Deriving requirements. Important skills for listening and asking the right questions of customers

1. A Faster Horse: Skills for understanding the difference between customer needs and what they ask for
MichelleErickson-merickson@mathworks.com
JoanWortman–jwortman@mathworks.com

2. A little bit about us
•Joan –20+ years in software
•CS degree
•Software Engineer/UI Designer
•UX Specialist
•Michelle –20+ years in software
•Technical Degree
•Software Industry
•UX Specialist
“Do not assume anything Obi-Wan. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover…”

3. Boston Code Camp 22 -Thanks to our Sponsors!
•Gold
•Silver
•Bronze
•In-Kind Donations

4. Goal
Help improve interactions with customers by providing:
•skills for better listening and better communication
•tips for digging deeper and gathering requirements
•practice tools

5. Agenda
•Active Listening
•Usefulness and importance
•Skills
•Effective Dialogue
•How to question for better information
•Tips for challenging situations
•Discussion

6. “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
-Stephen R. Covey

7. Listening and talking
•Two parts to every interaction:
•Active Listening -unbiasedand focusedlistening
•Effective User Dialogue -unbiasedand targetedquestioning
•Both are critical to effective and meaningful exchanges.

8. Active Listening
Being present and undistracted, communicatingthat you are listening, and confirmingyour understandingthroughout a conversation.

9. Why is Active Listening important to you?
•Promotes genuine engagement
•Builds trust and respect
•Helps clarify thinking and ideas
•Uncovers hidden information
•Enhances collaboration and invigorates team work
•Improves conflict resolution

10. Why is active listening so difficult?
We listen and process words at a much higher rate per minute than the average speaker can speak
Active listeners learn to focus all of their brainpower on the speaker.
Bury the bone…
Fire hydrant…
Play fetch…
This extra capacity allows room for our minds to wander.

11. Think of a recent conversation…
…in which you felt that the listener was not engaged.
What made you feel that way?

12. Behaviors to avoid
•Interrupting
•Assuming you know what the person will say
•Finishing the other person’s sentence
•Changing the subject or moving in a new direction
•Getting distracted
•Discounting the speaker’s feelings
•Rehearsing your response in your head
•Interrogating
•Giving unsolicited advice

13. Four levels of listening
•Distracted
•Defensive
•Problem-Solving
•Active
Harvard Business Review: Listening Past Your Blind Spots

14. What makes listening active?
•Focus, tune in and be present.
•Show the speaker you are listening.
•Understand and confirmalong the way.
•Engagein the interaction

15. The Skills

16. •Remove Distractions
•Clear your desk
•Turn away from your screen
•Put down the cell phone
•Get in the mindset
•Pay attention to speaker’s tone and body language
•Think about your own tone and body language
•Be aware of your own biases
The human mind is easily distracted. Focus and prepare to listen.
Focus

17. •Non-verbal Indicators
•Your body language can say a lot
•Posture
•Eye contact
•Verbal indicators
•“uh hmm”
•“I see”
Let the speaker know you’re listening
Show

18. Let’s try it
•Turn to the person next to you
•Take turns telling a one minute story to each other about how you got here today.
•Practice:
•Showing that you are listening
•Body language -your best and worst

19. Understand
•Reflection
•Clarification
•Questioning
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
-Stephen R. Covey

20. Reflection
•Restating
•Repeat key words or last words
•Keep it short and simple
•Paraphrasing
•Repeat using different words
•Careful not to loose important terminology
The only person who can tell you if you understood is the speaker

21. Clarification
•Clear up confusion
•“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying”
•Check your perception and interpretations
•“When you said… what did you mean?”
Ensure your understanding

22. Questioning
•Closed Questions
•“Have you used this application yet?”
•“Do you prefer the blue one or the red one?”
•“To conclude, we’re in agreement that this widget is best?”
•Open Questions
•“What kinds of things do you do with this application?”
•“What do you think about the color?”
Get more information and encourage more thought

23. Questioning
•Probing questions
•“Why did you choose that one?”
•“Can you give me an example?”
•Dangling questions
•“When you pushed that button you expected….”
Get more information and encourage more thought.

24. •Show empathy
•Provide feedback
•Offer encouragement
Engage“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.” -Scott Adams

25. Empathy
•Tune in to speaker’s body language, facial expressions, and mood
•Hear, recognize, and acknowledge
•“I know how you feel…”
•“You said you’re frustrated and I can understand why.”
Validate and show respect for feelings, motives, or situation

26. Giving feedback
•Share perceptions of speaker’s ideas and feelings
•Share your own point of view (only if relevant)
•“Something similar happened to me and I decided to…”
•“From my point of view it looks like…”
Sharing information, rather than praise or advice

27. Offer encouragement or assistance
•Don’t give unsolicited advice, opinions or solutions
•“Would you like some help with this?”
•Sometimes people just want to vent
•Tying up a conversation
•“Would you like to talk more about this sometime?”

28. Active listening summary
Focus, tune in and be present.
Show the speaker you are listening.
Understand and confirmalong the way.
Engagein the interaction.

29. Effective User Dialogue
A method of deriving informationfrom users.
We need to engage our users to understandhow to help them do what they do better.

