{"id":25687,"date":"2021-07-15T03:50:35","date_gmt":"2021-07-15T03:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/?p=25687"},"modified":"2023-08-17T07:53:41","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T07:53:41","slug":"soft-skills-needed-career-in-ux-attentive-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/software-ux-ui\/soft-skills-needed-career-in-ux-attentive-listening\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cSoft\u201d Skills Needed For A Career In UX: Attentive Listening"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Did you land here by searching for \u201chow to get ahead in a user experience job\u201d? Or, maybe something more like \u201csoft skills needed in UX\u201d? In either case, you\u2019re in the right place. There are four basic keys to this wisdom, and while none of them require advanced degrees, similar to many of the skills required for the future of work<\/a> \u2013 all four require some tutelage and a lot of practice. Because the most important skills to master as a UX practitioner of any flavour \u2013 UX designer, UX researcher, UX writer, UX architect, UX strategist, and so on \u2013 are the so-called \u201csoft\u201d skills of attentive listening, fostering psychological safety, practising clear and consistent communication, and knowing your audience. Today, let\u2019s take a look at attentive listening \u2013 what it is, why it is important, and a tip or two on improving your ability at putting this skill to good use.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Attentive listening \u2013 sometimes inaccurately referred to as active listening \u2013 is surprisingly simpler than it sounds, and once explained, is far more difficult to put into practice than one would think. At its core, attentive listening is about being mindful of your own internal thoughts and ideas while conversing with another or several other people, so as to silence those inner \u201cvoices\u201d in order to truly hear what the other person is saying. While this may sound easy, attentive listening also means doing your best to listen openly to the other person so as to reserve any and all judgements<\/a> that your brain may try to float up to your consciousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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While others are speaking, it is quite likely that a new thought or idea will come to mind \u2013 this is the nature of discoursing with other people, after all, and you won\u2019t want to forget that thought while you\u2019re listening to someone else speak, so it\u2019s at this point that many of our best-intentioned attentive listening suddenly breaks down. Well-intentioned though it may be to want to remember your addition to the conversation for an appropriate moment to speak, it\u2019s this focus on remembering which makes it virtually impossible to actually attentively listen. Many folks \u2013 for a variety of reasons such as cognitive or neuro diversities, to name two \u2013 have issues with short-term memory, and so for many folks, some kind of \u201ccoping skill\u201d is required to help supplant the memory issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A tried and true technique is to consistently have paper and pen (or a smartphone) to jot down a short note to self. Even a single word is often enough to remind you, if\/when the moment is appropriate, of what you had thought of and wanted to add to the conversation. Sometimes, this jotting down of a word or a few words is also enough to help you realize that perhaps you no longer want to share that thought for any reason, or you changed how you had planned to bring it up \u2013 again, perhaps based on something said after you jotted down your note-to-self.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In a situation where you ask someone or a group of people a question and are expecting or waiting for a response, it\u2019s important to be comfortable with silence. It\u2019s very much human instinct to fill a void<\/a>, and in conversation, this means filling silences with more words. In a focus or any other group, it is likely that there are folks who would like to speak up, but are shy or hesitant for one of many other reasons, and for these folks, an elongated silence may be the key to ever hearing their input and feedback. In one-on-one or small group conversations, especially amongst people who don\u2019t know each other extremely well, the tendency to misread non-verbal cues, or worse yet, as on a call without video, there are no non-verbal cues to read, the impulse to fill those conversation voids can be overwhelming. It\u2019s these moments where it is perhaps most important to be comfortable with silence, counting silently in your head to five before verbally prompting or otherwise checking in (\u201cDid I lose you? Are you still there?\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If you are interviewing someone \u2013 whether a user, stakeholder, or prospective employee, and you have asked a question and are waiting for an answer, then remaining silent no matter how uncomfortable that gets is absolutely vital. Doing so maybe the only way to get as truthful and as unbiased an answer as you can hope for, given your unique situation at that moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Another aspect of attentive listening, and something that can help if you find attentive listening difficult to do or maintain for any reason, is getting curious. Curiosity is the core commonality which all UX practitioners must have<\/a> plenty of in order to not just be successful at their jobs, but more importantly, perhaps, to find satisfaction in their work. Luckily, while curiosity is not exactly teachable<\/em>, it can be regained if you feel you\u2019ve lost it. Play \u201cThe 3 (or 5) Why\u2019s Game<\/a>\u201d with whatever the situation\/thing\/person is, asking yourself (or Google, or the subject of your curiosity, as the case may be) \u201cwhy?\u201d and obtaining or listening for that answer and then asking \u201cwhy?\u201d again, and again (and again, and again, if it is possible, and you haven\u2019t annoyed your conversationalist). Do this about things you don\u2019t need<\/em> to ask why about if you\u2019re wondering how to practice this skill or \u201cmental muscle,\u201d like when you see a cat cleaning itself: ask \u201cwhy?\u201d or when you see a friend buy a particular brand of anything, ask them \u201cwhy?\u201d And, if anyone asks you why you\u2019re asking, you can honestly tell them you\u2019re \u201cjust curious.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hopefully, this has provided some insight not just on what attentive listening is, but on the many benefits \u2013 professional and personal \u2013 associated with it, as well as a few tips on how to practice and employ this skill to your benefit as a UX designer<\/a>, UX researcher, or any type of human-centred problem-solving situation. This is one of the foundational skills to being successful in this field, and with consistent practice and the self-awareness to recognize when you\u2019ve strayed from listening attentively, mastery of this is part of the basis for both a successful UX career and harmonious interpersonal relationships.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you land here by searching for \u201chow to get ahead in a user experience job\u201d? Or, maybe something more like \u201csoft skills needed in UX\u201d? In either case, you\u2019re in the right place. There are four basic keys to this wisdom, and while none of them require advanced degrees, similar to many of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1178,"featured_media":25689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-2.php","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[200],"tags":[328,1597],"ppma_author":[3977],"class_list":["post-25687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software-ux-ui","tag-active-listening","tag-ux-ui"],"authors":[{"term_id":3977,"user_id":1178,"is_guest":0,"slug":"staceryseonick","display_name":"Stacey A. Seronick","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Headshot-StaceySeronick_72ppi-150x150.jpg","user_url":"","last_name":"Seronick","first_name":"Stacey A.","job_title":"","description":"Obsessed with human behaviour and how we might better understand the brain and it\u2019s endless quirks and bits of electrochemical magic, Stacey has been seeking to arrive at this understanding for over 25 years, through researching, strategizing, and designing with humans of all sorts, with all kinds of different challenges and needs. As a UX design manager at IBM, she operates at the intersection of design, education, and technology, and humans, AIs and machines. However, her career has included work as seemingly disparate as: managing an independent record label and talent booking agency; designing couture latex clothing and brick and mortar retail shopping experiences; and creating educational projects for adult learners of the MS Office software suite. Stacey cares deeply about psychological safety - her own and that of others and speaks passionately about this and inclusive and ethical AI-driven design whenever she gets the opportunity<\/a>\r\n\r\nStacey holds a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts from Bennington College, Vermont; a Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction and Design from the University of California at Irvine, California; and is a 2021 candidate for a Master of Business Administration from Quantic School of Business and Technology, Washington, D.C."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25687"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30561,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25687\/revisions\/30561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25687"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=25687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}