Your “Psychologist Voice”: Leveraging Voice Mindfulness for UX Research

Lunch Talk with Dan Berlin

Moderating a one-on-one interview to elicit the most actionable data is an acquired skill. A primary aspect of this, which we don’t normally talk about, is the tone, timbre, and pace of our voice. Some say that a moderator should try to match the participant’s tone; that this makes the participant feel that you are similar to him or her. But I believe that it is better to use your “psychologist voice” when moderating sessions. That is, you should always keep a soft tone, modulate your voice, stay quiet, and always be ready to turn a question back to the participant. In this presentation, I’ll reveal the fun origins of how I discovered the psychologist voice and why it not only makes for sessions that yield useful data, but is also an important life-skill.

About the speaker

After seven years of providing technical support for hard-to-use interfaces, Dan found his User Experience calling after participating in a usability study. He enrolled in the MBA+MS in Human Factors in Information Design program at Bentley University and has spent the past eight years talking with users to help design great experiences. As vice president of Experience Research for Mad*Pow, Dan combines his experience and education, including a BA in Psychology from Brandeis University, to conduct both traditional and novel user experience research techniques.