Today’s guest is Alex Wright, who is the director of research at Etsy. We discuss the partnership between qualitative and quantitative research at Etsy and how his background in journalism helps him with the storytelling aspects of managing the research function.

Etsy’s not just in the business of trying to generate maximal profits every quarter. Yes, we’d like to be profitable, but we also want to serve the community of sellers; we want to be environmentally responsible; we want to support the local community. – Alex Wright

Show Links

• Alex Wright
• Follow Alex on Twitter
• Cataloging the World – Alex Wright
• Etsy
• Rob Kalin
• Jill Fruchter
• Roxie Karpen
• DoubleClick

Follow Dollars to Donuts on Twitter (and Stitcher) and show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes.

(more…)

• I’ve just launched a new podcast, called Dollars to Donuts, where I speak with people who lead user research in their organization. You can find it on the Portigal Consulting site, on iTunes, and on Twitter. Our first episode, an interview with Gregg Bernstein of MailChimp, is getting a great response so far.
• Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15 is filling up. If you’d like to be part of it, register for the conference and then sign up for the workshop here.
• We’ve rescheduled my workshop on improv, collaboration and creativity for the folks at GreatSchools in Oakland to next week, after we realized that the last week was not good for people’s schedules.
• I’m kicking off a new project this week, working with an agency in more of a creative director role. Well, that’s probably not the right term, but I don’t think we know what it is. Their staff will be doing the heavy lifting but I’ll be around as a sounding board and general guide on fieldwork, analysis and ensuring we’re meeting the client’s goals. Should be an novel and promising way for me to collaborate with some enthusiastic people.
• Ten years gone: From January 2005 – Ghoulish spam, The Google Pause.
• What we’re consuming: cheese, Episodes, Len Deighton.

Since 2012, I’ve been collecting War Stories, where researchers share the stuff that happens during fieldwork. There are more than 70 stories (start your reading here) and they’ve proven to be a valuable resource for the practice. I’ve been giving a talk over the past few months about the stories and what I’ve learned from the process of curating the stories as well as from the stories themselves. From UX Australia, here’s the audio, the (minimal) slides, and a few sketchnotes.

If you have a story about an experience you had doing contextual research, please get in touch! We want more stories!

To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

Matthew Magain, UX Mastery

War stories with @steveportigal at #uxaustralia. So many stories I don't want to draw… #iHadFun pic.twitter.com/a9kc7Ml2HI

— guillaume hammadi (@ghammadi) August 28, 2014

Guillaume Hammadi

https://twitter.com/sujeevnotsteve/status/504876135193141248
Suj

Welcome to the debut episode of Dollars to Donuts. Today’s guest is Gregg Bernstein, who manages customer research at MailChimp. We discuss how MailChimp uses research to uncover new product opportunities, how the right research artifacts can best provide value to different internal audiences and how humility is an essential soft skill for successful researchers.

We research people and we try to better understand what would make them happy, what would fit into their lifestyle, what would fit into their day-to-day. We don’t go out with an idea for a product in mind. – Gregg Bernstein

Show Links

• Gregg Bernstein
• Follow Gregg on Twitter
• MailChimp
• Evernote
• Laurissa Wolfram-Hvass
• Stephanie Troeth
• Aarron Walter
• MailChimp Snap
• Square
• Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski
• Jenn Downs
• Urie Bronfenbrenner – Ecological Systems Theory
• The Big Web Show
• Jeffery Zeldman
• useronboard.com
• MailChimp UX Newsletter

Follow Dollars to Donuts on Twitter (and Stitcher) and show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes.

(more…)

On February 9 I’ll be teaching a new workshop at Interaction 15

in San Francisco. Entitled Soft Skills Are Hard, it’s a deeper-dive that build the interactive talks I’ve done recently that focus on developing the interpersonal, creative, and cognitive skill sets that are essential in innovative work cultures.

If you are registered for Interaction 15, you can sign up here.

Below are the slides from an earlier talks. The workshop will focus on identifying individually relevant skills and creating an action plan to strengthen them.

Welcome to 2016! The New Year seems a good time to post my occasionally updated roundup of links to various bits connected with Interviewing Users. Of course, if you haven’t already, you should buy a copy here! It would be fantastic if you wrote a quick review on Amazon here.

The Book

• Buy from Rosenfeld Media
• Buy from Amazon
• Foreword by Grant McCracken
• Excerpt from chapter 2
• The cover
• Acknowledgements
• FAQ
• Testimonials
• Images and diagrams

Reviews

• NEW: UX Book Reviews
• Web Designers’ Review of Books
• How To Interview Your Users And Get Useful Feedback by Garrett Moon, Founder of TodayMade
• Reviews on Goodreads
• QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) Views Magazine (PDF)
• NEW: Reviews on Amazon
• Why You Should Read ‘Interviewing Users’ by Steve Portigal

Interviews

• NEW: Yours Productly
• transcript for Ask the UXperts: Using Insights to Inform Design & Innovation
• transcript for Ask Me Anything
• Tuesday #TechHour
• UX Discovery Session
• Wise Talk
• The eLearning Coach
• UX Magazine
• UX Matters
• UIE Book Corner (audio)
• 33 voices (audio) [summary slidedeck]
• UX Booth part 1, part 2
• Business 901 (audio)
• Huffington Post
• Ethnography Matters (and in Spanish)
• Interview with Denise Lee Yohn (audio)
• The User Experience podcast with Gerry Gaffney
• Steve speaks with Jared Spool about field research
• SpoolCast: Steve Portigal’s Interviewing Tips

