Steve Portigal
The Future of User Research
In this episode of Brave UX we take a deep-dive with Steve Portigal into his views on user research, the struggles he sees internal research teams going through, and how he’s adapting to changes in the industry.
Highlights include:
- Why should user researchers stop focusing on problems?
- What is important for user researchers to know about bias?
- How does the org. structure shape the UX research practice?
Who is Steve Portigal?
Steve is one of the most experienced, effective and well known user researchers on the planet.
In his 20+ years as Principal of Portigal Consulting, he has run research studies - interviewing hundreds of people - for organisations such as eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Nike, PayPal, and Sony.
Steve’s a regular blogger and podcaster, as well as the author of two widely praised books on user research - “Interviewing Users” and “Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries”.
Transcript
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave UX. I'm Brendan Jarvis, Managing Founder of The Space InBetween, and it's my job to help you to put the pieces of the product puzzle together. I do that by interviewing world class experts and UX and product management, and they share with us their expert learnings, advice and experiences. My guest today is Steve Portigal, an Escape Canadian now living in the San Francisco Bay area. Steve is the principal of Portigal Consulting, a firm he established 20 years ago to help people uncover key insights about their customers so that they could make better decisions about the design of their products, services, and businesses. But the title Principle doesn't really do Steve Justice. He's one of the most well known, deeply experienced and effective consulting UX researchers on the planet. You simply don't get invited to help people at companies like B dobe, eBay, hp, Microsoft, Nike, PayPal, and Sony to solve wicked problems.
- If you're a lightweight, Steve is perhaps most at home in other people's comfort zones. He's interviewed hundreds of people, including families eating breakfast, evangelical home automation enthusiasts, and rock musicians, all in the pursuit of discovering what matters. He's also put his interviewing skills to use as the host of Dollars to Donuts, a podcast where Steve speaks with people who lead user research at their organizations like Udemi, the New York Times and IBM to name a few. Steve's, a regular blogger and author of two widely placed books on user research, interviewing users how to uncover compelling insights, which has fast become a classic even though it's only seven years old. And more recently, doorbells, danger and Dead batteries, user research war stories, which is a hilarious and insightful look into the trials and tribulations of being a user researcher. These contributions to the field and Steve's engaging speaking style have seen him invited and invited back to speak at conferences and meetups around the world, including Mind the product, Northern UX, UX nz, UX Australia and South by Southwest. Steve's been described by his peers and clients as a creative force, a vital part of the community and incredibly insightful and well here he is, Steve, welcome to the show
- Steve Portigal:
- And I go lie down now. That was lovely and no pressure or expectations that here. Thanks for that [inaudible], great to get to speak with you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I like to set the bar high and before we get into the obvious subject matter of today's conversation, I really wanted to ask you Pat's most important question of this interview, which was, why do you have a museum of foreign groceries in your home?
- Steve Portigal:
- I mean, why not haven't those weird? I think you see this among research people, but I think people that are into of design, UX and products and just that sort of all of us, we find things about the the commercial world or the consumer world that we experience not in our work but just in our traves as someone who shops and eats or many people have a thing that they're obsessed with or entertained by or that's kind of their running joke whatever that would be. And for me of early in my career, I mean anyone that gets to travel outside their home country or home culture, it's in the rear view mirror for me now. So I remember being young and just being struck by stuff that is weird or funny or strange.
- I, I use those judgmental terms, I mean to be very light about it, it's your own view of the world as suddenly challenged. And I remember growing up in Canada in that era that I did, I dunno how common this is anymore, but go back, going to backpack around Europe was sort of the thing that you did when you finished your finished uni. And so my roommates and I, we just took two weeks. We went to European capital cities like you'd expect. And I remember having this moment of buy things in the grocery store and go eat in the park. We were very frugal staying in youth hostel, sort of very typical experience I think. And so go into the grocery store we're in Amsterdam, everything's in Dutch, but it sort of looks like English. You can figure out what everything is and we buy some bread and we buy some cheese and buy kind of a pint container, 500 milk container of chocolate milk.
- It's in the dairy section. I love chocolate milk. It's kind of like a childish thing to do get, I was just ready for a little treat it been a hard day of being a tourist. And it's got a picture of farm and cows on and it's got that chocolate brown colors, kind of the artwork on the box right on the carton, pay it with our foreign money. Obviously war foreign, but everything seems foreign to us. Go sit in the park having what we're having open up the carton. Just so excited to have some chocolate milk. I'm like a young man, so know how young men drink, they're just blood blow blood. I just tilt my head back tilt it was cared back and it's pudding [laugh]. So it's just this glob kind of entering my mouth and you know, just set your brain up for a sensory experience. Oh, I'm sorry, should it said something like, Dutch looks sort English shocked with milk or something like that. It said what it was. And so this pudding comes and I mean I must have just screeched out loud, so such a shock.
- So that's like, anyway, that's the canonical patient zero foreign grocery experience where not only was, I mean I was surprised by something sort of benign, seemingly benign. And then years later as I'm getting to travel for my profession and we're in Japan and we're going into restaurants and trying to navigate or whatever we're doing for field war, or not the research but the life of the researcher that is being exposed to these different things. You know, find funny mascots flavors that you don't think would be that interesting maybe where you're from. Lots of words that are very funny in English that maybe aren't meant to be funny in the language that they're written in, but they wanna have an English brand on them, [affirmative]. So they started to be souvenirs or mementos of the experience and then I just started collecting them like, oh, this would be a thing to do.
