22 Aug Stakeholder Listening as UX Method

When research doesn’t land, is it wrong , or unreadable?

This is not a real project. It’s a constructed example , a fictionalised scenario drawn from patterns I’ve seen repeat across teams, industries, and projects. The quotes are imagined, but plausible. The tension is real.

We had good evidence. Interviews were clear. Quant confirmed it. Playback sessions felt aligned. But the moment we shared our findings with the wider team, the temperature changed. One stakeholder frowned. Another asked, “Where’s the commercial angle?”

It wasn’t confusion , it was misalignment. The findings didn’t land. Not because they were flawed, but because they couldn’t be read.

At the time, we assumed this was a presentation problem. In hindsight, it was a listening problem , not with our users, but with the organisation itself. We had treated the business as a backdrop. Static. Not something in motion, with its own anxieties and codes. We had done research, but failed to translate it.

This article explores how stakeholder listening became a method , not for appeasement, but for sensemaking. And why triangulation doesn’t just mean using multiple tools , it means listening across systems that don’t always speak the same language.

 

Step 1: The wrong insight , or the wrong context?

In this fictional case, the brief was clear: users needed faster access to a diagnostic tool. The product team had shaped the roadmap around that. But once in field, our interviews told a different story. These users , clinicians working with vulnerable patients , didn’t want speed. They wanted validation. To cross-check, consult peers, follow their instincts.

We brought that insight back confidently. Quotes, behaviours, even a mapped-out moment where one doctor paused to rewatch a training module mid-task. But our synthesis landed with a thud.

It took a tense follow-up session to uncover what we’d missed: a new pricing model was in play. “Speed” wasn’t about UX , it was about cost-per-user. Fewer steps meant fewer calls to support. The goal wasn’t task flow, it was operational savings.

We hadn’t failed to understand the user. We’d failed to understand the organisation.

 

Step 2: Listening upstream , a second round of research

After that moment, the team did something unplanned. They paused external fieldwork and re-entered the business. Not to get approval. To investigate.

They ran a second round of interviews , this time with internal teams. Product, legal, customer support, finance. Not stakeholder check-ins, but structured conversations. What were people worried about? Where had previous efforts gone wrong? What did they really think research could change?

This second wave revealed patterns:

• Product managers wanted user-centred change , but not if it meant shifting delivery dates.
• Legal teams feared ambiguity in insight statements , they needed defensibility.
• Support leads were burnt out, and saw new UX flows as potential ticket generators.

What emerged weren’t feature requests. They were thresholds. Unspoken constraints. The team realised they’d been treating internal interviews as logistics. In truth, they were a second dataset.

This was triangulation, but not across methods. Across perspectives. Internal and external evidence, layered , not to validate, but to surface contradiction.

 

Step 3: Translation without appeasement

One phrase from a delivery lead stayed with the team: “We just need confidence.” At first, it sounded like obstruction. But in follow-up, they understood it differently. Confidence, here, meant traceability. The ability to stand by a decision if challenged internally or legally.

This realisation reshaped their approach. In their final insight document, they added a new section: crosswalks. Each key finding was accompanied by links to roadmap priorities, risk concerns, and compliance constraints. Not to dilute the user voice , but to protect it in unfamiliar territory.

This didn’t mean conceding to the business. It meant helping insights survive the journey.

Stakeholder listening, in this sense, wasn’t about pleasing people. It was about translation , making insight legible in a space where multiple value systems operate. And resisting the urge to resolve contradiction too early.

 

Personal reflections:

Writing this fictional scenario helped me test my own assumptions. I’ve sometimes approached stakeholder interviews as background , necessary for alignment, but outside the frame of the research itself.

What I now see more clearly is that internal listening is interpretive work. It’s not only about extracting priorities, but about sensing where language falters , where a stakeholder can’t quite name what’s at stake, and the researcher’s task becomes one of translation.

The cost, in this case, is letting go of the idea that research speaks for itself. It doesn’t. It needs help crossing thresholds , not just from insight to decision, but from meaning to meaning.