I argue that in evaluating public deliberation, the basic criterion should be how deliberating citizens’ need for usable input is met, rather than how the debaters embody Habermasian consensus-oriented ideals, and I question assessment of “deliberative quality” on that basis, such as the “Discourse Quality Index.” Studies of public deliberation should instead build on an Aristotelian notion of deliberation, on Rawls’s idea of “reasonable disagreement” and on the deliberating audience’s needs. To explore these, we need real-time studies of audience reception of public deliberation. I place the studies I call for in a typology of studies, present a study with novel methodological features and discuss its implications for criteria for public deliberation.