To be talking to you all today. I see people are still um joining, but in the interest of time, we'll go ahead and uh um get started.Um I'm currently a principal design researcher at Intuit based out of in the office and have previously worked at uh linkedin Microsoft and some other companies, I'll tell you more about myself. But first, via videos, we are here to become better listeners. Um listeners who connect with strangers um establish a rapport to unpack insights. We are here to distinguish how we might be listening versus how can we listen better. We have to lean in and listen on a deeper level to what's being said and what's left unsaid with deliberate effort, we can become listeners who understand and empathize with others. Like I said, um I've been a researcher for 14 years now. Um I started as a quantitative researcher and then moved to more qualitative roles. Um However, I wasn't always a listener at best. I was listening just enough to go by in conversations, um listening enough to find a point so I can share something that I had to say in a meeting.

But after years of uh conducting hundreds of interviews with participants to uncover how people think about a product and how their real life context impacts its usage. I have come to realize that listening is a skill that has to be learned and practiced because it forms 90% of those conversations when you are trying to understand your users. So today, we'll start with the story and uh this is a very interactive presentation that we are doing today. So there would be practice exercises for you to practice, you know, some of the listening prompts and uh so you can become, you know, better listeners in this process.

Um If you have some questions, uh please hold your thoughts, we will take them towards the end. We should cover this whole deck in like probably 15 minutes or so. So here comes the story on this Tuesday morning. Um We a design research team had settled in Menu's shop in Bangalore India to do a contextual inquiry. But Manoush was not the kind of participant who was going to share a lot because the subject of our inquiry made him anxious. How do small business owners deal with payments? From our earlier conversations with Manoj? I knew that his challenges were many as a small business owner. He was trying to establish himself in the market with plans to expand so he could provide for his growing family uh with a third baby on the horizon. His immediate was his personal and increasing expenses. Also manu was facing some real time challenges as a part of the session. Um and given that he's part of an emerging economy that lacks resources. So first, he was concerned about his mobile data usage and downloading the prototype. Um as you might be aware, data is equivalent to money in emerging markets because you have to pay extra for it. Second, he was struggling to comprehend the English language in the screens.

And third, he was also uncomfortable with money related questions for the fear of letting out his financial secrets. At one point, I asked Manoj about connecting his bank account to a payments app. He hesitated and, uh, gave a rather superficial answer. I don't like it. I'm not that kind of person. What followed next was silence, sensing his discomfort. I wanted to move on to the next question, but I waited a few seconds and a few more seconds and then Manoa spoke, I'm afraid what if my bank information gets stolen? There are hackers. You know, I've heard of people whose bank accounts got trained overnight and, uh, you feel that way because I intentionally left my sentence incomplete. Manus began to talk more about his concerns around security. You know, he touched upon the possibility of government logging into his account.

He felt that, uh, the money in his money in the form of cash is secure with him. And, uh, when it's online, there could be security breaches um versus, you know, cash, which feels more mine and more safe. We continue talking for another 40 minutes. At the end of it, we had a solid understanding of my note's needs. We had an idea of how our team could improve the product based on his feedback. Sometimes we don't really listen, we listen just enough to find a commonality so we can share our own stories, listen enough to get a signal to get our work done. Isn't that, you know, something that happens with all of us. But as I mentioned earlier, listening deeply is important to uncover our users tacit moves. Let me show you how listening looks to a researcher listening creates a space, a space for participants to open up. It's like taking a walk in the park where our participants can process their thoughts. This in turn empowers us to understand how they feel and what it's like to see the world through their eyes. Let's look at some specific distinctions when it, when it comes to listening, shallow versus deep. So when we listen in a shallow mood, we project our biases onto the other person.

We miss um looking into different perspectives because we are too busy validating ours deep listening, helps us put ourselves in other people's shoes and enables an understanding of their cultural backgrounds that might have shaped, you know, who they are, their attitudes, behaviors and motivations.

