadest sense. You’re in control of your efforts towards your goals. (Already been caugh singing “I did it my way…”?)

No personnel management
You don’t have to decide about your subordinates; you won’t curse your team leader twice a day. You have responsibility for only one person, and fortunately, it’s you! You will gain time while not bothering about organizing personnel meetings, and you’ll be able to reduce friction between your team member(s).

More ownership
Everything that comes out of your team is produced by you. You are the one who’s responsible for what you deliver – good or bad. I believe that in this case empowerment helps building a notion of responsibility, thus strengthening the will to become better. Endorsing responsibility leads you to improve yourself; embrace it!

Further readings

Would you like to become a team of one? Why, or why not?

The right media

Noémie Lemaitre — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:44:08 +0000

As I stood in front of the meeting room, being told that the reunion had been postponed to half an hour later, I was slightly disappointed. As a colleague added “But I’ve sent you an eMail”, I was tempted to talk about the foolishness and inefficiency of such an action.
So let’s see which medium is best for what topic at work. (Note that the adequate medium for a specific topic might be totally different at home.)

Personal contact
Meet the other part in person if the topic

is very important
will probably generate a longer discussion
is top secret
involves talking about money
involves many people (organize a meeting in this case)

Phone call
Dial the other part’s number if the topic

is time-critical
is an idea or concept that’s better explained personally (rather than written)
doens’t need deep thinking from the other part
is a question which can be answered by “yes” or “no”

Direct messaging / Instant messaging
Depends on your organization’s guidelines.

eMail
Send an eMail to the other part if the topic

is not time-critical
can be written and understood shortly
is precise, defined
is a question which can be answered by “yes” or “no”, if the recipient is not available on the phone
can be structured into smaller chunks if it’s longer

Sticky note
Paste a sticky note if the topic

contains no sensitive information
is not time-critical
is not important