Active listening

#55 - Mar.2023

There are tons of techniques to capture and probe customer needs for your design process. One of them is mostly underrated: Active Listening.

As simple as it sounds, active listening in today's accelerated world requires a lot of effort for being present and attentive to what others had to say.

Active listening is the entrance door to real empathy and creating long-term trust bonds. Is the hidden backbone for building personal and business relationships. Is the guardrail against our own biases and prejudgements.

The best designers are great listeners. They resist the temptation of creating solutions and building upfront assumptions. They listen, question, and reflect before jumping to solutions.

Listening is a skill. Requires training. There's always room for improvement. This skill is fed by curiosity, focus, and the humility of not knowing.

Pause. Focus. Listen. Act.