Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

fascinating!

“communication strategies, rapport building, building alliances, using the team approach and training” – aren’t these ‘soft skills’ what every single professional in a set up aims have/develop to climb up the ladder? I am interested though on how you apply these to UX and how you want to define ‘hostage negotiators’.

Thanks for the comment Junaid.
Yes, these are “Soft Skills” in the “Emotional Intelligence” sense and it is important to note the few options that researchers and other professionals have for developing these kinds of skills. As far as the term “hostage negotiators,” the definition is consistent with the law enforcement accepted usage.

-Bryan

Thank you for the follow up.
Emotional Intelligence is primarily about one’s ability to read and react ‘right’ to situations. Ability to develop any kind of soft skills is based on how well built one’s emotional abilities are. There is no magic formula – it takes time and experience across different situations to be able to judge right. Specific to our profession and how we could develop and use these soft skills as researchers is just a subset of how best we develop and use these soft skills to be more effective at work every day. I am still interested though to hear your inputs and perspectives on the soft skills we need to build, use and apply for the work we do as UX researchers.

Junaid. If my article does get published, the questions you have about what soft skills are most valuable and how to perfect them will be discussed. I think you will find the article very interesting because it comes from the perspective of the hostage/crisis negotiator and how they go about perfecting the art of communication and relationship building in their field. It was not until I started doing research for negotiators and training with their teams did I realize how applicable their communication skills are to design research. Hostage negotiators who train frequently are really good at getting people to open up and discuss topics that are uncomfortable or challenging. This is something that researchers come across all the time when conducting studies and working with participants, especially when working on products or services that are new or push the limits of innovation.

Lateral thinking is a key contributor to breakthrough innovations. Bryan, I am very interested to learn more about your perspective on the relationship between hostage negotiations and design research.

Hello, I submitted this idea a while back and I have not heard anything from the editors. I would really like to publish on B&A but I have no idea if the editors are planning on using my article. I am hoping that someone at B&A will see this post and contact me soon.

Thank You,
Bryan

Hey Bryan!

We’re here, but occasionally miss ideas that get posted.

One of us [the editors] will get back to you. :-)

Thanks Austin. I know you guys are really busy and have a lot of content to review. Hopefully the publishing team is interested in this article. I think the design and research community will learn a lot from it and it should also make for some great discussion! Talk with you soon.

Bryan

Hi Bryan,

We definitely look through these ideas, but it can take some time for them to get into the story funnel. This one is looking good. I’ll be in touch soon!

Thanks Chris. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Bryan