Thanks to Jorge Arango for a great conversation on The Informed Life podcast. The half-hour episode is embedded below, available at the podcast site, and wherever you get yer podcasts. The episode page also has a transcript.

And I have found, over the last few years, that in addition to providing tactics and kind of mindsets and sort of, “here’s what I advise and recommend for you to be successful in doing this work.” In these interactions that we have in kind of these feedback sessions, the role that I’m often playing is in giving people confidence and being able to say, “oh, the thing that you are describing is very common.” Because I think people have some experience, it feels weird, and they’re like, “well, I’ve screwed this up.” And so I’m working hard to give people confidence and say… to affirm their experience, to validate the uncertainty and struggle they felt in it. And then maybe say, “yeah, here’s a thing that you can try,” or, ” you know, there are tactics to kind of address this.”

But they need the confidence as much as they need the tactics. Because they might get to those tactics on their own, but if they feel like, “this is not the right way to do it, I’m screwing this up,” because it is a weird thing, because you may find yourself feeling like you’re screwing up when you actually are succeeding, because you’re dealing with the absolute uncertainty of another person who you don’t know, who you’re spending time trying to get to know a little bit… it’s entirely unpredictable and uncontrollable. And so, all the ways that we expect ourselves to be successful is to be controlling for all that uncertainty, but it’s inherently uncontrollable to some extent.

So yeah, the more you do it, the more you either make mistakes or feel uncertain about an experience that you’re having and reflect on it, whether it’s through listening to a podcast where people are talking about this or reading a book, or, working with someone who’s more experienced, who can reflect back to you. Those are all ways that we do become more confident with these sort of… surprising or unexpected aspects of what the nature of the work is.

Thanks to Ravi Tej for having me on the Nodes of Design podcast. The 35-minute episode is embedded below and can also be found on the podcast site.

In this episode, Steve shared wonderful insights on user interviews and why we do user interviews in design; we then discussed the framework of interviews using which we can gain great insights from users and few tips on actively listening and note-taking during interviews. In the latter part, Steve recommended five do’s and don’ts that designers/researchers must avoid while doing user interviews

Thanks to Daniel Elizalde for having me on the Enterprise Product Leadership podcast to talk about user research, especially in enterprise and industrial organizations. The audio (51 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

We discuss the complexities of doing user research in a B2B context, the challenges of getting access to users, the need to understand customers’ pain (as opposed to only focusing on usability), and how to influence your organization to conduct more research. Steve also shares his advice on how to build a practice that encourages ongoing user research.

Topics

• Steve’s career background and the work he does today as an experienced user researcher
• What a user researcher does and why it is important
• Invaluable tips for user researchers
• Why companies struggle to understand their customers’ challenges
• How a company can become more user-centered
• How to enable a culture that empowers everyone
• Why you may want to bring on a user researcher or an external expert
• The nuances of being a team player and contributing to the success of the company
• How to challenge baseline assumptions to move forward and grow as a company
• The differences between B2C and B2B user research
• The challenges of user research (and how to overcome them)
• Why user research is not only incredibly invaluable but needs to be figured out for your company
• Why culture is critical to research
• How to support leaders in helping transform the organization’s mindset into a customer-centric culture
• Proactive vs. reactive research

Tips

• Keep in mind user-research is a skill. You can read about it, take classes, listen to podcasts, but you also have to practice.
• Practice can include: knowing when to do research, knowing what research to do, how to go about actually doing the research, learning how to leverage the research that you’ve done, and learning how to help others understand the research.
• And be sure to give yourself the chance to get better. All of this takes time. Be compassionate and understand that research is not just binary; there are many, many facets of it.

I enjoyed the chance to speak with Brendan Jarvis for his Brave UX podcast. The 67-minute episode is embedded above, and is on YouTube. Update: Now on the web, with a transcript!

In this episode…

• How Steve’s adapted his practice in recent years, as a result of industry changes
• Why should researchers stop focusing on problems and start focusing on people?
• What’s important for user researchers to remember about bias (their bias)?
• How can researchers overcome resistance and level-up their impact?
• And why does Steve have a museum of foreign groceries in his home?