- You could spend a very small amount of money and kind of capture some part of this experience. And so then making it a museum was just a way to maybe in some way sort of market myself just to try to describe myself. I mean some of this goes back to 20 years ago being new at being my own consultant and just trying to stay the world like, oh here's an interesting thing about me that the captures in an indirect way what it is that I think that I do see how things are. It's, it is that thing that we do in research. We don't completely forego our own assumptions about the world, but we do find things that represent somebody else's assumptions about the world and hold them up so that we can examine both our assumptions and the reality. I'm making it sound much more kind of precious than it really is, but it's kind of a quick and dirty way to tell that story about myself in a way that's maybe fun. Yeah,
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I like that. And let that be a lesson to anyone that's traveling to Holland and wants a glass of chocolate, chocolate milk. I think there's something in there for us as researchers about checking our expectations and our prior assumptions before we get into a research session in there. And Steve, you mentioned in there sort of touched on this notion of curiosity and that the collection of these pieces of foreign grocery is almost like partner memento, but it's formed this library of curiosities in your home. And you mentioned 20 years ago, and I wanna come back to that in a minute. But before we do that, I was actually listening to another podcast that you were interviewed in the Shift podcast and it was Think Kavita apa. She asked you about the dedication of your first book to your mum interviewing users, Shana. And what I wanted to ask you and cause I really liked that story, why did you dedicate your first book to your mum?
- Steve Portigal:
- Do I need to be consistent with how I answered that question the last time? Because you just watched it and what I said
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I know, but
- Steve Portigal:
- That was six months ago and I don't remember what I said exactly.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- There's no test.
- Steve Portigal:
- Yeah, I know I grew up in a single parent household, so it's more, that is maybe more common now. I think there's just, as life has changed, but certainly in the era that we grew up in, it wasn't quite shameful, but it was pretty close to that and of a traditional conservative European-centric community that we were from [affirmative] that not, and that we were from my family was sort of expats from one part of Canada to another part of Canada. So there was not multiple generations of people there. So I think it's sort of an isolated kind of upbringing. I don't mean that we didn't have community and friends, but some of the infrastructure that maybe we take for granted in certainly what I'm exposed to now at this point in my life. And so that means that there's a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility for my mother who I think made it her goal to ensure that her kids had opportunities beyond those which she had finished high school and that was it. And did, didn't ever have really a career. She worked her whole life until she retired to enjoy that. But she worked to take care of everybody. I mean, she worked at a job to take care of everybody, but she also worked to take care of everybody.
- So I dedication says that my mother taught me how to ask questions. And I think that is the text that my mother is an incessant question asker. It's one of those qualities that you know, admire and you roll your eyes at, depends where you are at in the question asking. So I think the text is sort of saying it's impossible to disconnect what my profession demands of me in terms of looking at the world, doing that task, but also thinking about the world that way literally is a thing that I was exposed to. But also I think reaching a point in one's life where, wow, I wrote a book and I am having this book come out where does all this? I mean that's a milestone that I was extremely mean, grateful for the chance to get to that point. And I think the subtext of that dedication was just to acknowledge, yeah, I was put on a path, put on a path by someone that didn't know what that path looked like but sent out with to have opportunities. So I think the SubT Tax is kind of acknowledging, if not for the kind of upbringing that I had then I wouldn't be having this conversation with you wouldn't be someone who's written books. It's, I'm grateful for that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's a really, really beautiful story and thank you for sharing that with us today. So I don't like to ask people to pick favorites, especially when it comes to children, but in this case, when it comes to books, you've written two obviously the one that we were just talking about interviewing users was your first, have you got a favorite of the two that you've released?
- Steve Portigal:
- Yeah I mean the sales numbers tell me what the world's favorite is, interviewing users is you know, refer to it as a classic. I think it, it's done really, really well. Yeah, I mean, I guess I can say how and why they're different in terms of, so I think doorbells danger in dead batteries is my favorite but they, they're very, very different experiences. I was just telling someone yesterday that writing a second book was amazing as an experience because I had to relearn how to write a book and I think maybe many of us go through whatever creative projects, different kinds of endeavors and you know, figure it out and then the stakes change or the context changes, you gotta refigure out how to do that. And for years I was very intimidated by the idea of writing a book to begin with, manage somehow to kind of do it with all the help and support that I had the first time and then took on a very different kind of project and was just stuck for so long.
- But there was a point in, so if people haven't read the book, it's a collection of I wanna say 35 stories from other researchers about experiences they've had. And I'm there in the book pulling it together and reflecting on what these things tell us as researchers. So very different than writing, interviewing users, which was basically capturing, I don't know, 15 years of practice of teaching a blog AGS of lectures and trying to taking what I had been doing. I mean the arrogant analogy I use is the band that gets signed after playing clubs for 10 years puts out an amazing debut album because they have been, they've had those songs forever and they have been playing and refining them. So I think, yeah, interview users came out seven years ago, but it's 15 or more years of work that kind of went into it. So yeah, then the bands have the so more slump whether the second album doesn't necessarily do as well cuz it's like, oh it's an album about being in a band because suddenly that's what their life is about.
- So I wrote a second book which was about what's it like to be a researcher? I mean I'm just, I'm cliche all down the line but that experience of writing was extremely, it was hard to figure out what that was gonna feel like, but there was a point at which I cracked it, the light bulb went off or whatever metaphor you want. And it was an extremely rewarding creative state where, oh, I've got this now I can just do this. I can write this chapter and write this chapter, write this chapter and see how it's structured and have things to say. And creative work can just be a grind or it can be this thing that lifts you up. It's pretty rare to encounter the ladder, but I got there with that and just having gone back over it at different times to use it for talks and conferences and pull things out, there are all these pieces that I kind of go back and look at 'em like, damn, that's good.
