The Project That Made Me a Better Listener

I used to think that being a strong designer meant having strong opinions. Clear rationale, confidence in critique, a sharp eye — those were the traits I leaned into. And in a lot of environments, they served me well. But this project challenged all of that.

It wasn’t even a massive initiative. No flashy launch or executive visibility. Just a product update tied to an internal workflow that had become a bottleneck. The kind of project that gets passed around, deprioritized, and re-scoped half a dozen times. By the time it landed with our team, the brief was vague and the energy was low.

I came in ready to fix things. I could already see the inefficiencies. The UI was dated, the interactions were clunky, and the flow made no sense unless you already knew the workaround. I started sketching before I finished reading the documentation. I thought I was being proactive.

But in the first team sync, something didn’t feel right. Engineering didn’t have many questions. Product was quiet. And the person who’d been supporting this tool for months — a business ops lead who deeply understood the pain points — barely said a word. I talked too much. I framed the problem too narrowly. And I walked away thinking, “Why aren’t they more engaged?”

The truth hit a week later when I finally stopped talking and started listening.

I set up a one-on-one with that ops lead, expecting a quick sync. It turned into a 45-minute download on how the tool had evolved, how people actually used it (not how it was supposed to work), and how past design updates had missed the mark. I wasn’t just hearing edge cases — I was hearing the system around the system. The human workarounds, the trust gaps, the emotional labor of having to train new hires on a broken flow.

I realized I had been designing too early. I wasn’t creating space for the people who carried the work to speak up — and I wasn’t earning their trust. That conversation shifted everything. I brought what I’d learned back to the team, rewrote the problem framing, and pulled in voices we hadn’t included before. The tone of the project changed. The engagement I thought was missing had been there all along. We just hadn’t been listening.

What came out of it wasn’t just a better interface. It was a design people were actually excited to use — because they saw themselves in it.

That project made me a better listener. And a better listener, I’ve learned, makes a better designer. Not because they give people what they want, but because they understand what’s really at stake.