Imagine if a person could know almost everything about you by simply looking at you. He could tell your profession by looking at your hands and wrists. He could tell where you were from by your dress and speech. He could tell what you like to eat and drink from your teeth and lips. With little effort he could know your deepest secrets and know you better than your best friend. These are the attributes of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional private detective from turn of the century literature. Holmes may at times have seemed like a super hero with a near omniscient power of the criminals he chased, but his abilities were based on real skills that are honed by real-life detectives every day.

A few months ago, we shared with you a way to communicate with research participants to help them to feel more comfortable and speak openly. In this article, we are going to delve into Observation Skills that can really help you to get the most out of your research.

Much like the Active Listening Skills that we discussed previously, Observation skills can help you to better understand the user during a research session. All of the small bits and pieces of information that is emitted by a person at any given moment amount to so much more than the words that they speak. Non-verbal communication can account for as much as 93% of total communication with spoken words accounting for only 7%. On top of that, there is a popular saying here at ActiveComm Labs, “behavior doesn’t lie.” You’ll never have to worry if a person is being completely open with you or if they are remembering incorrectly, what you observe from them is undoubtedly what they are experiencing. By combining the information you gather from observation with your ability to communicate using Active Listening skills, you will have a powerful tool to inquire about the emotional experience that you are observing, and truly tap into the user experience.

The Act of Observing
There are myriad aspects of human behavior, too many to observe and record comprehensively in real time. However, it’s because of this massive amount of information that we can tap into an experience. Of all the different types of communication, verbal communication provides people with the greatest control. Many people feel safer communicating through email or text message rather than speaking in-person because they are nervous about the messages that their involuntary body language and facial expression will convey. We’ll have to pick and choose which aspects of observable behavior we will attend to based on what we expect to find relevant to the user experience. With that said, we’ll discuss behavior and how it can be observed and interpreted. We’ll also discuss how to apply the information you gather through observation and combine those observations with communication skills like Active Listening. One thing to keep in mind as you become aware of all of the information you gather through observation, is that it’s imperative that you avoid jumping to conclusions. There is almost always an alternative explanation to any observed behavior; this is where verification through communication will be essential. Through this article, we’ll start with the most general behaviors (physical characteristics) and work our way to the most specific (eye movements).

Physical Characteristics
Physical characteristics include factors such as height, weight, body type, hair color, eye color, complexion, and so on. There’s quite a bit that you can glean about a person’s general lifestyle by looking at these characteristics. For example, a person with a muscular build is likely to exercise on a regular basis. A person with fair skin probably doesn’t spend much time in the sun. Health of the hair and skin can provide hints as to the food that a person eats and whether they smoke. These are all clues that are part of an overall puzzle. Keep these lifestyle factors in mind when you are forming your questions and interpreting answers, it’s not unusual for lifestyle to shape product usage.

Personal Style
Personal style tells you more about a person’s lifestyle and also their values. Observing a person’s hair and clothes can tell you how the person wants to be perceived by the world. A woman with a glamorous hair style that’s reminiscent of a Hollywood movie star is a person that cares about her appearance and is willing to spend money to achieve it. On top of that, it’s reasonable to think that she has the means to pay for expensive hair care. A man wearing a suit during the day probably has a job in which he interacts with clients that are considering spending a significant amount of money. A person wearing tight-fitting athletic gear is very likely to spend some time at the gym or some other physical activity. There are a variety of different aspects of a person’s lifestyle that can be gleaned from their personal style, it’s important to be aware of these things and think about what these observable characteristics tell you about the person.

Body Language
Body language is great for gauging a person’s mood and comfort level. A person that’s comfortable will seem relaxed, maybe he’ll slouch a bit in his chair, his arms and legs will be uncrossed and open. A person that’s uncomfortable will be sitting up straight and changing position often, fidget, and cross his arms in front of him. A person that’s interested and engaged will lean forward, literally on the edge of her chair; her body will be oriented toward the point of interest. A person that’s feeling sad will seem to droop down, her head will hang, her eyelids will be heavy, and her shoulders will slump. Use these clues adjust your communication. Try to make someone nervous feel more at ease, recognize that a person that’s relaxed will communicate with you more freely, and tread lightly around intense emotions like sadness or anger all of these actions will help you to build rapport and maximize the amount of information you can get from a research session.

Facial Expression
Facial expressions, like body language, can provide specific information about a person’s emotional state. Unlike body language, some elements of facial expression are wholly involuntary and respond almost instantly to the person’s immediate experiences. It takes quite a bit to learn all of the different microexpressions, but if you do, you can function like a human lie detector and more. Rather than drudge all of the myriad different types of facial expressions and their underlying meaning, I’ll direct you to the foremost authority in the world, Dr. Paul Ekman. Dr. Ekman has spent decades studying facial expressions and produced some easy to consume training programs, I highly recommend this program (http://face.paulekman.com/default.aspx) to anyone that is more interested in understanding the people around you. Being able to make sense of facial expressions will help you tremendously when observing a research participant interact with a product.