- Or I remember who did the review of the draft and pointed me how to fix this thing. So it's a very self-centered view of favorite, I think It's not about what does the world need or where is their value or what do people get out of it, but as the creator of something and the pride that I take in it. And then the caveat to all this is I have sort of wondered maybe I should go back and read my first book. I don't really know what is in there the same way because to sort write it and then it is material that I'm still teaching and still applying and so on. But I don't know that book as well, again because of the look where that material came from and how it's like I organized it, but I'd been living it before and since.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What was it about needing to tell other researchers stories in the way that you did? Why this format? What were you hoping that it would achieve? What impact would it have in the community in four researchers?
- Steve Portigal:
- So the original intent was not to do that and the books are linked. There's a point in interviewing users where I talk about one of the ways that we can learn to be better at research is telling stories about what happens and interviewing users that says go to this url. There are stories there. And so before interviewing users came out, I had to solicit stories. So I'd obviously been thinking about it I had my own stories I had somebody working for me that this had a couple great stories, so I was just always awestruck by them in terms of just a great story just really moves you without really picking, not really picking up on what did that story tell me. But just that sense you get, oh wow, this says it all.
- So I started this project kind of in support of interviewing users to populate that URL to solicit stories and they sit on a channel in a blog on my site I guess is how I describe it. And every story that would come in and be like, oh man, that's it. And it was really interesting as the story's kind of accrued, you start to feel like, oh this is kind of a corpus, this is kind of a collective. And what happens is they're on a blog and blogs are about the recent posts and as time goes on, suddenly I have this sort of historical collection that's now disappeared. It's on, if you were to page through, it's on the 11th page of the 27th page, it's not. And so the gestalt of it, the thing it aggregates into was lost.
- And at the same time a number of my peers and friends were self-publishing. And self-publishing went from an inaccessible thing maybe over the last, from X years ago to five years ago. It's very logistically realistic way to do it. And I thought, okay, I have these stories, let me just put them from one form into the other. I'm going to concatenate them, put them in series and put them in paper with a cover on it. And that'll just be this thing that just has some meaning. You can read all, you can hold onto them all together out of this diffusion of the blog and look at what they have to say. And so I don't know how this always works, but my publisher, Rosenfeld Media has a clause, it's a first write of refusal clause. If they sign you, they have the rights, you have to give them your first book or they can turn it down if they want to, but you gotta go to them first.
- So I'm kind of contractually obligated. So I have the meeting, I think it even just came up, we're at a bar, it was not a formal meeting, but I just kind of said, Hey, I think I wanna do this. I know it's probably not for you, I'm just gonna kind of do this thing. And Lou Rosenfeld, my friend and publisher says, well maybe there's something more to it. I'm like, I don't know, I just think it's just all these stories put together, it's maybe you have a new theory of user research that's kind of lurking in here's, I don't know. And so we negotiated. So anyway, he was not interested in refusing. He's like, he wants another book and he thinks there's something in here. So we just negotiated and you go through this iterative process of trying to describe what the book is going to be about even though a lot of times you don't really know until you start writing it.
- And so I was kind of cajoled, pushed along, pull along, encouraged to kind of take it a little bit further. And so then I think that's sort where I was stuck. It's like, okay, I can kind of group these but what do I have to say about it? And then we're working with an editor is really helpful because they would even just very tactical things like every chapter should end with a series of tips. And I'm like, but these stories are up here. They're about these things that happen. They're about somebody kneeling in cat urine and having to still maintain their rapport. What's the tip for that? Bring extra pants. How do you translate these stories which are, they're kind of anti lesson or they're like meta lesson or something, how do you translate that? So that was the pushing and direction that I got from working with a publisher, working with an editor.
- And then, yeah, like I said, you reached this point of the creative process where this is what it's about. Now I get what it is that I have been trying to say or what is the gestalt when you put these things together and it's sort of clearer at the end, but it was very unclear at the beginning and at the end. So that all being said, the reason I started aggregating these things in the first place is I think I want people to tell stories about what happens, including the things that go wrong, including the ordinary and banal things that happen because that is the reality and we don't talk about those things. We don't talk about case studies and conference presentations. We're missing the chance to really learn as a community, as a practice. So that mission I think was what drove me. But it's not until I kind of understand what the book is shaping up to be that I'm able to say that more clearly. I think then just here's a bunch of stories.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I mean look, it was certainly a really effective format for helping you feel connected to the community globally. And there are a couple of stories in there that I particularly enjoyed. One I believe was in Portugal or Spain and it was a female researcher visiting I think a viti culturist or a winemaker. And he just refused to acknowledge her as the research lead because she was a female. And it wasn't until she was able to check that situation, step away from it, have a conversation over t and then work into it, interview questions once she'd addressed that bias that he had held possibly just because of his age and then was able to continue with the interview. And I think there's just so many gems in the book of just the expectations we have when we go into someone else's environment and sometimes the disgust and another story that you had there with the dirty nappy on the way up, the drive that another researcher had and how you manage those situations and storytelling such a really powerful format for passing on wisdom. So it was a really, really great book and I highly recommend it. Shifting gears, Steve, thinking about what you do. So user research, UX research, whatever you wanna call it, whatever we call it these days, there are a lot of different perspectives out there about what it is. It isn't how you should do it, how you shouldn't do it to you, what is the role of user research?