30. Why is Effective Dialogue so important?
Users know what they WANT, but not what they NEED

31. “People don't want to buy a 1/4" drill. They want a 1/4" hole.”
-Theodore Levitt
“If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” –Henry Ford

32. Getting to what users NEED
•Goal: to solve a problem
•We don’t always know their domain
•We don’t know how they’re currently solving it.
•Commonality: the Software
•It immediately imposes a constraint
•Our software should be the tool, not the goal

33. “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
-Einstein
“If I were given an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 50 minutes defining it and 1 minute solving it”

34. How will Effective Dialogue skills help?
•Understand the problem
•Map out workflows and tasks
•Identify core challenges and constraints
•Peel off the layers
•Derive user requirements
•Customer Pain = Requirements
•Better requirements = better design
•Check our assumptions
•Gather feedback on design

35. When do we talk to users?
•Usability studies
•Site visits
•Industry conferences
•Interviews
•Out and about…

36. It’s easy right?
•It's easy

37. Common Barriers
•Feel awkward
•Starting a conversation
•Keeping it going
•Need to fill the silence
•We like to talk about ourselves
•On average, people spend60% of conversationstalking about themselves
•We don’t want to admit that we don’t understand
•Not our job... tech support and marketing

38. Aspects of Effective Dialog
•Establishing rapport with common ground
•Probing for relevant details
•Asking for specifics
•Asking unbiased questions
•Keeping the conversation going

39. The Techniques

40. Asking questions
Think of yourself as an apprentice and the user as the expert who can teach you everything you need to know
The apprentice mindset

41. The apprentice mindset
Ask questions like:
•“Tell me what you do and how you do it.”
•“Show me everything you do to accomplish …”
•“Tell me why….”
Benefits:
•Useful because it avoids assumptions
•You may learn things you didn’t know to ask about
•Helps keep you out of solution space

42. Uncovering rich information
•“Hmm…that’s interesting; tell me more?”
•“Tell me about what you’re working on right now.”
•“How?”
•“Why?”
Ask broad and open-ended questions

43. Getting to real details -BEST
•Ask about something they are working on right now
•Watch them work
The present is most accurate

44. Getting to real details -GOOD
•Ask about “the last time” or “the most memorable time.”
•Ask “Have you…?”, not “Would you…?”
•“Can you show me some recent examples from your work?”
Recent past, specific events

45. Getting to real details -AVOID
•The future
•Generalities
•What ifs
Speculation

46. Uncovering still more…
•“Is there anything else you want to talk about?...”
The 10 second rule

47. Biased questions
Talking to Users Part 1

48. Biased questions
•What’s wrong with asking biased questions?
•In general, people seek to please others.
•Power of suggestion. Customers will give answers they think we want to hear.
•It’s not as obvious as you might think
•Don’t you love it?
•What do you like about this?
•Do you like this?
•What do you think of it?

49. Quiz
1.Should the widget be a drop-down?
2.Do you like the drop-down widget?
3.Do you like the widget, or don’t you like the widget?
Which of these are biased questions?

50. Practice–unbiased questions
Situation:
You’ve just released and app “PubFinder” that helps people find cool pubs to visit after a long day at a conference. You want to get some feedback and ideas for your next release from your users (Michelle and Joan).
•What are some unbiased questions you can ask?

51. Challenging situations
When you: What to do and ask:
Talk too much
Use the 3 second rule
Ask the user questions about their work
Don’t know what to say
Begin with small talk
Have 3-4 unbiased questions ready

52. Challenging situations
Jump to solution space
Shift focus to the user’s goals and problems:
“How would that help you accomplish your goal or solve your problem?”
“What challenges have you encountered?”
When you: What to do and ask
Adopt the Apprentice Mindset
Ask for an explanation in layman’s terms
Ask “why?”
Don’t understand what the user is talking about

53. Challenging situations
Talking to Users Part 2

54. Challenging situations
Moves into solution space
Understand their problem:
“Why are you suggesting this particular solution?”
“What is the problem you’re having?”
“How would this solution help?”
When the user: What to do and ask:
Goes off topic
Determine if/how it’s related to the topic you need to cover.
Bring them back on topic:
o“Thanks for telling me about … Now, I really want to understand this other aspect of your work.”

55. Challenging situations
When the user: What to do and ask:
Misunderstands a product feature
Correct any important or dangerous misconceptions.
Understand how they’re using it and why
o“That’s an interesting (not wrong) way to use …”
o“Is this how you typically use this feature?”
o“What are you trying to do?”
Is disgruntled
Empathize and acknowledge their frustration or anger
Understand what they’re trying to do and why
Let them know you’ll investigate the issue, pass it on, or come back to it.

56. Your challenging situations
What challenges have you encountered while talking to users?
How did you handle them?

57. Wrap up: Listening and Effective Dialog
•Two parts to every meaningful exchanges:
•Active Listening -unbiasedand focusedlistening
•Effective User Dialogue -unbiasedand targetedquestioning

58. Go forth and communicate effectively
•Exercises
•Self-assessment

60. References
•7 tips for effective listeners
•Harvard Business Review: Listening Past Your Blind Spots
•Listening Skills
•Reflecting
•Asking effective questions
•Empathy
•Giving Feedback
•Additional Videos
•Ray learns Active Listening
•Ray uses Active Listening
•Conflict resolution
•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA-RaDNVKpw
•It's not about the nail

61. Acknowledgements
Donna
Cooper
Reeve
Goodenough
Jeff
Goodwin
Ryan
Kiel
Ramya
Adusumilli