Steve and his pals talk about running our own user research practices

The other day I had a great conversation with Janelle Ward and Michele Ronsen about running our own one-person user research consulting practices. We have followed three different paths, with different durations, and different individual motivations and strengths. If you want to hear what we each had to share with each other (about unpaid work, about community building, and about thought leadership and positioning…and much much more), guess what! We recorded the discussion and it’s available on Curiosity Tank. It’ll cost you $5 USD — all proceeds are donated to the International Rescue Committee – and we’ve already donated $315.

Check out Steve on the Vit Lyoshin Podcast

I spoke with Vit Lyoshin about User Research in Product Development for his podcast. The one-hour episode is on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and below.

User Research in Product Development | Steve Portigal


Takeaways

  • User research helps make informed product management and development decisions by understanding user behaviors, attitudes, and needs.
  • Mature user research practices involve skilled researchers, infrastructure, and effective documentation and socialization of research findings.
  • Collaborating with organizations and addressing their specific questions and concerns can promote the value of user research.
  • Starting with small, impactful research projects can demonstrate the benefits of user research.
  • User research techniques include watching people, asking questions, and asking people to try things.
  • Combining qualitative and quantitative methods can provide a more comprehensive understanding of user needs and behaviors.
  • Collaboration between qualitative and quantitative researchers is essential for a holistic understanding of users.
  • Getting buy-in and recognition for research findings can be a challenge, but research leaders can advocate for the value of research.
  • Conflicts between stakeholders’ expectations and user insights can be resolved by presenting research as a starting point for discussion and design opportunities.
  • Join me for “How to Use UX Research to Delight Your Users”

    I’m excited to be on a panel with Laura Klein and Thomas Stokes to talk about How to Use UX Research to Delight Your Users. Join us on August 27 at 9am PT/12pm ET for an exclusive live webinar featuring three industry experts who will dive deep into the nuances of UX research and design, helping you turn common pain points into opportunities for innovation. Register here.

    Bonus: our moderator Hannah Clark interviewed me earlier this year for the Product Manager podcast

    Dollars to Donuts: Emily Sun of Hipcamp

    Dollars to Donuts logo

    In this episode of Dollars to Donuts, I talk with Emily Sun, the head of Design and Research at Hipcamp. We discuss staying engaged in work, designers doing their own research, and research at a small, growing company.

    There’s actually a big opportunity with smaller companies. At small startups, you are much closer to the people who are making the long term vision for what the company is going to be. Because we have access to that level of leadership, there is a lot that can be influenced through research. – Emily Sun

    Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

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    Check out Steve on the Design Better podcast

    Thank you to Elijah Woolery and Aarron Walter for having me on their Design Better podcast, for The art of interviewing users.

    There’s an art to interviewing customers. It’s so much harder than just asking a few people some questions. If we’re not careful, bias can throw off our findings. And sometimes the most salient information that may inform the next generation of your products can slip by even the most seasoned researchers. Few people have mastered interviewing users as well as our guest today—author and independent research practitioner Steve Portigal.

    Steve’s just released a second edition to his popular book, Interviewing Users, that expands upon the principles and techniques introduced in the first edition, and provides guidance for conducting user research remotely. It’s essential stuff for anyone in UX.

    The one-hour episode is on the episode page, Spotify, YouTube, and below.




    Steve Portigal: The art of interviewing users

    Listen to Steve on the Product Quest podcast

    I enjoyed speaking with Yann Wermuth, Jonathan Edwards, and Scott Burleson on their Product Quest podcast.

    We talked about

    • How to go into an interview with someone you know you disagree
    • How to keep a conversation going without tripping up
    • How to create meaningful interview guides that solve business questions
    • How to formulate questions in your head while leading the conversation
    • What the best mindset is to go into a user interview
    • Tips when you start out with interviewing

    Our 80-minute conversation is on the episode page and embedded below.

    Listen to Steve on the Making Things That Matter podcast

    Thanks to Andrew Skotzko for a fun conversation on the Making Things That Matter podcast where we talked about improving your user research process.

    Our 75-minute conversation is on the episode page, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can find a transcript on this page.

