Social networking sites like Facebook and the like were fun when they started. You could be ensured of a reasonable degree of trust with them.
I don’t know if you have noticed lately, but Facebook have been slowly but surely selling off your privacy, and rights to the information you put on their site. They are doing this by just changing their Terms and Conditions from time to time. The changes have been slow and almost calculated.
You have been to all the networking events, chatted to people, exchanged business cards. Even found a few contacts that would be worthwhile leads in the future.
Still after all this, it just doesn’t seem to be working.
So you go to few more events, you have been really listening to people and you have your opening networking pitch perfect, it’s all going well.
However still the results aren’t that great. Sound familiar?
The problem is business networking doesn’t stop once you have left the event. It’s about the longer term networking post event. This is often the most important aspect of networking besides the event.
Listening is one of those skills that no one really talks about, and yet listening is critical to User Research and general business as well.
You have to understand, and in some cases even become emotive, with the users you are listening to. Yes we can all listen to some degree, but the reality is this will not be that thorough, there will be gaps, major things that you will miss or just did not understand completely.
It follows in the field of user experience listening is critical. Without it you just aren’t going to a able to understand the issues your users are telling you, or worse you will miss important information.
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, prototypes, do UX research and conducting usability & accessibility tests and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc.
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