Listening is the most important skill a designer possesses
Robert Hoekman is the author of Designing the Obvious, which all web application designers should read.
In a recent post he talks about the right way to listen to feedback from one’s users:
I have also long maintained that once you have a product available, you should then plug in and start listening to your audience. In doing this, however, I’ve said you should pay attention to the overwhelming trends - the requests that bubble up to the top over and over again - and not the idiosynracies of individual or small niches of users.
He then quotes a statistic from the Opera web browser development team that shows that a feature that users had frequently requested, and which has been implemented, is never used.
He concludes:
Clearly, even paying attention to trends can be risky. I’ve seen this myself in a couple of situations. It seems that a large number of people can all have the same wrong idea….
Our job as designers is to interpret and define problems, and to create solutions. Very often this means ignoring everything you hear and paying attention only to what you see. When you pay attention to what people actually do instead of what they say they do, you can devise solutions that exceed their expectations.
Instead of building exactly what they ask for, figure out why they’re asking for it. Then find a solution that solves the real problem.
I have occassionally heard designers respond to criticism with the words “I did exactly what you asked me to do” This response, it seems to me, can arise for only two reasons:
1.) The organization for which the designer works has no real respect for design. The designer is not empowered to do actual design work. Instead, the designer is told to follow orders or be fired.
2.) The designer does not understand the actual work of design. The designer needs to spend more time listening to the client/boss so they can figure out the why of a request, rather than the what.
There is no easy fix for #1, which is an epidemic sapping potential economic value out of millions of businesses worldwide. However, for #2, all that is needed is greater design education.