40. Gregg Bernstein returns

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I welcome Gregg Bernstein back for a follow-up episode. He’s now Director of User Research at Hearst Magazines. The thing that I always come back to is that there is no one way to do research. And I also think there’s no one way to do research leadership. […]

39. Mani Pande of Cisco Meraki

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Mani Pande, Director and Head of Research at Cisco Meraki. We used to do these immersion events where we would bring everybody who worked on, who was our stakeholder, to come and listen and talk to our customers. And we would do these focus groups, […]

38. Vanessa Whatley of Twilio

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Vanessa Whatley, UX Director – Research & Documentation at Twilio. For many years, I had anxiety and regret around not starting my career in the field that I’m in sooner because I felt very very lost stumbling through all of the different fields and roles, […]

37. Nizar Saqqar of Snowflake

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Nizar Saqqar, the Head of User Research at Snowflake. For a domain that takes a lot of pride and empathy and how we can represent the end user, there’s a component that sometimes gets overshadowed, which is the empathy with cross-functional partners. With every domain, […]

36. Noam Segal returns

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features a return visit from Noam Segal, now a Senior Research Manager at Upwork. AI will help us see opportunities for research that we haven’t seen. It will help us settle a bunch of debates that maybe we’ve struggled to settle before. It will help us to connect with […]

New episodes! New book!

Today we’ve got a quick program note about new episodes of Dollars to Donuts, an announcement about my new book, and an interview with Steve Portigal. Show Links Interviewing Users (2nd Edition) Steve on The Rosenfeld Review Podcast “How-to with John Wilson” on HBO

35. Danielle Smith of Express Scripts

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Danielle Smith, the Senior Director of Experience Research & Accessibility at Express Scripts. Something that I’ve really changed the way I thought about since I’ve been at Express Scripts — we are in the healthcare ecosystem. So the experiences we deliver, if they are not […]

34. Amber Lindholm of Duo Security

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Amber Lindholm, the Head of User Research at Duo Security. That’s the sign of a really good researcher – it can never be just about research for research’s sake, like this is a cool project, this is a neat thing, I really wanna go in-depth […]

33. Julia Nelson of MOO

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Julia Nelson, the Director Of Research at MOO. All researchers say to some degree that they don’t necessarily have a traditional background when they come into the research field. But I think there’s a lot of strength in welcoming people with different perspectives onto your […]

32. Chris Kovel of First Abu Dhabi Bank

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Chris Kovel, the Head Of Research at First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB). I look at needs as proximate needs and ultimate needs. An ultimate need is why the product exists in the first place. And then the proximate need is the experience of using that […]

31. Noam Segal of Wealthfront

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Noam Segal, the Director of Research at Wealthfront. Everyone from PMs to designers, researchers, obviously, engineers, data scientists, marketing, we’re all trying to to understand our clients, we’re all taking part in that process in some way, shape or form. And so I view my […]

30. Laith Ulaby of Udemy

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Laith Ullaby, the Head of Research at Udemy. I’m really into the idea of questioning what we do. That can be the methods and that conversation about getting out of our comfort zone. It can be thinking about our relationships with stakeholders and trying to […]

29. Kathryn Campbell of Ticketmaster

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Kathryn Campbell, the Director of Research & Insights at Ticketmaster. Whenever there is availability of somebody that might normally work on the marketplace side, they might tag team on an account manager project and that helps to inform them about that product. It gives them […]

28. Laura Faulkner of Rackspace

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Laura Faulkner, the Head of Research at Rackspace. I’ve never just sat and done just what I was asked to do. I’m always looking for something new, something else. It’s probably just part of how I’m built but it’s also a conscious choice of, of […]

27. Colin MacArthur of the Canadian Digital Service

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I chat with Colin MacArthur, the Head of Design Research at the Canadian Digital Service. We talk about bureaucracy hacking, spreading the gospel of research throughout government, and embedding researchers in complex domains. Often the idiosyncrasies in people’s research and the sort of surprises that don’t fit within […]