Presentations

• Designing for Unmet Needs talk at Warm Gun (slides, audio, sketchnotes)
• Designing the Problem keynote at Interaction South America (video, slides, audio, sketchnotes)
• Denver UX Book Club (video).
• Interviewing Users at HOW Interactive Design (slides, Vimeo, YouTube).
• IXDA Los Angeles/LA UX Meetup – slides, video, alternate video, tweetstream
• recording of O’Reilly webinar #1
• recording of O’Reilly webinar #2
• A 5-minute talk about The Power of Silence

Other

• Tweets from 32 Awesomely Practical UX Tips
• Summary by Bree Straayer-Gannon of key takeaways from Interviewing Users (and other books).
• Epic FAIL – Takeaways from the War Stories Project (slides, audio, sketchnotes)
• All our 2013 writing about Interviewing Users.
• New York book launch party
• San Francisco book launch party
• Answers to questions from readers of the Usabilla blog
• NEW: War Stories
• Susan Dray’s reflections on the impact of the War Stories

Happy New Year! It’s been 2015 for a few days, but this is back-to-work day here and for many of you as well, so I think the greeting still stands. Here’s what’s up as we get things back into gear.

• The semi-stealth project I’ve been working on will launch this week. More to come but here’s a big hint.
• Please sign up for Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15. It’s in San Francisco on February 9 and you can register here.
• Tomorrow I am teaching a workshop on improv, collaboration and creativity at GreatSchools in Oakland. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone and having a chance to play together.
• Also this week is circling back with various projects, nailing down schedules for meetings, sorting out invoices and reimbursements, lunch with colleagues, figuring out travel details and generally trying to move forward all the bits and pieces which have been up in the air especially through the holiday.
• From December, there is now a video for Designing the Problem from Interactions South America (also slides and audio).
• Ten years gone: From January 2005 – We don’t remember new products, dress up your vacuum cleaner as a bear, bunny, cat or (ironically) maid.
• What we’re consuming: Lucky Peach, crab rolls, Modern Family, Little Yangon

This NYT Magazine profile of author Laura Hillenbrand explores her writing process and considers the ways it has been impacted by her illness. One section of this excellent article had resonance for me around conducting remote interviews, something I’m frequently asked about.

One hallmark of literary nonfiction is its emphasis on personal observation. But Hillenbrand found that telephone interviews do offer certain advantages. No one appreciates this perspective more than the radio host Terry Gross, who performs nearly every interview on her program, “Fresh Air,” by remote. Gross told me that she began this habit, as Hillenbrand did, by necessity: The cost of bringing a guest to her studio in Philadelphia was simply too high. Over time, she said, she has come to believe that there is intimacy in distance. “I find it to be oddly distracting when the person is sitting across from me,” she said with a laugh. “It’s much easier to ask somebody a challenging question, or a difficult question, if you’re not looking the person in the eye.” Gross also said the remote interview makes it easier to steer the conversation. “I can look at my notes without fear that the interviewee will assume that I’m not paying attention to what they’re saying,” she said. Finally, the distance eliminates nonverbal cues, which can interfere with good quotes. “A hand gesture might be helpful to communicate something to me. It communicates nothing to my listeners.” Hillenbrand, who recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with Zamperini, experienced a similar effect. “I thought it was actually an advantage to be unable to go to Louie,” she said. Because neither of them had to dress for the interviews and they were in their own homes, their long phone calls enjoyed a warmth and comfort that might otherwise be missing. She could pose the deeply personal questions that even her father had trouble answering.

I gave a (remote) presentation, Designing the Problem, at Interaction South America a few weeks ago.

Too often we assume that doing research with users means checking in with them to get feedback on the solution we’ve already outlined. But the biggest value from research is in uncovering the crucial details of the problem that people have; the problem that we should be solving.

As the design practices mature within companies, they need to play an active role in driving the creation of new and innovative solutions to the real unmet needs that people have. In part, driving towards this maturity means looking at one’s own culture and realizing the value of being open-minded and curious, not simply confident. This is a challenge to each of us personally and as leaders within our teams and communities.

We’ve got video, slides, audio and sketch-notes. Enjoy!

The talk is just over 40 minutes and there are two questions (which you can’t hear but which should be obvious enough from my response).


To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

Sketchnote by Kat Davis (click for full size)

Sketchnote by Thiago Esser

• I got back yesterday from a fantastic client workshop in Austin and am looking ahead to this holiday week. I’m going to try and gear down over the next few days (which paradoxically means I feel like I have a lot to get done) and hopefully take a step back for the end of the week and some time next week as well. We’ll see.
• There’s now video for Designing the Problem from Interactions South America (also slides and audio).
• Just announced: Soft Skills Are Hard, my workshop for Interaction 15. It’s in San Francisco on February 9 and you can register here.
• Ten years gone: From December 2004 – Bob Dylan Q&A.
• What we’re consuming: Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken, The Problem Is Not The Problem, Torchy’s Tacos, Frank, latkes, Whip In.