Part 3
Are you really paying attention?
Applying reflections to your UX Research practice.
Learn to think on your feet. Follow along as I discuss how to apply an important clinical skill — Motivational Interviewing (MI) — to your UX Research practice.
Continuing my Motivational Interviewing (MI) Medium series with Part 3, this article focuses on the third construct that comprises MI — Reflections. If you’re curious about what motivation interviewing is, take a look at the primer in Part 1 the series. From there, feel free to check out how to apply affirmations in your UX research practice and how they can help you redistribute power dynamics in Part 2.
In this article, I want to explore the art of a reflection as a way to forgo neutrality and continue to explore ways in which I think we as practitioners can leverage evidence-based techniques to practice the kind of research I personally care deeply about — a UX research practice that is equitable, just and actively interrogates power in the development of products and services.
What is a reflection?
A reflection, in MI terms, is a lot like it sounds — echoing both what the participant said and felt in a given statement, which is designed to prompt the participant to reflect on their own statement until they arrive at a solution or “ah-ha!” moment in their line of thinking.
In MI, reflections are divided into two categories:
- Simple — in which the interviewer repeats or paraphrases exactly what the participant said.
- Complex — in which the interview infers meaning and feeling from what the participant has said.
Although these categories describe most reflections, there are many ways to implement complex reflections. The University of North Carolina has a great list of reflection types with examples to consult.
As you may have surmised, a reflection is not something you would write into your research plan. It requires researchers to think on their feet and really pay attention. Listening is one of those oft repeated “must-haves” in our qualitative toolkit. It’s true that listening is important, but I also think it doesn’t capture what we need to do.
Listening as a passive exercise doesn’t particularly put us in a position to think on our feet. But if we pay attention, if we’re picking up on nonverbal cues and drawing inferences, we are able to stay in pace with those we interview.
An interview question is only half the battle.
One of the first things researchers learn is the art of neutral and non-leading questions. And for good reason — it’s nearly impossible to prevent our allegiances to stakeholders, to our product or service and even our own biases from seeping into our work. We practice neutrality in hopes of improving our data quality.
So when we write our interview guides, we are careful and methodical. We don’t ask questions about user preference, because users are bad at predicting future behavior and perhaps more importantly, we care more about why and in what context something is a bad experience, not simply whether or not users “like it.”
For instance, researchers do not (or rather we should not, for a variety of reasons) ask a question such as: “why do you dislike this site?” unless it is a direct follow up to a comment in which the user has stated: “I don’t like this site.” Why? Because by asking “why do you dislike this site?” before a user has given their opinion, we’ve assumed that a negative relationship exists between the user and the site. Given we don’t know that’s the case, a better way to phrase the question would be: “Tell me your thoughts about this website.”
Remaining value- and judgement-neutral when compiling interview scripts and questions is one of many ways to improve data quality in UX research. However, it is not the only way to improve data quality, and sometimes neutrality isn’t the right strategy. I am not suggesting we reject neutrality outright and stop concerning ourselves with biases. That is the antithesis of our practice. But, an oft-unconsidered aspect of neutrality is this — can we be both empathetic and neutral at the same time?
Let’s sit with that a moment. Can we be both empathetic and neutral at the same time?
When I say neutral, I am looking at the word in the strictest sense. It is the absence of decided views or strong feelings. The Switzerland of the WWII conflict, essentially.
But isn’t the absence of decided views a view in itself? Silence is a decision, a choice we make to stay safe and avoid discomfort, even at the expense of others. A complete lack of acknowledgement on any given topic, particularly when our service or product is aimed at reducing inequality, does not signal empathy to our users, particularly those who stand to be harmed the most in the face of injustice.
Now, I do not believe that we need to reject the concept completely. Neutrality, in my opinion, is helpful to keep in mind while writing research questions but a dangerous thing to dogmatically accept as the only way to jettison biases. However, I am of the opinion that neutrality as a sacred cow blinds us to the ways in which it does us a disservice as practitioners. And this is where reflections can help us.
Reflecting: truly active listening
Let’s return to what a reflection is for the purposes of Motivational Interviewing. A simple reflection paraphrases or repeats directly what someone said. A complex reflection infers meaning or value from what they said, even if they have not explicitly stated it. In classic MI training, a trainer will listen to tapes of a motivational interview and mark each time the interviewer performs a simple or complex reflection. The ratio of complex reflections to simple reflections should be quite high.
So if MI encourages making inferences, it is not a neutral practice. Rather, I think a more helpful concept to invoke is one of not knowing. A beginner’s mind, as the Buddhists call it, has gained traction in recent years as a way to improve qualitative research data. Staying present and curious throughout the user interview, even if an answer seems obvious, offers us a way to practice empathy without sacrificing data quality. If we want to learn anything about our users, we have to first assume we do not know them. From there, we need to pay attention to what they are telling us.
Let’s look at an example.