- Steve Portigal:
- There are many perspectives and depending on when you get me, I wanna say they're all wrong or that we have room for all of them. I think it's that tension between this our, I mean everybody's understanding is evolving and shifting all the time and the language shifts and everything all the time. But what is the role of research? I wish I had some great wisdom. Let me take a shot at it and let's see if it sounds smart or I'm making something up. I think the role of research is to elevate the sense of, it's not just the sense of I'm trying to elevate something and that thing is what do we collectively believe about the world, which is my bro, it's more than just our users. It really is what's out there the world ourselves and the things that we can do. So that's product services, communication, strategy, brand, mission statement, all the things that we can do to connect with and the way that's kind of best for us about them. So there's us, there's them, and then there's choices we make about what we wanna do. And so when I say elevate, we're like, I'm trying to move that forward into a more confident and kind of empowered state so that better decisions can be made.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And you're a consulting researcher and that gives you a external perspective often which the internal researchers or product or design teams just don't have. From your experience from the outside in, how do you think in general terms the organization sees the role of user research?
- Steve Portigal:
- Yeah, I think it would have few of those words in it. I think in the worst possible situation, well the worst possible situation is we don't need research, we know all this. But I think just above that is the situation where research is seen as confirmatory or validating. And I dunno if I can do this justice, but I had someone once try to parse out the difference between evaluative and validation. Whereas evaluative is help us assess and validation is give us the rubber stamp. Yes, yes, you just did. Yes. So I think sometimes we map this strategic and tactical, but I don't think that's a clean mapping cuz I think you can be strategic about of tactical, you can do strategic evaluations, you can use all those information a lot of ways I think research is often seen as a way to help the company you get these sort of phrases, be closer to our customers soft. But I think they're a good kind of soft definition. You try to empower an understanding that's kind of an engine or kind of a baseline sense of what it is we're doing and who we're doing it for.
- But I described something I think was a little more tapping right into the mission of the organization. And I think that is not, it's hard to be, it's very many different kinds of companies with different kinds of leadership including research leadership that isn't always what that potential for research, which I'm articulating isn't always the role that research is placed in.
- And so I, the people I talk to on my podcast to are leading those research functions inside those companies would probably talk more about shipping products. I mean the things that the company does to make money and stay in business that they have jobs and how they can support their colleagues in making the right decisions about those things in the products. And I think what I like about the people I talk to in my podcast is they're kind of whatever it takes to get that kind of information that will help support them in making those decisions. So yeah, I mean have the consultants aspirational framing of it's that it can be slightly higher than that. But yeah, as you said, I'm a consultant. These people are inside organization inside these teams
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [affirmative]. And I've heard you say in the past that it's interesting to see how the language of the people inside the organization almost instantaneously changes when they're responsible for delivering research in that context. Largely cuz incentives that are aligning behind whatever the organization wants to achieve, not necessarily what it is that people need to hear. And this is actually something that I've been quite fascinated with is this idea of research becoming an internal function as you mentioned, and how or if that senses or modifies the approach that researchers take. You've mentioned or you've taken issue in the past with researchers describing themselves as supporting squads. And this sort of spoke to me about this notion of, you talk about aspiration sounds like research as a leading activity within creating value as opposed to a following or a supporting activity. How important is the structure of that enables research to shaping the way in which people think about their role?
- Steve Portigal:
- Structure's a great term cuz I think it can mean reporting structure but there's other sort of structural elements about how people work internally. I heard a story from someone who's a research leader at a big technology company and she was describing to me how when the UX and especially the user research function defined roles and promotion and kind of levels and so on they felt like a key measure, an input into those decisions of career progression would be input from other functions. So in this case I think it might be engineering and maybe product management so that it was important for the researchers performance assessment to include input from these other functions that they support or collaborate with. But this leader pointed out to me that's not asymmetrical. Those functions do not ask for research to provide input to them. If you're an engineer reviewed by engineers and you're manager and then you kind of evolve that way but researchers are kind of saying like, oh no, this is the right thing to do.
- Our work is very much dependent on impact and influence. So even structurally how you are going to be promoted and the power that other disciplines have to determine how you're gonna be successful. And then this then creates situations where, so here's this leader who has people that they're responsible for. And I think the thing that, and this is probably true for every discipline, but researchers, we like to complain about unrealistic or uneducated expectations. Can you give us this information this way that will help us do this? Well that's not gonna work. We have to do this. It takes us much time but we don't have that much time. So all those kinds of expectations that are set by other people and all that negotiation, well those people are now determining literally your promotion, your financial incentives are determined by people that you might need to say no to.
- And so here's the manager, the manager's job, I mean among many other things is to write interference is to ensure that the people that report to them are being utilized effectively and consistent with their skills or best practices to do quality work to help the company ship products that people will buy and use and love and all that. Well now all these things are in conflict. So it's not even about, so I guess when you say structure, I'm like that's sort of a structural aspect too but it's kind of in policy, it's kind of in hr, it's kind of in management but I mean there's just all these conflicts, these things are not in harmony and it has the negative effects that you would expect I think in terms of how are people stressed about trying to meet expectations? And if you think about what kind of people become researchers, many of us are people pleasers, maybe conflict averse. There tend to be my assessment, there tend to be more introverts in research. Our skill in research often is about listening first and talking second. So those kinds of things then also create structural, I think challenges to one's success. And I guess I'm kind of conflating now two pieces, I'll stop in a moment. I'm conflating two pieces. One is the individual researchers sort of success, contentment, happiness and just stress level and all that and the effectiveness of the research to do its job and improve the product. Anyway, I'll stop there. There's an example of structure and almost tendrils really having an impact.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Something that you said and then answer there really made me think about the expectations on research and researchers. You mentioned how other disciplines don't actively seek researchers input and how they do what they do. So you don't get a developer or an engineer asking a researcher to do some code. There's a movement at the moment, it feels like a bit of pressure that the researchers that I talk to are under in general to reinvent themselves. And part of that is being driven by what I'm seeing out there. And that's the people who do research, which I believe you've talked about versus the user researchers and this shift to enabling non researchers to do research. And the most basic example of this is the usability test. And that the UX designer or the product designer or the product manager could and maybe run these studies. What is it actually, I'll run, I'll rewind that back a little. How do you feel about that?
