Listen to Your Stakeholders : Sowing seeds for future research by Tomer Sharon.
From the post:
If I needed to summarize this article in one sentence, I’d say: “Shut up, listen, and then start talking.”
User experience practitioners who are also excellent interviewers know that listening is a key aspect of a successful interview. By keeping your mouth shut you reduce the risk of verbal foibles and are in a better position to absorb information. When you are concentrated in absorbing information, you can then begin to identify research opportunities and effectively sow seeds for future research.
When you discuss future UX research with your stakeholders you want to collect pure, unbiased data and turn it into useful information that will help you pitch and get buy-in for future research activities. As in end-user interviews, stakeholder interviews a word, a gesture, or even a blink or a certain body posture can bias an interviewee and add flaws to data you collect. Let’s discuss several aspects of listening to your stakeholders when you talk with them about UX research. You will quickly see how these are similar to techniques you apply when interviewing users.
Stakeholders are our clients, whether internal or external to our organization. These are people who need to believe in what we do so they will act on research results and fund future research. We all have a stake in product development. They have a stake in UX research.
Tomer’s advice doesn’t require hardware or software. It does require wetware and some social interaction skills.
If you are successful with the repeated phrase technique, ping me. (“These aren’t the droids you are looking for.”) I have a phrase for them that starts with a routing number. 😉