After we submitted our final project proposal (which outlined using surveys to conduct our needfinding), we received feedback that our project might be better served by conducting more focused needfinding - what does being a good listener mean to specific people? We decided to conduct individual interviews in order to find the qualities that people most associated with a good listener, and to assess the actual need for our product. Since our needfinding was based around getting individuals to talk about their personal experiences in a more detailed way, we conducted the interviews in person with people in our homes.
The Interviews
We used the following interview questions:
Do you consider yourself a good listener?
What makes someone a good listener?
What makes someone a bad listener?
Have you ever tried to improve your listening ability?
If so, how?
If not, were you discouraged by a lack of available methods?
Do you think listening is a valuable skill?
Why?
When do you think it's important to be a good listener?
Do you have any personal stories regarding times you felt listened to?
Do you have any personal stories regarding times you didn’t feel listened to?
Results
We found that a number of responses kept coming up with our interviewees. They nearly universally reported that eye contact, leaving space to talk, and asking questions were features of good listeners, and that bad listeners don't maintain eye contact, don't look at the speaker, and appear distracted. They all felt that being a good listener was important, whether it were for personal reasons like helping friends and supporting family or for professional reasons like understanding your boss. A number of interviewees had attempted to improve their listening abilities before. A number of interviewees had had negative experiences caused by not being properly listened to.
Takeaways
Based on our interviews, we arrived at a number of conclusions:
People value listening.
There is a need for some sort of method to improve listening.
Key traits of a good listener include eye contact and absorbing information.
A bad listener is marked by a lack of eye contact and talking over the other person.
From these takeaways, we knew that we wanted to focus on eye contact (among other things) as a key measure of the "goodness" of a listener for our purposes.
You can view transcripts of our full interviews here.