In this particular interview, an interviewer is discussing what makes a health provider trustworthy. The interviewee is a gay Black male and he is discussing the attributes of his doctor that have helped them build trust over the years:
Interviewer: Tell me about your relationship with your healthcare provider.
Interviewee: Right, I’ve been with him a long time. I’m gay and so is he. So he really understands the needs of our community.
Interviewer. Right, so he can relate to some of your experience.
Interviewee: Well, not really. I mean, he can because he’s gay, but that’s about it. It’s more the way he takes the time to explain things to me and doesn’t, you know, tell me what to do. He will say something like, oh, you have high blood pressure. It might help to lose weight. How do you feel about that? And then we will talk about strategies and stuff to help me lose weight.
Interviewer: I see. So, it’s also really important to you that someone takes the time to not just explain your condition, but also ask you how you want to handle it. They see you as a partner in health care, so to speak.
Interviewee: Exactly. I don’t want someone to tell me just, oh, lose weight. If someone can explain to me why I need to lose weight and talk about how I can do it, then yeah, I’m gonna do it.
Interviewer: So it sounds like your doctor made you feel like you had the power to improve your own health.
Interviewee: Yeah. And really, that he cared about me actually making those changes, you know? He cares about me as a person.
Interviewer: Feeling like your doctor cares about you as a person helps you see him as more trustworthy, then.
Interviewee: Yeah. That’s the most important thing.
As you can see, reflections are not a neutral practice. They involve using the skills you have honed as a researcher to empathize and learn more about your participant. Reflections are a truly delicate balance between not making assumptions and crafting responses that surface important sentiments behind the statements.
At this point, you may wonder if reflections are presumptuous. They are. Sometimes getting users to reveal their feelings toward a product or service is a bit of a team effort. They articulate the beginnings of something, then I hazard a guess at what they might be trying to say. It’s important to remember that hazarding a guess should be framed in a way that is consistent with what the participant is saying while encouraging them to elaborate. Researchers should reflect only after they’ve internalized and digested what the participant said. Occasionally, you will be incorrect. So what happens if you’re wrong?
Participants will either correct you or expound on what they’re feeling.
This is the most powerful aspect of a reflection. When done properly, they challenge the interviewer and interviewee to reflect and dig deeper into their responses.
Notice that In the beginning of the interview, the interviewer didn’t hit the mark with her assumption that, because the interviewee mentioned his doctor is gay, the doctor could somehow relate to the interviewee’s experience of being a gay man. Notice the interviewers inference made sense in the context of what this participant said, but it didn’t capture the whole story. And what happened? The interviewee refined his perspective and corrected the interviewer, while the interviewer continued to reflect and draw inferences. That got them to the ultimate point: his doctor seemed to genuinely care about his wellbeing as a person.
The interviewer and interviewee arrived at this understanding by using reflections. The interviewer actively listened to the participant and guided him towards expressing all of his thoughts about what makes a relationship between a provider and a patient trustworthy.
At the end of the day, there are questions we can write in a guide to set us up for success, but then there are places we need to go in an interview. A good guide will make sure we hit all the right landmarks along the way, but listening, reflecting and clarifying what our participants are telling us will get us where we need to go.
Reflecting on reflections
Reflections have been one of the most powerful and important skills I’ve learned over the course of my career. They have helped me learn more about the people I speak with — both participants and business stakeholders. I have learned how to get alignment from some of the most disparate teams by using this technique.
If you’re interested in using them in your practice, I highly suggest you consult this practical guide with examples, in addition to the guide from the UNODC.
Below, I’ll outline some pointers that have helped me apply them.
- Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Our participants aren’t made of glass! As long as you’ve made it a point to create an open environment, and framed your reflections in a way to encourage them to respond and elaborate — they’ll correct you if you don’t get it completely right.
- As you start out, you’ll tend towards simple reflections. That’s totally fine. You’ll learn your own style as time goes on. Don’t be afraid to keep trying.
- Never underestimate the power of a metaphor. Once, when I was working on a clinical trial, I was assigned to interview women with high risk of carrying a genetic mutation that would all but guarantee a recurrence of cancer. My role was to us MI to encourage women to get genetic testing. In order to explain this in lay terms, I likened myself to a park ranger. I told them: “I’m here to help them understand their risk and their options, much like a park ranger is there to help you understand the landscape and the trails you can hike if you want to. Ultimately, whichever trails you want to hike are up to you. The same is true in this session.” That helped clarify my role and set the tone of the interview.
- Try to expand your emotional vocabulary. We tend to over-use words like frustrating or painful. Try using words like confused, annoyed, overwhelmed, anxious, relieved, surprised, unnerved, scared, etc.
- Acknowledge ambivalent feelings. Try to capture that in a complex reflection, using the format “On the one hand, I hear you say X, but on the other, you feel Y.” Humans have the capacity to hold space for a lot of feelings at once. Acknowledge that through reflection
- Finally, don’t be afraid of awkwardness. As with anything, it takes a little practice to get it right. And if you’re looking for some training, don’t be afraid to reach out!