So in the story about um if I was listening to Mano at a shallow level, at a surface level, I would have failed to uncover his unique experiences growing up in an emerging economy. Um I could have biased his growing up uh similar to mine because I also come from similar cultural roots and have grown up in the same social fabric. But deep listening exposed me to challenges in his life as a small business owner, which I am not and you know, as a father, as an entrepreneur um and a person with insufficient English fluency who wanted to limit his data usage. So shallow listening is that the surface level and deep listening can help us uncover what participant means at a deeper level and even what they feel if we go more deep. The another distinction is about literal meaning versus observing word choices. So the words people use, tell us a lot about their beliefs and values if I had not focused on manu's choice of words, um I would have walked away feeling confused about his real worries. You know, he touched upon a lot of things. Is it government, is it non cash instruments? Is he afraid of hackers uh getting into his online bank accounts or does he have problem with online platforms in general? Um Is he like old school um and not willing to adopt, adopt new technology?

Listening to me not's choice of words brought home the realization um of a lot of things which are left unsaid. So number one, he was very afraid of giving his bank information online. He was also skeptical that an online platform cannot be secure enough. Um He also believed that the possibility of government peaking into his bank account and was not sure uh um of online uh money. Um He was absolutely sure. However, that his money is safe with him in the form of cash. So sometimes uh we try to uncover the meaning of words, uh which are left unsaid. So when our participants say something like I want, they may be talking about their goals. When they say I don't want something, they could be talking about their pain points. And when they say something like you need to show me something before I do something, um they could be sharing their skepticism with us. Let's practice. I see we have time. So let's use it to practice uh some of the, you know, um words said verses unsaid, please feel free to use the chat for, you know, sharing your answers or if you have a notepad and pen lying next to you, that would be wonderful too. Um So when someone says these words, what could be the underlying emotion when someone says, you know, to be honest, or when someone says, I can't really admit that or when someone says, um I know it's just me who needs to do better, not your product.

What could be the you know. Um Yeah. Ok. Ok. I'm looking at the um, Q and A and it says chat is disabled um for attendees, which is all right, in that case, feel free to use, you know, your notepad and pen. And uh um yeah, uh I'll, I'll share some of the possible answers and you can see how, how, well you did. Let's take a moment here for you to note down some of these um underlying emotions. All right. So here are some possible answers. Um Then someone says, to be honest, they could be emphasizing a position, you know, they could be focusing on the stand that they believe in. When someone says, I can't really admit, um they could be sharing their um uncomfortability or the hesitation or even distrust about a product or your product. Uh When someone says, I know it's just me um who needs to do better, you know, they, they, they are being apologetic.

Um The question we should be asking ourselves is have we made them feel stupid? Um you know, through our product or through um through our words. Um So, you know, that's how you can uncover some of these underlying emotions. Let's move on to the next distinction, which is intentional pauses and I know we all freak out with silence. Um But it's so powerful when used in uh a research session or when talking to your users because pauses create a space for the other person to process their thoughts. You know, keeping quiet can be a very powerful technique for eliciting thoughtful responses. Um In the example above, if I had moved on to the next question, um recall when I said that, you know, I took a pause, if I had moved on to the next question to feel that uncomfortable silence. After Mano responded with that superficial answer, I don't like it. Then Manosh might have simply moved on from what was being discussed and discontinued his line of thought. Instead, what a pause did was it got him to offer a valuable insight regarding his security concerns on online platforms.

Here are some of the things we might be doing, um which may come across as bad silence, you know, interjecting our participants a lot, um making them shut down versus allowing them time to process their thoughts. We could also be interrupting them, you know, when they are saying something we could be focused on on our own agendas and could cut off their thoughts versus allowing them to think and dig deeper into a line of questioning. We could also be filling the space with chatter as we all do in our daily lives. Um Even I'm guilty of doing so. Um And this leads to a distracted participant in a research session versus a good silence would look like, you know, encouraging participant to share. Let's practice and quickly let me check if my presentation can share my computer sound. It seems so. Um if you cannot hear anything, even after I click play, um just ping me in the Q and A and I'll get this fixed. So the question is, which of the following do you think is a good example of intentional pause? I'm going to play three clips here and note down in your notepad. Which one you think is the right one?

This is crazy. I have no idea how to get to my account. Yeah, that's

pretty bad. Tell me a little bit about your design process.