Vocal Rate and Tone
Vocal rate and tone further indicates emotional states and also provides clues to specific things that a person finds valuable or interesting. The rate of speech will indicate a person’s energy level and vocal tone will indicate excitement, sadness, anger, or fear. Aside from that, a person will tend to emphasize words that he considers important. For example, by listening to a person speak about her life and extracting only the words she emphasized, you can arrive at a list that includes such words as career, travel, health, and family. You can use these clues to guide your communication and extract more information about the person while also making her feel more at ease by letting you know that you understand where she’s coming from. This can also give you clues as to which product features are most interesting to the participant.

Eye Movement
Eye movement is an excellent indicator of attention and can provide clues to a person’s specific thoughts. Where a person’s eyes land is usually what he is thinking about. If the person repeatedly looks at the clock, you can reasonably assume that he is thinking about the time, maybe because he has someplace they need to be at a certain time or he may be bored. Eye movement happens fast, and it is one of the most ambiguous of observable behavior, so be very careful not to jump to conclusions and also be aware of yourself enough to know if you’re staring. During a research session, look for patterns in eye movement. A person’s gaze might tend to fixate on parts of the product that really catch the person’s attention, whether that’s part of the interface or part of the casing for a physical product or even an advertisement for a web-based product. There are no easy rules when it comes to interpreting eye movements, you’ll have to think about what the movements could mean and communicate closely with the person to see what your observations really mean. Because eye movements can be so tricky, don’t try to make any sense of them if you are not in direct communication with the person.
Practice

I had some of the best observation practice that I’ve had in my life through a job that I had while I was working my way toward an undergraduate degree at a mere 19 years of age. That job was as a security guard. At the time, I thought of the job as just a job. After all, how much can one get out of guarding a mostly empty building through the night? On the other hand, it provided me my first chance at observation training and many, many empty hours to hone my craft.

As a security guard, it was my primary job to observe. My training amounted largely to observing and recording the characteristics of any suspicious individual and contacting police as well as my supervisor. It turns out that the liability involved with me actually trying to physically restrain someone was just too great and litigation was more expensive than most of the products that might be stolen. I spent many an hour mentally recording height, weight, hair color, eye color, facial characteristics and more. With that in mind, that is a great place to start your training.

When you set out to develop your observation skills, there’s a simple exercise that you can do to help. When you encounter a person while in a public place, in the time that you are with that person, see what you can observe about him or her. Catalogue the person’s height, weight, build, hair color, eye color, clothing and any distinguishing marks as though you will have to describe the person to the police afterwards. Notice important and telling details like whether the person is wearing a wedding ring. Also notice the person’s body language, facial expressions and eye movements, see what hypothesis you can form about their emotional state. Be careful not to stare while you’re observing all of these things, you don’t want to come off as creepy. If you feel comfortable, engage the conversation and see which of your estimates were on the mark. Once you feel comfortable with this exercise, up the ante and see if you can observe 2, 3 or 4 people at once. As you go through these exercises, you’ll notice that your ability to observe will increase tremendously.

Conclusion
It’s important to remember that observing these elements of non-verbal communication provide clues to what is going on for a person. Be cautious and don’t jump to conclusions based on what you see. Instead, use your communication skills to verify anything that you see. If a person’s wearing a Billabong shirt, rather than assuming that the person is surfer, say something like “Nice shirt, do you like to surf.” The person’s response will tell you if she is really a surfer or if she borrowed the shirt from her sister. The active listening skills we discussed in our previous post can provide you with guidelines to responding to emotional states. These skills are powerful and extremely useful, you’ll find by using them that it will seem that the world will open up and every experience will seem richer.

We at ActiveComm Labs are big believers in communication and forging a personal connection while conducting research. We also love talking about communication and its role in research, so we invite anyone to contact us if you’re interested in discussing research or communication or learning more about our approach to tapping into the User Experience.

Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain

At ActiveComm Labs, we are big believers in communication and what it can do to improve research. Our background in both user experience research and communication has allowed us to harness the experiences of our users and provide the most accurate feedback to our clients. Our background in communication includes many years of research and training with hostage negotiators across the country. Through this training we learned the skills and techniques that negotiators use to resolve crisis situations and how to apply them in a research setting. We consider Active Listening to be one of the key components of an overarching method that we call Active Observation®. Active Observation® is a synthesis of Active Listening skills, influencing techniques and advanced observation of non-verbal communication such as facial expressions and body language to generate a deep and dynamic understanding of an individual.

