The art of awkward pausing

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to conduct many user tests myself, both remotely and in-person. As a designer, this is an extremely fortunate situation to experience. It’s a feeling hard to put into words. You spend hours upon hours crafting this perfect prototype hoping that people tap where you want them to and praying that your visually prominent elements actually stand out in the chaos. You watch helplessly as people work out the hierarchy of the UI in a split second and how they navigate through the flow. You intently seek to find out how they’re holding the device, what part of their hands covers which part of the screen, and how prone they are to fat-fingering certain buttons.

It’s not just about observing, though. It’s also about asking the right questions. If you’re testing a web browser and the user says “Yeah I think if I tap this star icon, it will save the page”, you don’t just go “Okay, great.” You need to strike back with the right follow-up: “Where do you think it will save the page?” or “Okay, and how would you view your saved pages?” Asking these questions helps you understand the thought process of the user much in a much better context.

Lately, I’ve also learned about the art of the awkward pause. In normal conversation, I’ve been conditioned to fill every gap with a follow-up question, an expanded explanation of the current topic of discussion, or use it as a convenient segue into something else I wanted to discuss. A lot of us have conversations this way, intentionally or not. We’ve grown accustomed to treating pauses in conversations as an emotional disconnect between the two participants, especially in Western culture. We’re trained to think that something doesn’t quite “click” or there isn’t the right “chemistry” between the speakers. But in user testing, mastering the awkward pause is one of the most crucial elements.

When I’m watching a user play with my prototype, I typically start with “Alright, so walk me through what you see here and tell me your first impressions. Please be as honest as you can.” You’ll typically get a few words out of them to start with, and then they’ll stop talking and just keep playing with your prototype, especially if they’ve never participated in a user test before. After about ten or so seconds of this, it’s tempting to interrupt with “What was that you just saw?” or “What was that button you just tapped on?” out of frustration that the user isn’t vocalizing their thoughts and that you’re not getting good data out of the test.

Here’s the catch. Don’t do that. I trained myself to not follow-up. I trained myself to just remain silent, nod in acknowledgement when needed, and simply silently observe for uncomfortably long periods of time — sometimes as long as a few minutes. Believe it or not, users will be the first ones to break the ice almost one hundred percent of the time. They’ll be the ones who start to feel uncomfortable and start saying things about your prototype. This is usually some of their most honest thoughts, since they’re not responding to an explicit question from you. They’re simply providing you with their undiluted feedback about the experience they’re having.

I’ve had people who have told me that they loved the concept when they opened the prototype for the first ten or so seconds, only to completely flip sides two minutes later and go “It was cool at first, but the more I look at it, the less reason I see to keep coming back to it” or “It was cool at first but I wouldn’t use it every day” or even “Yeah actually, I think I’d just claim this free stuff and then uninstall the app immediately.” All of this happened simply because I let them keep playing with it for over two to three minutes without peppering them with questions about what they were doing and why they were doing it. It’s also less intimidating for the user this way.

Obviously, if you want specific feedback about a certain icon or a navigation mechanism, you’ll need to ask them eventually. But don’t rush it. Just go very slowly and ensure that they’ve said everything they wanted to about the previous thing before moving on. It’s okay to provide acknowledgement of their thoughts or reinforce their mindset if needed, but be careful to not come off as biased. If you’re too friendly, users might hold back on some of the negative feedback so as to not hurt your feelings.

The pause is honestly your best friend when it comes to user testing. You can pretend like you’re taking notes or just keenly observe as if you’re expecting them to take a certain action. Users are oftentimes brutally honest about how they perceive their experience. As the user test progresses, the user will get accustomed to the silence and you’ll find that they open up more and more over time. They know that you’ll pause for a long time to get their thoughts after each question, so they’ll prime themselves to speak a lot to “fill the gap” as well.

You’ve probably heard of a similar approach in negotiation tactics. The common advice while negotiating on the phone when you have an offer on the line is to keep your calm and extend the silence, giving the impression that you’re in deep thought over what was just said to you. Let the person on the other end hang for a bit. Keep it going for as long as thirty seconds and soon enough, they’ll retort back with a better offer. It’s uncomfortable for both parties, but the less comfortable person will break first. This is also a commonly used sales tactic.

I’ve gotten plenty of incredible feedback from users this way. When I don’t interrupt their train of thought and just let their mind wander for a bit, a lot of users simply keep going. I’ve had a couple of users go into an in-depth explanation of the mobile app world and their frustration with the walled garden ecosystem on mobile. While this may seem like irrelevant rambling nonsense to you from the user, it’s getting to the core of what their problem with the experience is. You may not be able to solve the overarching issue with their frustration, but you can leverage it to provide them with an emotionally compelling experience through your product. You know how they feel when they’re using your product, which is incredibly useful information to design with.

It’s not a foolproof strategy, though. There are users who simply don’t talk that much. They typically will say one sentence using as few words as they possibly can and will just remain silent for the rest of the time, occasionally staring back at you expecting you to move on to the next question. This happens and it’s a little uneasy for the participant, but you can quickly gauge their sentiment and adjust accordingly on the fly, which is another thing you’ll get better at over time the more you do this.

It’s not easy to break a mindset that you’ve had since you had a functioning conscience. But it’s one of those things that you need you train yourself to do if you really want to get the most out of user testing. Pausing for extending periods, as uncomfortable as it may be at the start, gives users enough time to mentally process not just the experience they’re having, but also how they feel about it and how they want to convey that information to you. It allows them to form coherent thoughts and talk intelligently about their experience, not just state facts and answer hypotheticals.

If you’re a designer, I’d highly suggest you run user tests yourself. It helps you understand users better and you tend to observe things that other individuals won’t. And the next time you do it, make sure to pause for long periods of time after each question. It will help you immensely in observing and designing for the vast array of user behaviors and perceptions that exist in the world.