- Steve Portigal:
- Great question. Lots of things are going on there. I think researchers have been champions for research. I mean, yes, I've written books and given lectures and teach people. I mean I want people to be able to do this. And yeah, there was kind of a point a few years ago where I had this like, oh, oh moment. Oh, be careful what you wish for. You invite everyone in, you tell 'em to do this, you show them. And now we're at a point where I'm like, oh, everyone's doing it. Which has impacts for mean just the demands for my services.
- So what does that mean? I mean I think it's a net good, but it, it's created lots of upheaval and lots of challenges. I've heard stories about teams that went to a lot of trouble to set up structure to enable people who do research to recruit their own usability participants and moderate a test and get the results. And as I understand this, and this is someone else's story, so if I have it wrong, it's on me. It led to a lack of appreciation for the research team, which was fairly sizeable and doing I think all kinds of work for this company. But they dramatically downsize it. It's like, well why do we need you? We can do all this.
- So we call all of this research and we say this is all lower caser, capital R, research researchers do it. People who do research do it. These are not all the same thing. We don't have, and this is on the practice of research to not sort articulate that nuance or those distinctions. So I think you have lots of examples where this is very successful where it's driven, sorry, there's a lot of facets here and I'm jumping quickly across them here. A lot of this is driven by demand exceeding supply. Well that's good. The company, the teams, the squads acknowledge we need more research than can be performed. And we're not gonna hire 170 researchers. I mean if you're a big company, yes, but we're not gonna hire people to do all these things that maybe not even be a good thing to do. So now we have a resource problem, all right, research leaders, how are you gonna do this? Well, we can prioritize, we can delegate, we can kinda level up people. I think there are all these mitigation strategies there is research that there's some snobbiness here. I mean I'll research, I don't wanna do, it's not an efficient use of my time, it's not a good match with my skills. There's other research that I do want be involved in. And so you have these teams with some diversity of kind of skill but also intellectual leanings and background. So being able to take, I think this is a great thing for a leader to do.
- I saw this talk that the folks from Asurion in Nashville put together and it was kind of around the cookbook for a user research team. I dunno if I can extend the whole metaphor metaphor properly, but they had this kind of sheet of paper that they drew up that was they did this process of looking at what the different teams were doing and they coded them things teams were doing that they were gonna just ignore a team over here has got something. They're doing these kinds of check-ins with people that are these kinds of users not even gonna touch that. And then there were things where they were gonna go, and again, I'm not getting everyone's stories exactly, so this is my paraphrase. They might kind of intervene, advise like, hey, you know could do this better if you use this or we have this tool for you, we have this resource.
- There were things they were gonna kind of manage and then there were things they were gonna kinda own. And so their brief for themselves, again resources are constrained, was about looking at all that stuff and making an assessment about that. And I think it sounds very empowering to say there's things we're gonna just ignore. We're maybe in the best of all possible worlds that wouldn't be happening, but it's not. We can't, so we're just gonna leave it. And so I think they're being strategic that what is our mission? What do we have resources to do? Where can we have the most impact on the company? And let's look at what those activities are. So there's research that's gonna be happening that will have none of their involvement or they'll have little of their involvement. That seems, I mean while there's risk in that, I'd say overall that's good. There's more research happening than the research team can do and the company is learning more about people and its products that they're gonna put out in the world. So yeah, that's how I feel about it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I mean it sounds like you look at this as an opportunity rather than a threat. And it's almost like there's a maturity of research that's happening. It's almost like growing pains at the moment. It's sort where do we fit in? How do we add the most value? Is this a maturing of research that we are seeing and living through?
- Steve Portigal:
- Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. And you can look at individual companies and kind of see where they are in that trajectory. What is their maturity look like? But you're right, I think in the aggregates, because we have companies or teams or leaders that are at different points, they're kind of pulling everyone along and we have more models of what kind of looks like. Yes. And I think there still are, when you mature at anything, it's like you can look back, you can also look forward. I think we, it's clear how many things are not yet fully worked out in terms of, like I said, we don't even have a proper term to describe this different kind of research. So that might be the indicator if we can talk about this in a more nuanced way to distinguish between these different pieces. And I think there's maturity to come there. But yes, I think tremendous growth. If you look at the number of researchers, the number of books, conferences, podcasts, whatever it is, there's a lot more out there than there used to be. But you're right, I really, it's cool to hear you say that. Yes, I think the discussion of what we should be doing in our organization and who is moving right along I think in a good way.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And this moving along of how researchers practice and where researchers add value. How are you adapting as Portugal Consulting, as Steve Portugal, how have you observed your practice changing in recent years to accommodate for the shift?
- Steve Portigal:
- Yeah, I mean I think helping companies to mature their practices is often the request that I'm getting. So yeah, I'm a researcher. I definitely go and work with companies and run a study to use the jargony term, do some research, help try to drive decisions. But more and more companies are looking to someone like me who's written books I suppose, or just as a history to guide them in how to move from where they are now to where they wanna be. I mean sometimes that involves trying to assess doing research on the practice. What is, who's doing research? What are you doing, what kind of decisions are you making? Sometimes it's collaborating with those leaders who maybe have done some identification already of where they see the gaps. Sometimes it's working on skill development for researchers who are kind of stuck or have some questions they really wanna dig into how do we get better at storytelling?