26. Jesse Zolna of ADP

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I talk to Jesse Zolna, who leads the User Experience Research Team at ADP’s Innovation Lab. We talk about driving change as an experiment, exposing the organization to how customers solve problems, and engineering psychology. One of the challenges we face is getting “credit” for the work that […]

25. Juliette Melton of The New York Times

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Juliette Melton, Director of User Insight and Strategy at The New York Times. We talk about updating the old “design research” label, user research in a journalism culture, and the role of coaching. I think that researchers can bring a kind of brightness into a […]

24. Ashley Graham of IBM

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my conversation with Ashley Graham, a design research leader at IBM. We discuss synthesis as a collaborative, co-located activity, being mission-driven, and building a process that addresses complexity. When I look at the wonderful research community, I don’t see a ton of people that look like me and […]

23. Michele Marut of CBRE Build

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Michele Marut who leads user experience research at CBRE Build. We discuss the curation of research repositories, using research to go beyond fixing things, and building processes and tools that can be used by researchers and people who do research. The philosophy is that the […]

22. Vicki Tollemache of Grubhub

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Vicki Tollemache, the Director of UX Research at Grubhub. We discuss how to manage incoming research requests, running a weekly research session for testing designs, and why candidates should come into job interviews with a point of view about the company’s product. To me, researchers […]

21. Ruth Ellison of Digital Transformation Agency

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Ruth Ellison, Head of User Research at DTA, the Digital Transformation Agency in Australia. We discuss the challenges of user research – and digital product development – in government, embedding researchers into product teams but maintaining a guild model to connect them, and how research […]

20. Leisa Reichelt of Atlassian (Part 2)

This episode of Dollars to Donuts is part 2 of my conversation with Leisa Reichelt of Atlassian. If you haven’t listened to part 1 yet, you can find it here. We talk about corporate versus government work, scaling research, and changing organizational DNA. I love research, I love the way that we learn things and […]

19. Leisa Reichelt of Atlassian (Part 1)

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features part 1 of my two-part conversation with Leisa Reichelt of Atlassian. We talk about educating the organization to do user research better, the limitations of horizontal products, and the tension between “good” and “bad” research. If you’re working on a product that has got some more foundational issues […]

18. Kathleen Asjes of Schibsted Media

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features Kathleen Asjes of Schibsted Media. In our conversation, we talk about what happens when research need exceeds resources, the importance of keeping the knowledge inside the organization, and the benefit of diversity in a research team. It’s not so much about which university do I go to and […]

17. Tomer Sharon of Goldman Sachs

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts, I talk with Tomer Sharon, the Head of User Research and Metrics at Goldman Sachs. We talk about how to assess potential hires for user research positions, infrastructure for capturing and searching a body of data, and developing a practice inside a willing, yet large, organization. Some parts […]

16. Marianne Berkovich of Glooko

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts, I speak with Marianne Berkovich, Head of User Research & Consumer Insights at Glooko. We talk about doing research through leadership changes, setting up opportunities for self-critique, and how to build empathy, especially in health technology, by experiencing some aspect of the condition and treatment yourself. It really […]

15. Leanne Waldal of New Relic

Welcome back to Dollars to Donuts. This episode features Leanne Waldal, Senior Director of Product Research at New Relic. We talk about establishing research in an organization for the first time, building up a diverse set of research collaborators, and the pleasure of taking on certain types of challenges. I’ve seen hopeful examples in startups […]

14. Monal Chokshi of Lyft

In the final episode of the season I speak with Monal Chokshi, Head of User Experience Research at Lyft. We discuss traditional paths to a user research career, creating routines for meeting different types of users, and the emergence of leadership roles in user research.

13. Kate Lawrence of EBSCO

In this episode I speak with Kate Lawrence, Vice President of User Research at EBSCO Information Services. Our conversation covers where to place user research in the organization, emotions in fieldwork, and empowering others to advocate for information literacy.

