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A reminder to LISTEN
I'll announce something new for the Good Experience community at Gel 2009 tomorrow, and it has to do with listening.
During my prep I came across this, from Pomegranates and empathy, which sets things up nicely:
You have to listen. You have to pay attention. That's pretty low-tech advice for high-tech marketers and product managers. And yet I can't think of a better foundation for customer-centered work. LISTEN.
What? (Kidding ;)
We can not claim to be human-friendly, empathic designers if we are not competent, sensitive listeners, be it via aural or other means. I've found the "soft skills" can be the hardest and most necessary and valuable skills of all to develop. Not only to understand "users," but for true collaboration with team members. This is a great topic for experience designers to dig in to and get out of our comfort zone of forgotten assumptions. We need more of this.
Low tech advice often brings people back into the process. This day in age, when people look to automate everything that may be a differentiator . I believe you can bring technology into the listening process with online surveys. Big research companies like Gartner and Forrester have been using surveys as a listening post for years.
It's a great way to determine user wants and needs and discover what is keeping your clients up at night.
Talk about useful advice for any sector of the market, or any area of your life? Imagine if parents would *listen* to toddlers before getting angry. What if teachers listened to students more effectively. What if we asked our customers what they wanted and actually delivered on that? Yes, low-tech but high on the "effective" axis!
Listening is one of the most important parts of business. It's far easier to listen to what the customer wants, than tell the customer what they need!
Listen. Love it. But sometimes it is really hard to convince people. Some folks think that talking to customers means break out PowerPoint and lecturing them on the benefits of their products. Pah! Even if you get them to shut up they'll give it one sentence before explaining why the customer is wrong. Hahaha.