Thanks to Helena Levison (“Queen of UX”) for having me on the Why UX? podcast to talk about Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. The audio (28 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

This was a particularly exciting conversation for me because over the past while Helena has been hosting a online book club where she reads from the book, and even features appearances from some of the authors of the stories themselves!

I really enjoyed my conversation with Dawan Stanford for his Design Thinking 101 podcast. The audio (57 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

We talk about Steve’s excitement for and interest in spending more time with stakeholders within a client’s organization. He has learned why a stakeholder’s perspective is essential in relation to the success of a project. He talks about creating “learning-ready” moments, how he helps people have these moments, and how learning and sharing the journey of learning affect learning retention.

Listen in to learn:

• How Steve and others developed the design processes in the early stages of user experience and research
• How Steve’s skills, interests, and the work he does for his clients has evolved over the years
• When Steve knows he’s found a great client
• Why he believes that learning together is when change can happen
• Why understanding stakeholders gives better results with clients
• Being able to embrace realistic expectations of what you can accomplish

I had a really lovely conversation with Kavita Appachu and Mike Kendall for the SHIFT podcast. The 56-minute episode (available as either video or audio only) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

Steve Portigal, Author, Speaker, and Customer Research Expert, shares how to drive innovation using the power of strategic customer insights. He reminds us that learning from customers is “messy” because we are complex beings. In order to go deep while interviewing customers, you should have clarity about what is uncomfortable for you versus what is uncomfortable for customers and not conflate the two. His provocation, “No One Cares,” highlights the risk of magnifying the significance of our solutions in a customer’s life and missing the opportunity to focus on things that customers care about.

In the past couple of months I’ve managed to post a raft of new episode of Dollars To Donuts, the podcast where I speak with people who lead user research in their organization.

Here are the latest episodes

• Danielle Smith of Express Scripts
• Amber Lindholm of Duo Security
• Julia Nelson of MOO
• Chris Kovel of First Abu Dhabi Bank
• Noam Segal of Wealthfront
• Laith Ulaby of Udemy
• Kathryn Campbell of Ticketmaster
• Laura Faulkner of Rackspace

You can also find the podcast on Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and Apple.

It was great to speak with Leigh Allen-Arredondo for the UX Cake podcast. The audio (32 min) is embedded above, and available on the episode page.

I had a great conversation with Jamin Brazil for the Happy Market Research podcast recently. The audio and video are embedded above, and available on YouTube, or on the episode page.

While I was in Poland last year I was interviewed by Tomasz Skórski about the state of UX and user research.

The audio and video from our conversation is embedded above, available on YouTube here, or on the episode page.

In case you missed it, Dollars to Donuts, the podcast where I talk to people who lead user research in their organizations, is back with new episodes! So far, I’ve spoken with Leanne Waldal, Marianne Berkovich, and Tomer Sharon. And there are more to come! Check out the podcasts on portigal.com, iTunes, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Big news! The Dollars to Donuts podcast is back. Check out my brand new episode, a fascinating conversation with Leanne Waldal, Senior Director of Product Research at New Relic.

If you don’t know, in this podcast I talk to people who lead user research in their organization.

You can get Dollars to Donuts in a few places, including

• portigal.com
• Apple Podcasts
• Overcast
• Stitcher
• Spotify

While I was in Manchester last year I had a very enjoyable and friendly conversation with Bex and Jonny, the hosts of Tech for Good Live. We talked about the role of the user researcher, the increasingly blurry line between design and research, design ethics, and my favorite stories from user researchers out in the field.

The conversation is posted at Tech for Good Live and embedded below.

I had the pleasure of speaking recently with Chirryl-Lee Ryan about user research and more – we got into outcomes versus deliverables, tipping points for the tech industry, and a few other fun areas. The conversation is now live on This is HCD (including a transcript), and embedded below.

Chi shared her own user research war story

We didn’t have a car. We should have hired a car or we should have had a driver because we had no idea what the traffic was like in Manila. One of the team members went to catch their flight back to Australia and the taxi driver kind of kidnapped them because they didn’t have cash – all the things that you don’t think about when you’re going to do research – they happened to us on that on that particular research trip. And so you know, we got great insights and the client was just amazed but at the same time we sort of went through this wild adventure of our own on the back side of what was actually happening on the trip.