- A pretty soft kind of framing around researcher skills. Sometimes it's around people who do research who just don't know if they're asking questions the right way. Don't know who they should be talking people dunno what kinds of studies they should be doing. So yeah, I think it's sort of been the evolution. And for me the goal is to have, I mean that's the fun of consulting. Everything informs everything else. So doing research makes me a better workshop instructor, running a workshop makes me better at doing research, seeing how this team is progressing. It helps me understand how this team could build a roadmap. And so when my workload is good, it's good because it's diverse enough that I'm learning I'm better at everything because I'm getting to peek into these different kinds of problem spaces and use some different muscles of mind.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So shift shifting gears now, thinking about that role doing as the researcher. You've said that you'd wish researchers stop approaching research as a way to solve problems and instead focus on people. Tell us a little bit about that and what you mean
- Steve Portigal:
- That initial question that you frame a research effort with. Yeah, I mean you set out to look for something, you're gonna find something that looks like that. The more you do this, the more you sort of learn the yes and how to find something else. But if your research study is about help us find find the pain points in our invoicing system. I mean you can find them and you can fix them. But that's starting with an assumption about the world. If your exploration is about how do you know people that manage money for businesses take care of the money in and the money out I'm using of non processing terms that obviously includes the tools that they use, not just ours but our competitors the tools they use that our product feeds into or flows from the numbers that the ways that people interact and communicate and try to accomplish their goals.
- It builds a richer picture of the thing that we're trying to do. Our mission is not sell people more invoicing software. Our mission is support people in, I don't know, money management or kind of a account receivable. It's one or two levels above. And if we don't do research with that in mind, we're missing opportunities. Opportunities that we don't know that don't opportunities that are within what we're doing and you know can get false negatives and false positives. If you just zoom in too much, you think, oh this isn't working, it needs to be different. Well it's not working for another reason if you don't zoom out enough to understand that larger reason. So looking at people and their behavior gives you information to answer questions about your product and how you should solve something. But you're run the risk of missing a lot of exciting stuff that I think has just tremendous potential for the thing that we're trying to do. Help the organization think and believe differently about what they're doing in the world so that they can have the impact that they want.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And for the researchers that are listening to today's show, I mean some of them are probably feeling like this ability to focus on the people and the bigger problem connected to the mission may feel like a lot of a lUXury that they can't quite grasp. How do I communicate to the business that they haven an objective and I'm shaping my research question in a way that's perhaps a level or two above where the business stakeholders see my role. What advice or experience in similar situations can you share with those researchers that feel a little bit stuck with their ability to level up their research questions so they can research those more interesting and more broadly and potentially more impactful areas of their customers and users?
- Steve Portigal:
- I think sometimes it's worse than even what you're talking about. I was have colleagues where their stakeholders were sitting in on calls with them and then going back over the script afterwards. And I want you to get to this topic by this minute, micromanaging it as a script. I think once dynamics are established, it's a lot more work to change them. And ideally you want to get in front of this, this is great when this is still challenging, this is better when there is a research leader who is setting the tone for what the team does and setting the tone ahead of time and that can back the individual researcher up.
- I think one key for a research leader or this individual researcher is trying to shift the narrative from reactive research, researched a proactive research. And that doesn't mean we're not answering the questions that our teams, you call them squads, I'm trying to use your word squads, but our squads know that they have it doesn't mean we're rejecting their questions. I think I said yes and before it can be and you kind of model it pretty well. We're gonna talk about your thing and we're gonna start here. So being proactive is a different way of doing it. And so reactive is often, hey we're here. This is just about to happen. We just need these questions. Can you get them to us by this and this time? And now you're like a short order cook here at a fast food restaurant the proactive is hey, squad A and group B and this department over here, we're looking over the next 18 months or four months, whatever kind of you're planning horizon is. What are you building, what are you shipping? What new markets are we going into? What innovation's already kind of exploring, all right, let us propose to you what information you're gonna need to do that and let us propose to you or not even tell you here's the activities we're going to engage in to support that.
- And so to answer those questions, especially when, so the better thing about reactive proactive versus reactive is you can look at the bigger picture. I don't need eight studies about how somebody onboards, I need one study about longitudinally, what the life cycle is of somebody's experience with something. So now we can put together a more intentional study that includes what are your goals and includes where did you click and includes, I don't know, a log analysis, it includes patterns from data science that they're gonna pull. Cause now we are trying to solve the problem, not kind of apply a method in a less intentional way. So I think researchers can be asking, they can be asking all kinds of questions if they're involved in thinking more long term and thinking more intentionally. And so yeah, going back my point about leadership, if you are seen as supporting this flaw and kind of an executor of plans that are handed to you, it's very hard to say let's take some time and talk about your goals and talk about your plans.