    #80 Steve Portigal: Improving your user research process

    Steve Portigal is a veteran user research leader and consultant who helps companies mature their research practices. He’s the author of Interviewing Users, a classic in the field, and the host of the design leadership podcast Dollars to Donuts. In this conversation, we explore:

    • how to use creative practices to develop your voice as a leader and storyteller

    • how to be a smart consumer of research findings when you aren’t an expert in the craft of research

    • one simple question leaders can ask to set their organizations to make the most of research

    • and how to create the conditions for high-impact, effective creative work in your team

    Topics discussed

    (10:21) Experimenting with writing and finding one’s voice

    (15:47) Feedback model: GASP – goals, attempts, successes, possibilities

    (19:53) Workshops, creativity, and self-doubt

    (27:06) Embrace authenticity, find your unique facilitation style

    (28:10) Appreciating different approaches, understanding executives’ skepticism

    (34:37) Engage with compassion

    (39:29) Research is essential for informed decision-making

    (49:01) Compassion and reflection are crucial for leaders

    (50:48) Create a safe learning space for engagement

    (56:03) Assessing code quality and marketing effectiveness

    (01:00:39) Research raises questions, timing and deployment important

    (01:10:31) Stay fascinated with the world around you

    Save 20% on Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries

    Save 20% on my book Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries through the Rosenfeld Media summer sale, through July 15. This book of stories from other researchers examines the bizarre, comic, tragic, and generally astonishing experiences that researchers have out in the field.

    Portigal’s collection of war stories illuminates the discipline and improvisation endemic to researching people. Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries is a fitting companion to his landmark Interviewing Users. – Gregg Bernstein

    Listen to Steve on the Product Thinking podcast

    Thanks to Melissa Perri for having me on the Product Thinking Podcast to discuss of the second edition of Interviewing Users.

    Our one-hour conversation is on the episode page, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can find a transcript on this page.

    Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interv...

    In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri celebrates the updated ten-year anniversary edition of Interviewing Users with author Steve Portigal.

    Join them in this engaging episode as they discuss the importance of user research in product development. The pair also delve deeply into the changing landscape of user research, the impact of increasing reliance on remote interviews, and the difficulties that purely digital interactions pose for understanding the user’s context. Melissa and Steve also touch on common mistakes in interviewing users and the role of active listening.

    If you’re interested in learning more about effective user research and its role in creating successful products, this episode is a must-listen.

    You’ll hear them talk about:

    05:13 – The Change to Remote Research

    When Steve wrote the first edition of his book, Interviewing Users, his advice and experience was centered exclusively around the principles of in-person research. The world of work and meetings has changed a lot in the ten years since that edition, and now remote interviews are far more common, especially since the pandemic. Looking to the positives, Steve comments that geographical diversity is now far more possible when conducting research. In the past, you would target a certain place where you’re going to be able to call on a lot of different participants, namely urban metropolises rather than more rural areas. Doing research remotely allows you to look further afield more easily and create a more diverse cast of participants. Though Steve admits that, on the other side of the coin, the need for technology introduces its own new barrier.

    19:52 – Interview Pre-Work

    Steve makes an interesting distinction between the person and the ‘thing’ being investigated in an interview and he notes the importance of understanding whether you’re looking at the person in the research or their device itself. For more open-ended interviews looking at the person, it can be useful to follow Steve’s lead and send the subject ‘pre-work’. This could consist of one question or multiple but either way, it ought to be a small bit of work that the interviewee can do, without spending too much time, in advance of the interview itself. More than the answers themselves being of vital importance, the act of asking will get the cogs moving in the subject’s brain before the interview and could possibly give you a hand in opening them up.

    30:01 – Interview Technique, Letting Go Of Yourself

    Judging whether an interview has been conducted in a successful way is hard to gauge because it’s impossible to be sure what would have happened if you’d done it slightly differently. Steve’s perspective is that being a bright, curious, and extroverted person is the first step to being a good interviewer. He recognizes that this is the most natural way to approach this kind of situation; filling air time, talking a lot to show interest, nailing your questions, and putting some of yourself into that conversation. But Steve thinks that the next level up from this requires being comfortable with the unfamiliar task of leaving yourself at the door. Some of the best answers he gets come from saying very little, simply encouraging the subject to continue rather than hit them with the next question, and even saying nothing at all and letting them fill the space.

    Dollars to Donuts: Tamara Hale of Splunk

    Dollars to Donuts logo

    This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my conversation with Tamara Hale, the Director of Product Experience – Research & Insights at Splunk. We talk about the long tail of impact, being an anthropologist of work, and having a creative practice.

    The ‘doing the research’ bit is only about a quarter of your job. The rest of it is all the other stuff that goes around it. It’s about storytelling and influence and developing a vision and creating alignment around who the customers are and creating alignment on what actually are the business goals. It’s your stakeholder mapping. It’s your internal research. It’s your knowledge management. It’s improving how we work. All that stuff is part of research, and if you only think of your job as that quarter, you’re missing out on some of the most interesting and also trickiest parts of the job. – Tamara Hale

    Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

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