This article will include contents similar to the training curriculum performed by hostage negotiators. We’ll provide you with a very brief overview of Active Listening as well as discuss some of its numerous applications. We’ll detail each of the Active Listening techniques and how and when to use them. Finally, we’ll discuss the importance of training in order to make these advanced communication techniques work in the context of research.

Active Listening – Overview and Concept
Active Listening consists of a set of communication techniques that were originally developed by psychotherapists as a way of getting their clients to feel safe and open up. This involved establishing rapport and trust by demonstrating care and a genuine desire to listen. Since its original development for psychotherapy, Active Listening has also been used for a wide variety of professions that rely on interpersonal communication. These professions include educators, law enforcement (particularly hostage negotiators), customer service, salespeople, and business professionals.

Active listening focuses on what a person is communicating to you. It includes techniques to ensure that you understand what you are being told, encourage further disclosure, and demonstrate that you are listening closely. When people communicate with one another, they not only communicate content but also emotions. It is the emotions behind the content that tell us the most about a person’s message. This can be extremely valuable in research by allowing the researcher to tap into the emotional component of a user’s experience with a product.

One way to grasp a better understanding of active listening is to understand the difference between active listening and passive listening. Passive listening is how most people learn to listen to one another and can result in missing a lot of content compared to Active Listening. It simply consists of sitting back and letting a person talk without taking any action at all. Think of it like listening to a keynote talk at a conference. It does not include interacting with the speaker or engaging in any way. It is a one-way form of communication. Anyone with experience speaking in front of a subdued crowd understands how uncomfortable it can be without any kind of engagement or feedback. This is how a research participant feels when you don’t engage him or her with Active Listening skills.

By contrast, Active Listening is, by definition, active. It includes engaging the speaker, asking questions, paraphrasing, emotional discovery and a variety of other actions taken by the listener in order to get more information from the speaker and build a relationship. As an active listener, your job is to engage in communication that will shape the behavior of the speaker to continue to disclose. An observer might describe it as a discussion in which two people are mutually interacting; however, when you are listening actively, the information will tend to flow in one direction, from the user to you. The information that flows to you will be the user experience. When appropriate, we’ll provide examples of an active listening exchange between a participant and a researcher to show how each technique should be used.

Active Listening – Specific Techniques
The specific techniques listed below are the communication actions that compose Active Listening. For each technique, the article will provide a description of the technique, why the technique is important, and how the technique can be most effectively used.

Eye Contact
Eye contact is looking the other person in the eye when he or she is speaking. It indicates that you are paying attention and listening to the person. The most effective way to use eye contact is to look at a person but do not stare. Occasionally make eye breaks, preferably looking down rather than away. Looking down gives the impression that you are thinking about what the person said. Looking away gives the impression that you are paying attention to something else.

Attentive Body Language
Attentive body language includes gestures and postures that indicate that you are interested in what you are hearing. This will make the person feel like you are listening to what they are saying and that you find them interesting. You can use Attentive body language by making gestures of understanding like nodding as well as postures that indicate interest such as slightly leaning forward or tilting your head.

Vocal Style
Vocal style is how a person uses speech rate, volume, and tone to indicate interest. Vocal style communicates to the other person your interest in what he or she is saying. Make the most of vocal style by making variations to speech rate, volume and tone to emphasize areas that are important or interesting in the conversation. An example would be speaking slower when asking about a topic that is very important.

Verbal Following
Verbal Following is responding to what the other person is talking about rather than abruptly changing the topic; it comes into play when you need to transition between topics for one reason or another. Verbal following shows that you are interested in what is being discussed even though you are changing the topic. In order to use verbal following always make a comment about what the other person was saying before you change the topic. This technique requires good judgment because some of the most valuable data can be gathered when you allow the participant to control the discussion.

Participant: It would be great if this device could sync with my PC also.

Researcher (Verbal Following): That’s a great idea. I’ll make sure to pass that on to the designers. Now if you saw this device in the stores, what would you expect the price to be?

Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is when a person summarizes what the other person said. Paraphrasing demonstrates that you are listening, builds rapport and creates empathy by showing that you understand what the other person said. It can also ensure that information gathered is accurate. The most effective way to use paraphrasing is to listen to the other person and then summarize what the person said and ask them if what you heard was correct. Examples might be “Are you telling me…?”, or “So what you are saying is…?”

Participant: I’m not really sure, if it’s like it is now, probably about $50, but if it could sync with my PC, I’d be willing to pay $75, maybe a bit more. Researcher (Paraphrasing): So the ability to sync with your PC will dramatically increase the value?