Ok. So there, there's a process we have here that we're trying to use to Time Box, our design process, it's like a way to, to scale agile. Oh, yeah, safe. You know about it. Then we are really good at going fast. Like the teams are just clipping along and it really makes it. So we hit our milestones.

I mean,

well, we maybe miss one milestone per month and that's always because uh marketing slows down the process. So it doesn't really count. It's like it always feels like they're operating on a different set of information than the rest of us. I don't know if they need to be in the stand ups or what. But it, but, but it's bad,

I'm sure a lot of you voted for the right answer, which is uh the third one as we saw, it was a good example of good silence. Let's move on to the next distinction, which is closing questions versus connecting prompts. Um So you are some of you might be aware of closed questions versus open ended. And uh this is what this alludes to. So prompts basically help us deepen the conversation without pushing the participant too far in the story narrated about. Um As soon as I saw Mano open up a little, I offered a nudge if you recall um to encourage him to keep going. Um And you feel that way because was gently inserted so he could expand on his feelings. If I had not nudged him, he might not have felt, felt safe um to release the fears and the skepticism that he carried. If I had asked him a yes, no question instead, such as does it mean that you don't like online platforms? And a lot of us might feel the urge to, you know, straight away, ask that question, all we would have gotten would be a single word response no or yes. At this point, I would have even closed out my participant further to talking about a sensitive area that he was already reluctant to address.

Here are some connecting prompts that you can use in your conversations, you know, with your participants or even otherwise with your conversation partners in meetings at home, et cetera. When they're sharing something, you can say something like you feel that way because and you don't take a pregnant cause you can say something like, tell me more, you know, just encouraging them to keep going. Can you please expand on that? What does that mean to you? Let's practice again. Um Convert the following closed prompts to open on correcting prompts. So take a shot at uh five of these and try to convert them into a question which wouldn't elicit a binary response of yes or no. Feel free to share some in Q and A. All right. I'm gonna continue moving ahead in the interest of time. And uh um yeah, Elaine has a very beautiful response. Share with me how that is working for you. That is a very nice response because it help participant to expand more on their thoughts, framing a question with how or you know, more open ended question words like what uh when, why is always a good idea as we will see here? So does it act as you expected can be reframed as what did you expect to happen when you, you know, did something, have you done this before? Can be reframed as what happened when you did this before? Right?

Is this experience as smooth can be reframed as how was your experience? And you know, similarly, please describe your level of satisfaction. Um If I would have asked, you know, questions starting with is Mr was they would all elicit a single word answer. So um to sum up listening to, it's a space, a space for our participants to open up this in turn empowers us to understand how they truly feel and what it's like to see the world through their eyes. Conversely, when we don't listen, we close ourselves to learning. Um We fail to unpack our users, behaviors, motivations, and friction points, we fail to go deeper. That's it. Um If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer. Um I'm not sure if you can unmute yourself and share. But yeah, Q and A is open for you. If you don't have a question, please feel free to share any comment or thought you may have. Um I would be glad to know that, you know, this, this helped you in a, in a little way. Thank you so much. I'm so glad that you could join and we could connect on this platform and um discuss this topic which is mutual, which is of mutual interest. Um Maria has a question. If, if person doesn't want to contact pauses won't help, how would you deal with it? I think uh what you're alluding to is if a person doesn't want to um provide more context, uh pauses won't help. How would you deal with it.

So, um uh you know, a, a good uh practice in such a case would be to continue trying, you know, give it two or three best shots. Um If pauses are not working, try using some prompts, um if even they are not working and the participant has made up their mind to, you know, to, to not share anything for any reasons. You know, maybe they, they are not happy that they participated in this session or they just don't like um how their day is going in that case. Sometimes we just have to, uh, you know, let it go, like move on to the next question if they are not um answering a particular question, um you can always get that answer from other participants. I mean, that's the worst case. Really. Majority of the times I have noticed that they will open up and you continue uh prompting them. We have like eight more minutes until the session lasts and then it automatically disconnects. So if you would like to ask more questions, I'm here just looking at my screen. Yeah, I guess if there are no more questions or the points of discussion, then um we can all disconnect. It was lovely. Um Sharing some of these learnings with you and I hope um you found some of it useful.