- And maybe in fast growing startups there isn't, it's harder to do that. The time horizon is shorter and you need the authority to convene that conversation. So it's certainly easier if that's the title and that's what you're hired for and those are your peers and you're having meetings with them anyway. It's not to say that a researcher can't be a change, an isolated individual contributor researcher can't be a change agent and say, you know what? I think these conversations need to happen and I'm going to find someone that where we've been successful together before in the past, who is excited by information that surprises them, is sort of comfortable with the unknown and comfortable with challenges, their assumptions. And I'm gonna just talk a little differently about what we do or I'm gonna pitch them or I'm gonna have a meeting with them. And so to start slow individual changes. Again, it's very hard to manage up and change culture and so I don't wanna sort over promise that, but there are so many great stories about people who have found allies and gone where the heat is go, where the love is to start to not even start to continue having these kind of better conversations about what we're going to be doing and then how we're gonna go about it. Yeah
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I really like that. I mean if you're listening and you are a sort of lone researcher and you really wanna level up the organization, that what Steve mentioned there about finding an ally, find someone that connects with the value that research can bring and you don't have to convince and then see if you can work with them to fur further the goal. I wanna come back to something you mentioned, Steve, just there about this sound sounded like almost a tension between proactive and reactive states of research. And one of the things that I've observed, and I'm not sure if this is your experience as well, but even non-tech or product based organizations are adopting agile as a way of working. It's almost like you have the quarterly result used to be the most important thing and everyone was charging for the quarter. And now you have this cadence of delivery based on sprints, which are for arguments sake two weeks long. Yet the discovery cadence doesn't seem to have yet found its rhythm to work in with delivery expectations. How much of this tension between proactive and reactive is baked into the way organizations are actually trying to create things these days?
- Steve Portigal:
- I mean I think reactive goes back to kind of the origins of user research and us saying we don't get any respect and we get brought in too late. I mean that's UX design before we even had UX, we wanna go back decades. That's a perennial complaint I think. I suspect when you have engineering led businesses, that's kind of how they operate. And as other processes and disciplines to try to make a case for themselves. They face the, yeah, we're being brought in too late and we kind of can't have impact in the way that we know we can offer. So think agile software development methodologies or the things that people do that they use that label to characterize I mean I'm sure that's exacerbated it, but I don't, it goes way, way back.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- We think now about the individual researcher, there's an ancient Greek saying that goes along the lines of thy self. What do you believe is important for a user researcher to know about themselves when doing research
- Steve Portigal:
- This, the bias word is this word that comes up a lot. People that are sort of new to research are afraid of it cuz they've sort of heard it. And I think it's a bad thing. And when we use bias in other contexts, it's a bad thing. It's a fireable offense, it's discriminatory to, it's not inclusive, it's a bias is kind of as bad thing. And it's hard to then say, well in research as a human to human activity bias is just, it's part of our wiring. And there's that amazing diagram. It's like the cognitive bias wheel. I dunno if you've seen this thing, it's overwhelming. There's like hundreds and hundreds of biases
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I gave up on it. It freaked me out when I looked at,
- Steve Portigal:
- Yeah. And so people ask, right? And they're like, well how do I stop being biased? It's like this is part of the brain, this is part of culture. We have choices. I think we have lots and lots of choices, but we also have biases. It's kind of we come with it. I was hearing some people talk the other day and they were very I wish I could have capture their language. It was so brilliant. It was about the combination of as a researcher going through a study, there's the combination of lived knowledge and collective knowledge. They said it much, much better. But I had never heard of it so neatly. So we all have lived knowledge, we have a view of how the world works based on what we've experienced. That is an unassailable fact. You cannot cleanse yourself of that.
- But we also collect knowledge in doing research. And those two pieces interfere with each other. They inform each other. They're kind of, they're intention, but they're also I think in sort of celebratory ways together. So that is the nature of being a researcher. And I loved that these women I heard talk about this other day, didn't call it bias. They just said, I've been in the world and so I have an experience and I have things and I'm doing this research. And so all those things come together. Again, another example of me paraphrasing and not doing justice as somebody who is very smart. So if you heard that it's better than what I'm saying.
- So that self knowledge that was being described there as opposed to squelching a bias or denying it or even overriding it. And so for me there's been just trying to pay attention to those moments. When you do an interview mean, especially true in an interview versus maybe some other methods, you're just gonna make a mistake. You're gonna ask a question. And the answer to that question is outside the presumptions of that question. And that's a failure. So when you get a well action in your response, Brendan as a citizen of New Zealand, what's what's it like to live in a place where the borders are closed? Well, actually my family came here, Steve, from the whatever, former Soviet Union in the eighties. I'm like, oh, okay. So that's awkward. And I failed as the interviewer when I do that. But it's actually something cool in that there's a little gift in that because my question had an assumption and the answer challenged that assumption.
- Well that's what we're trying to do. That's the whole point of doing the research. If I know everything about everything and I just get all those great stuff coming in, then we don't really need me. But as much as I'm trying to be open and not make presumptions, I'm still gonna try to be nice to you and tell you how much I know about you and connect and do all those sort of pleasing rapport building things. So when you make those mistakes, and sometimes they're not even utterance, so sometimes they're just monkey mind things. Like, I have a whole story about this person in my head that I don't know that I have until they tell me something about them. And that is cool. That's like this little gift. Oh, how I thought the world was is not how the world is. That's why I collect groceries from other places.
- That's why I do research. And so you have these small moments where that is happening. So in terms of knowing oneself I would love for people to be able to just identify the second or the microsecond that anything like that ever. Not all of them, but just once, identify what that is and sit with what the feeling there is. Is it a feeling of failure? Is it a feeling of excitement? Is it all of those? So for me personally, I think that's a really interesting part of research that we can make into a positive and make us more effective. Cause ultimately you wanna embrace those moments, not shut them down or not hear them. Cuz then you're not, you're missing the chance to get everything out of this experience that you possibly could.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, I really love that notion of recognizing those gifts. And this is something I've actually wondered about, and we don't have time today to go into this in any detail, but just the expectations that we place on ourselves and our profession and how they may have been shaped through our education and what success looks like. And it seems like mean if I think about my own practice, very hard on myself, which I think can be a good and a bad thing but when it verges on that perfectionism, how do I accommodate for all of these biases? And really wrapping yourself over the knuckles. If you make a mistake in an interview, which I've done in this interview, I mean this isn't a user interview, but being too critical really removes your ability, I feel, to acknowledge and see and do something with those moments, those gifts that you've mentioned, Steve. So we'll gonna bring things to a close. I have just a couple of quick final questions and then a short game to play. If there was one thing that people could use from the user research toolbox that would help them to understand other people, and I'm talking about people at large and general, not people in the practice of user research, what would that be?