Reflecting
Reflecting is when a person repeats back the last word of a phrase. Reflecting demonstrates that you are listening and paying attention. It is a simple way of gathering more information without asking for it. The most effective way to use reflecting is to repeat back the last word of a phrase then let the person elaborate on it.

Participant: Actually, I was really confused by this button.

Researcher (Reflecting): This button?

Participant: Yeah, it took me a while to figure out that it was a button. I thought it was just a label.

Silence
Silence is when you strategically don’t say anything. Many people use silence when they are about to say something important or just said something important. Many people feel uncomfortable when there is silence in a conversation and if you wait, the other person may say something that he or she would otherwise not disclose. Just be careful not to overuse silence because it will make the person feel uncomfortable. Also make sure you wait to use it until after you’ve already established some rapport with the person.

Minimal Encouragers
Minimal encouragers are words or sounds that are used to express interest. Minimal encouragers are important because it encourages the person to continue speaking and shows that you are interested and paying attention. When minimal encouragers are used properly, the person will not feel interrupted while he or she is speaking. Use minimal encouragers by making responses like, “oh,” “yeah,” or “uh-huh” during the natural pauses in the person’s speech. These pauses tend to happen at the end of sentences.

Participant: I can totally see myself using this all the time, especially when I’m travelling.

Researcher (Minimal Encourager): Yeah?

Participant: Yeah, when you’re sitting in an airport for a while you have to keep yourself busy.

Researcher (Minimal Encourager): Uh huh

Participant: And the fact that you can switch between functions so quickly really makes me want to keep using it.

Emotional Discovery
Emotional discovery is an effective way to talk to a person about his or her emotional experience. Emotional discovery is important because it shows that you are listening, care and understand what he or she is feeling. Use emotional discovery to respond to the emotions heard in a person’s voice, rather than the content. Tell the person how he or she seems or sounds, rather than how he or she is feeling. An example might be a statement like “you seem to be uncomfortable,” rather than “I know you’re uncomfortable.”

Researcher (Emotional Discovery): You seem a little frustrated.

Participant: I just can’t figure out how to do this, honestly, if I was at home I would have given up already.

Empathy
Empathy is indicating that you understand or identify with the emotions of the other person. Empathy shows the person that you care and that you understand what they’re feeling. Empathy is one of the most effective tools for building rapport. The most effective way to use empathy is to make statements that indicate that you have experienced the emotion or statements that recognize the difficulty of the situation. Avoid making statements that show pity such as “I feel sorry for you”
Researcher (Empathy): We all know what it’s like trying to work with an interface that isn’t quite right.
Participant: I just feel like if you changed these couple things over here, then it would be almost perfect.

Open-Ended Questions
Open-ended questions are questions that cannot be answered with a “yes” or “no.” These kinds of questions encourage the person to elaborate on their answers. Open-ended questions are useful in gathering large amounts of information from the person with only a single question. It will also allow the person to express him or herself more completely and provide you with a greater understanding of the person. Use open-ended questions by asking questions that begin with “what,” “why,” or “could.” Examples may include “What did you do?” “Why did you do that?” or “Could you tell me more about that?”

Researcher (Open-Ended Question): How can you see yourself using this device?

Participant: Well, I’d definitely use it while I’m travelling, it’s great that it can keep me entertained and yet have so many other practical functions. I’d probably use it during my commute every day, although that would be a lot easier if it had some kind of docking station in my car. I’d probably even use it when I’m at home.

Close-Ended Questions
Close-ended questions are questions that can only be answered with a “yes” or a “no” response. Close-ended questions will generate concrete responses or force the person to acknowledge facts that they have avoided or unclearly addressed. Use close-ended questions to get a person to summarize or bottom-line and elaborate response, but be careful not to overuse them as they can make a person feel constrained and frustrated.

Researcher (Close-Ended Question): So you can see yourself using this regularly?

Participant: Yes.

Conclusion
After reading this article, you should have a pretty good understanding of Active Listening and how it works. As of right now, you know the techniques that compose Active Listening, but there is still another step to take in order to be able to use them effectively. Active Listening techniques should occur naturally, not as conscious actions that result from drawing from a knowledge base. You shouldn’t have to think about what you are going to say next. This requires taking knowledge of these techniques and transforming them into skills. The way to do this is through proper and effective training. Much like the training that hostage negotiators undertake. I encourage anyone that that is interested in maximizing their communication effectiveness to seek out hands-on training supervised by a qualified instructor. Feel free to contact myself, Demetrius Madrigal, or Bryan McClain at for recommendations on training resources.

Bryan McClain and Demetrius Madrigal