12. Pree Kolari of eBay

This episode features Pree Kolari, the Senior Director of Design Strategy and Research at eBay. We talk about the career arc of a researcher, having impact on the product, and breaking down organizational walls.

11. Gabe Trionfi of Pinterest

This episode features Gabe Trionfi, the Manager of Research at Pinterest. We discuss the evolution of user research, collaboration between disciplines and the journey versus the destination.

10. Elizabeth Kell of Comcast

In this episode I chat with Elizabeth Kell, the Senior Director of User Research at Comcast. We talk about the growth of Comcast’s user research practice, essential soft skills for research candidates, and putting a human face on the people that use your products.

9. Kavita Appachu of Kelley Blue Book

Today I chat with Kavita Appachu, the Senior Manager of User Experience Research at Kelley Blue Book. She describes the different roles she’s had in different organizations, moving from design to research, and explains the change effort underway at Kelley Blue Book.

8. Aviva Rosenstein of DocuSign

In today’s episode I speak with Aviva Rosenstein, the Senior Manager of User Experience Research at DocuSign. We explore how to make all types of research actionable, the benefit of doing your own recruiting, and the evolution from building a usability lab to having an in-house research capability.

7. Judd Antin of Airbnb

We kick off the second season with Judd Antin, the Director of Experience Research at Airbnb. Judd and I speak about their model for embedding talented generalists with product teams, skill-sharing among researchers, and just what exactly makes research “sexy.”

6. Carol Rossi of Edmunds.com

Today’s guest is Carol Rossi. She’s the Senior Director of UX Research at Edmunds.com. In our conversation, we discuss her small-but-mighty team, Edmund.com’s collaborative workplace culture, and the personal driver of “doing good.”

5. Kerry McAleer-Forte of Sears Holdings

Today’s guest is Kerry McAleer-Forte, the Director of User Experience Research for Sears Holdings. We discuss how researchers need to think like storytellers, getting at the underlying need behind a research request, and the risk of using research to make recommendations.

4. Nancy Frishberg of Financial Engines

My guest today is Nancy Frishberg, the manager of user research at Financial Engines. We discuss recruiting participants in an enterprise setting (where users are customers of your customers), finding the generative in the evaluative and how to think about collaborative workspace as entirely separate from reporting structure.

3. Frances Karandy of Citrix

Today’s guest is Frances Karandy, a senior manager within the Customer Experience Group at Citrix. We discuss doing product-focused research in a company with a large number of products, what to look for when hiring researchers, and how to select projects that not only support the business but also help team members to develop.

2. Alex Wright of Etsy

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.

1. Gregg Bernstein of MailChimp

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.

Listen to Steve on the Experiencing Data podcast

In connection with the second edition of Interviewing Users, I spoke with Brian O’Neill for his Experiencing Data podcast, titled “No Time for That:” Enabling Effective Data Product UX Research in Product-Immature Organizations.

You can find our one hour conversation (and a transcript) on the episode page (and on Google, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher) and embedded below.

Quotes

“If you don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t know what you should be investing effort-wise, that’s the inexperience in the approach. If you don’t know how to plan, what should we be trying to solve in this research? What are we trying to learn? What are we going to do with it in the organization? Who should we be talking to? How do we find them? What do we ask them? And then a really good one: how do we make sense of that information so that it has impact that we can take away?”

“What do people get [from user research]? I think the chance for a team to align around something that comes in from the outside.”

On the impact user research can have if teams embrace it: “They had a product that did a thing that no one [understood], and they had to change the product, but also change how they talked about it, change how they built it, and change how they packaged it. And that was a really dramatic turnaround. And it came out of our research, but [mostly] because they really leaned into making use of this stuff.”

“If we knew all the questions to ask, we would just write a survey, right? It’s a lower time commitment from the participant to do that. But we’re trying to get at what we don’t know that we don’t know. For some of us, that’s fun!”

Watch Steve on the Rock n’ Roll Research Podcast

It was a real treat to speak with Matt Valle for the Rock n’ Roll Research Podcast.

Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting has been doing User Research since the days our software all came in a box. He has written a seminal book on the topic, “Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights,” recently released in a 2nd edition available through Rosenfeld Media.

Steve shares his journey from the nascent years of user research through today and his take on where user research is headed. We discuss his book and how studying creative writing has informed his approach. Steve also tells the story of building a community of Rolling Stones enthusiasts – pre-World Wide Web! – that is still alive and kicking (just like Keith Richards).

You can find our 35-minute conversation on the YouTube and embedded below.

Episode #105: Steve Portigal - User Research Expert, Author, Rolling Stones Enthusiast

Bonus: the shirt I’m wearing is available here

Listen to Steve on the Product Mastery Now podcast

Thanks to Chad McAllister and Product Mastery Now for their interview with me, titled How product managers best interview users (bonus: it’s still good advice if you aren’t a product manager)

You can find our 35-minute conversation on the episode page (and on Google) and embedded below.

Summary

[2:52] Why did your book, Interviewing Users, need a second edition?
It’s been 10 years since the first edition was published. The fields that we all work in have changed. There was a little bit of discussion 10 years ago about remote user research, and now remote research is much more common. I wanted to talk in-depth about the best practices for remote research, even as they’re still emerging. Research operations, which is a field adjacent to user research, has emerged. The book also draws from 10 more years of me doing research and teaching research. I’m always learning. I updated the stories and included better examples.

[6:09] How do we ask customers the right questions?
First, don’t assume you know what people want. Second, recognize that just asking customers what they want is not effective. There are a few related questions that you should answer.

Business challenge: What do we want to do? What do we want to change? What’s coming up? Why are we doing this research?
Research question: What do we want to learn from people?
Interview questions: The questions you ask customers.

What you want to learn is not the same as what you should ask. For example, if you want to understand where people find the most value in their budgetary spending, don’t ask, “Where do you find the most value in your budgetary spending?” Instead, craft a set of questions and build a discussion guide that has a flow and sets context. Ask questions like:

  • What do you do?
  • How do you do it?
  • How long have you been doing it?
  • What are you big problems?
  • Where does budgeting fit into those larger problems?

Use the interview to ask many questions to get a larger context so you can conclude what the answers to your research questions are.

[10:19] How should we prepare for a customer interview?
Once you understand your business question and research question, think about your sample. Who are you going to talk to? Be creative in your sample. Don’t talk to the same people over and over again. Be intentional about who is going to give you the most information. Talk to people who will give deeper insight about the situation so you can make decisions about the changes you want to make. Figure out who will give you answers to your research question.

Next, figure out how to get to those people.

Then figure out what you’re going to ask them. Write a discussion guide. No interview looks like the guide you write, but it is a great tool to share with stakeholders to respond to their questions. This is a case of “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

[12:42] How do you avoid interviewing the wrong sample?
It’s much better to have a stakeholder object to your sample at the beginning of the study than at the end. Have a rationalization for the people you are choosing to talk to. Make everyone aware of the tradeoffs and how far these interviews will take you in your understanding.

[15:13] What do you do during the interview?
Don’t go through the interview line by line. All the good stuff comes from follow-ups. In the best interview, you ask one question and everything else follows. Every question you ask comes from something they just said. You are connecting and engaging such that everything they say is important because you have another thing you want know that builds on it. Telling someone honestly that their information is important and valuable to you creates rapport that makes these interview successful. Asking follow-up questions is a great rapport builder. You’re trying to poke around in the dark with a flashlight to see what’s behind the corners. You’re looking for your own understanding, not just checking off questions. Follow-up questions come from your own curiosity.

You can’t really do an interview by starting with a single question. There are points where you have to switch gears. That technique is really important. I call it signaling your lane changes. Tell someone, “Well, this is really great. I want to switch topics a little bit here and now move on to your procurement process.” Again, this tells them that what they’re saying is important.

