It seems that every website is bursting at the seams with the information it is trying to tell us, but lately I have been questioning this. What would it mean if we inverted the equation? What if it were the application’s responsibility to listen to the user rather than talk (or yell) at the user? What form would a “listening application” take?

Kevin Brooks, Principle Researcher at Motorola, presented on story-telling at Adaptive Path’s User Experience Week. While speaking on the role that stories play in our lives, he emphasized the importance of one reciprocal requirement of the narrative process: listening.

While his session focused on simple story structures and the interpersonal effects of listening, I am left re-applying the metaphor of story-telling to web applications.

The history of the web contains little more than a set of glorified brochures. Any story-telling is one sided, the web asking curt questions in order to provide small twists in the story that only it is allowed to tell. We on the other hand never question this, delighted when an application knows our name after only having provided it a minute earlier.

But what if the user was able to tell the story instead? What if it was the application’s job to listen? Kevin Brooks explained that when people take a listening role, understanding between people increases, the speaker is empowered, and the relationship between speaker and listener is deepened. More intriguing, Kevin spoke about listening addiction: “You just can’t get enough.”

An application that is gratifying, deepens connections with its users while empowering them. This seems like a metaphor worth exploring.