The interview I did for Ethnography Matters is now available in Spanish.

Steve Portigal es el fundador de Portigal Consulting, una firma que ayuda a los clientes descubrir y actuar sobre nuevas ideas acerca de s?? mismos y de sus clientes. A lo largo de su carrera, ha entrevistado a cientos de personas, incluyendo familias que toman el desayuno, el personal de mantenimiento del hotel, arquitectos, m??sicos de rock, los entusiastas de la dom??tica, comerciantes swaps de incumplimiento crediticio, y los radi??logos. Su trabajo ha informado del desarrollo de los dispositivos m??viles, sistemas de informaci??n médicos, equipo de m??sica, envases de vino, los servicios financieros, intranets corporativas, sistemas de videoconferencia, y accesorios para iPod. Tiene su blog en portigal.com/blog y tweets @steveportigal.

Ethnography Matters: En primer lugar felicidades Steve. Estamos muy emocionados de tener una copia de tu libro. Antes de profundizar en las cuestiones concretas, queremos saber lo que te motiv?? a escribir este libro?

Steve Portigal: Thanks! He querido escribir un libro desde que era un ni?±o peque?±o. Sin embargo no me imaginaba que ser??a la no-ficci??n! Un mont??n de gente en la experiencia del usuario y el mundo del dise?±o han sentido la necesidad de un buen libro sobre esto y mi nombre apareci?? como el autor que necesitaban ver algo al respecto. Yo hab??a estado hablando con Rosenfeld Media mientras escrib??a algo, pero parec??a un compromiso de enormes proporciones. Pero cuando los compa?±eros est?°n pidiendo esto, resulta muy convincente!

Thanks to Luis Lopez Toledo for doing this!

Here’s an interview with me at Ethnography Matters. We talked about the book, the writing process and other aspects of how interviewing users is playing out in the corporate world.

EM: How much heterogeneity is there between companies / clients? Are there any broad typological characterizations of companies and their attitude towards user research? Does this inform different ways of delivering research results, different ways of “talking to” these companies?

SP: There are no doubt dozens of frameworks (see for example, Jess McMullin’s Design Maturity Model on page 142) for characterizing the organization. But let me throw out a new one: in the Passover Haggadah there is the example of the four sons. One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question. The wise son asks to have all of the history, insight and other findings explained to him. We’re encouraged to explain everything to him. The wicked son separates himself from the issue by asking why it’s important to you. We’re told to tell him why it’s important to us (and not persuade him that it should be important to him). The simple son doesn’t even focus in on the issue and just asks “What is this?” so we’re to give him the headline. We’re told to approach the son who doesn’t even know how to ask a question and take the initiative to explain things to him. And one scholar writes about a fifth son who isn’t even in the room and it’s up to us to seek him out and give him the lowdown.

Sure, it may be a bit forced but it’s not hard to see those sons as archetypes of individuals, departments or entire workplace cultures. Whatever your framework is, you obviously need to understand the specifics of who you are dealing with and have a range of approaches for responding. All of this stuff with people (be they clients or research subjects) is messy and I’m not so comfortable with pre-emptive categorization and its resultant tactical choices.

Thanks to Tricia Wang and Jenna Burrell and everyone else at Ethnography Matters for a great discussion.