[5:35] How do we stay curious and avoid developing biases?
Cognitive bias is very natural, and I don’t want anyone to feel bad about it because I think feeling bad about it makes it harder to overcome. When I do an interview and uncover one of my biases, that’s the most fun feeling. You could easily feel stupid because you have biases, but I think we’re doing this research to learn things so it’s exciting when someone knocks our sandcastle down. Not every bias you overcome is an insight about your product, but it puts you in that mode where you realize you’ve been holding onto something. Be able to hear when you have biases and feel good about that.

The skill is not to not have biases. The skill is to be able to hold on to multiple truths at once. Set your worldview aside and use the interview to embrace somebody else’s worldview. Set the intention that makes you curious.

You want to hear how they approach their problem or your product. That doesn’t diminish what you know. Being curious and having a beginner’s mind does not negate your expert’s mind. You just compartmentalize them for a time during the interview.

[24:42] How do you ask questions?
I like to have a first interviewer and a second interviewer. The first interviewer controls the flow of the interview. The second interviewer records the interview, listens deeply, and identifies things to be curious about that have gotten past the first interviewer. Before transitioning to a new topic, the first interviewer asks the second interviewer if they have any questions.

[27:35] How do you analyze data from interviews?
In general, you might do two hours of analysis for every one hour of synthesis. Analysis is taking large things and breaking them down into smaller ones. You can pull out some things from an interview about the person you’re interviewing. These are not conclusions, just distillations.

Synthesis is taking small things and organizing them in a new way to make something larger. You reorganize the broken-down pieces from many interviews. This can be done with affinity maps. You start creating frameworks that create segmentation or a list of priorities.

How much analysis and synthesis you do depends on the size of your project. Don’t just tabulate what people said—you’ll miss all the nuance. You’re creating your narrative, a new story that’s put together from the data.

Listen to Steve on the Greenbook podcast

I was on the Greenbook podcast recently, in a episode titled Beyond the Surface: Navigating the Depths of User Research with Steve Portigal.

Check out our 40-minute discussion on the episode page (and on Spotify, Apple, and Google) and embedded below in two different formats.



Excerpt:

There’s this interesting part of research where it’s collaborative and facilitative…I can do a better job if I can help them learn something and take something away. But, if I hear what they’re taking away, especially [as] I’m not the domain expert. I work as a consultant, so I come into an area that somebody else inhabits. And so they’re going to always see things in the research that I won’t see. It’s really helpful for me to understand what didn’t they hear that person say. Like, if there’s a gap in what they took away, then I now know I need to kind of emphasize that because there’s a takeaway that’s obvious to me that isn’t to them. So I can get that out a debrief. And, when I hear what they heard and what surprises them, I understand, yeah, how they’re framing the world, what’s relevant information. I’m getting this indirect feedback.

Listen to Steve on the World of UX podcast

The World of UX with Darren Hood

Thanks to Darren Hood for leading a great conversation on his World of UX podcast.

You can listen to our 70-minute conversation on the episode page (also on Spotify, Apple, and https://media.transistor.fm/5414ab59/f8ed8755.mp3

Excerpt:

There was a semi viral post about how to go into a bar and show people stuff. I think it was meant to be helpful, but it was kind of a smart-ass post…”give people beer and ask them a question.”

It seems like, if one is trying to help somebody else learn a skill or utilize a process or a practice – I guess everything is on a continuum. But you can see one end of the continuum says “this is really hard” and the other end of the continuum says “this is really easy.” And I mean, hopefully I’m somewhere in the middle. I think I’m trying to say this is hard, but here’s how to get there. If that’s my story, I feel pretty critical of people that are like, oh, anyone can do this. This is easy.. There are books and posts like this that kind of say that.

And I think there’s something to be said for lowering barriers, reducing intimidation, kind of giving people some power and some confidence. So we got to ask ourselves, like, is that person, you know, all exhausted from talking to one person in the office? Is it better that they did that than they just sat in their cube and kind of thought how smart they were? Is the team going into the bar or the one person going, is that better or not than not doing that? And I think argument for “better” is like any effort you make to get out of your own head is, it can be well intentioned.

