Sometimes design is much more about knowing how to listen than knowing how to look.
Design is usually associated with the visuals, with how to create results or products that “look good.” As my fellow designers will already know, design is much more than makeup or an ornamental discipline.
However, I think we rarely associate design with listening skills; we tend to fall into wanting to give our opinion or share our point of view. Because on this we can agree, to design we must observe and observe a lot. From the beginning of our careers, we learn to train our eyes to see what is invisible to everyone else. To see how things happen, how people interact, to distinguish how one looks or how one reads, etc. But we rarely train ourselves to learn how to listen to others.
We often talk about feedback. I learned this word in my teens and always associated it with a two-way street, where one’s words or actions are put out into the world and then the other’s words or actions are immediately received back. But how open are we to receiving words or actions that come from others? As designers, in any field, feedback is crucial. There is no design without testing and iterations, and this is only possible thanks to feedback from others. This feedback can be verbal or through behaviors and actions. If your product X is not used as you planned at the time and the people who deal with it use it differently, that new behavior is the feedback you need to iterate and make the necessary changes, because let’s remember that both in design and in business, it’s not about what we want, it’s about what people or your customers want.
Now, when feedback is written or verbal, that’s when we should be much more open to listening. But really listen. Not “listening” while what we are really doing is putting together answers in our heads. I know it’s difficult. We tend to associate our worth with the ideas that come out of our mouths. However, today more than ever, in a world full of opinions and noise, keeping silent and listening consciously gives us a great opportunity: to ask questions that allow us to better understand the person in front of us (be it a person, a situation, or a product), instead of filling the silence with answers that we believe are the solution.
So… How can we start really listening? I think the first step is knowing how to remain silent, being conscious of not interrupting others when they are giving us feedback. Second, it’s about putting judgment aside, listening without immediately thinking about whether the other person is right or wrong, because that only leads us to become defensive, and we’ll only want to react with our ideas and solutions. Third and finally, embrace the idea that if we truly listen, we can truly understand each other’s potential, which will surely lead to better product experiences and more successful businesses. Listening is synonymous with empathy, the basis of a design and an economy that we should put into practice more often.