- Steve Portigal:
- I had a mentor slash colleague early on that would say people make sense and sometimes you approach, the worst version of this is people that talk about participants lying. I'm not saying it never happens, but for the most part someone says A and then contradicts a later on, they're not lying or it's not a useful frame to look at it. It makes sense. Why did they understand or feel the need to express something at a certain part of the interview? What was going on? What were they expecting from you? Were they trying to impress you? Were they uncertain? Were they nervous? Did they not understand? Did you give them an hour to reflect on it through an in depth conversation? Then later on they talk about it another way. So as opposed to pushing against and refuting what people tell you and it doesn't cue to the structures that you're kind of projecting on them.
- I guess it's kind of my theme here, right? You're missing the chance to see them where they are and using those contradictions, seeming contradictions as kind of a map to look below and try to understand. And yeah, if you just say that, if that person makes sense to them, they make sense. If they don't make sense to me, that's on me. And so I have to ask myself questions about what was going on there and why did we hear that? Maybe if you're still with the person, you ask them the question, but you're still gonna be sorting it out for the next however many days and weeks. So ask yourself the question, why did that happen? Why did they say that? Yeah, people make sense.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, that seems like a really important question or thing to bear in mind when you're talking with other people, particularly at the moment where there's so much charge, rhetoric and sort of dysfunction in society at the moment around quite important issues. And being able to say that the other person makes sense and to try and understand why what they said, I think is a really important thing for us all to bear in mind. So now we're gonna play a quick game. It's called, what's the first word that comes to mind? So what I'm gonna do, Steve, is I'm gonna say a word or a phrase and then you are just gonna tell me what immediately pops into your head. Sound good?
- Steve Portigal:
- No. Well, let's do it anyway.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh], are you ready?
- Steve Portigal:
- Yes.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- First word or words? Research sprint.
- Steve Portigal:
- Good God.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- [laugh] the second word. Ethnography.
- Steve Portigal:
- [laugh]. Sigh.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And our final word or words today. Pain point.
- Steve Portigal:
- Go further.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So thinking about the immediate road ahead, where in 2021, what is your greatest hope for user researchers in the coming years?
- Steve Portigal:
- I think the path for user research is really exciting. And you've talked about sort of maturation. I think there are conversations emerging. So I gave the example of we don't even sort align on the words that we use. I think I see people creating more and more spaces to talk about that. There's lots of conversation, probably nowhere near enough about power dynamics and systemic inequality and race and other aspects of identity in the relationships between researchers and participants the relationship between researchers and colleagues. I suspect that researchers in academic social science settings have more of a context for those conversations, but I don't know, it's not my world but it's new, it's emergent or I think in the professional world of user experience research. So that's an important set of conversations. It is uncomfortable, it is elusive but it's starting to happen. And so I put that kind of in the same category as, hey, what word do we even use to talk about ourselves?
- Not because of their social consequence or just the one, there's a lot of bad things happen to people with one of those, and we're ineffective, basically speaking with the other. So I don't wanna equate them that way in terms of what's at stake. But those are all examples of things that we have kind of taken for granted as a practice. And you can see us moving into, I don't know whether I had a 2.0 or a three oh, but the maturation you talked about, where there's more people, there is less interest in talking about the same old things and there's more interest and people who are willing to say, yeah, we need to have this conversation. I want to have this conversation. And so yeah, there's just so many things that we just move on past. And we talked before about compensation structures and reporting structure.
- Some of those are operational and tactical, and I think there's a lot of stuff that is just bubbling under and I'm, I am excited by people who are newer to the field than I am who are bringing up issues and addressing them. So I mean, for me, I have been doing this for a long time and I have so much to learn and I'm seeing the field that I am in change and that's like 5% threatening and 95% exciting. I mean, that's probably the percentage what it is for me on a healthy day. So I think it's good for people that are in the field, it's good for people that are coming into the field. It's good for the work that we do and the impact that we can have. It's good for me to continue. I say start as if it hasn't been happening, but it's just starting to happen the last couple of years. We're starting to identify and make space for these new and necessary kinds of conversation about all aspects of the field. So I'm super excited about that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yeah, it's an exciting time and I think we've got a lot to look forward to and probably some work to do, but it is an exciting time and that's a great place for us to finish today. Thank you, Steve. It's been such an wonderful conversation. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. And I wanna say thank you so much for so generously sharing with us your experiences and your insights and for your contribution to our community over the years.
- Steve Portigal:
- Thanks for the chance to speak with you. I really enjoyed this and I hope it's interesting to people as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime. For people that are interested in connecting with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
- Steve Portigal:
- I would send them to LinkedIn. I'm Steve Portigal on. I'm Steve Porto on every platform. But for stuff like what we're talking about, LinkedIn is a great place and I like to keep in touch with people there.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Great. Thanks Steve. I'll make sure that we link to LinkedIn in the show notes. So for everyone that's listening, all the resources that we mentioned today and anything by way of getting contact with Steve, we'll have that there. Thanks for tuning in everybody. If you enjoyed the show and you wanna hear more great conversations like this, don't forget to the video, make a comment for Steve or myself, subscribe to the channel and we'll keep them coming. And until next time, keep being brave.