And the evil part of me hopes that people try and fail –if you go to a bar and think if you just ask somebody one question in a bar about something that’s on your laptop and you fail somehow in that and you at least learn that you failed, you know, now I feel like now I’m going to hand you my book and say like, okay, you know, here’s how to get there.

And so maybe people need to try these things where someone says “Oh, yeah, it’s super easy just to ask this one question.”

That’s not how I would go about it. I would like to say “This is hard for the following reasons and here’s the way to get there.”

But, you know, people learn.

Join me for the Expert Series event hosted by Michele Ronsen

Interviewing Users: Evolving Perspectives & Umpteen Paths
An intimate conversation about research evolution, updating the book Interviewing Users, & finding inspiration.
Featuring Steve Portigal
Author, Research Expert and Consultant
Sponsored by Curiosity Tank
January 10th, 9am PST
*Registrants are invited to attend live and/or watch the recorded replay.

Please join us on January 10th! The brilliant Michele Ronsen is hosting me for an Expert Series event we’re calling Interviewing Users: Evolving Perspectives and Umpteen Paths.

We’re going to talk about

Registrants can attend live or watch the recorded replay.

All proceeds will benefit the International Rescue Committee.

Tickets are just $5.00 USD and additional donations are welcome.

The Eventbrite registration link is here. We hope to see you there!

Listen to Steve on the One Knight In Product podcast

One Knight in Product, Episode 193
Making Sure You Make an Impact through User Research
Steve Portigal
User Research Consultant & Author
"Interviewing Users"

Thanks to Jason Knight for having me on the One Knight In Produc podcast.

You can listen to our 45-minute conversation (and see links to podcast services) on the episode page. The audio is also embedded below:


Episode highlights

1. Some people are still wary of user research, or think they don’t need it, but it remains as important as ever

It can be tempting for founders to think they know exactly what they need, rely on feedback from customer-facing teams, or not speak to anyone until they’ve already built the thing they want to build. Feedback from sales teams and founders is an incredibly important vector, but should only be the start of the discussion never the end.

2. Continuous discovery and point-in-time research both have a place in a researcher’s armoury

There are methodological constraints to continuous research, alongside the difficulty of finding the time and buy-in to do it but, on the other hand, it can be incredibly impactful to have rapid research tightly coupled to the product team. On the other hand, well-planned up-front research can still help you to find truly disruptive insights for your company. Do both!

3. We all have cognitive biases – we should accept that and be honest with ourselves about their effects

People look at the word “bias” and worry about the negative connotations, but “bias” just represents how our brains are wired. Cognitive biases will affect how we interview people, and we should do our best to counteract their effect and improve on getting better (even if we’re not perfect).

4. The best research has a tangible impact rather than being research for research’s sake

It can be a heavy burden to bear if all of your well-planned and well-executed research ends up having no effect on decision-making at all. It’s important not to get downhearted, and work out ways to build actionable, accessible repositories to enable your stakeholders to make the best decisions possible.

5. There are a lot of similarities between good user research and improv

We don’t need to be able to create 45 minute plays off the cuff, and knowing when to stick to our interview plans and when to deviate from the script, enables us to get to the real generative insights that we need from our users and find out what we don’t know we don’t know.

Excerpt:

Sometimes we think that what we’re going to do in research is go ask people what features they want and then figure out somehow among these competing requests which ones to implement. And that’s not what interviewing users is about. It’s about actually finding a new interpretation, a new point of view, a new understanding, a larger framework that’s built up from all those things. And so, yeah, if people tell us what they want to tell us, they’re going to tell us what features they want. But we have other questions for them. How do you work? Why do you work that way? What are your tools you’re using? How has that changed? What has led to the definition of that as like a work process? How do you acquire new tools and technology? What’s been successful when you’ve rolled things out? What’s been a challenge when you’ve rolled things out?

A Zoom video still with Jason in a small corner giving a thumbs up while Steve is in the main window wearing headphones and a dark shirt holding up a copy of Interviewing Users

About Steve