Steve Portigal: Interviewing Users – Episode 167

Content Strategy Insights

Steve Portigal To conduct a good research-focused interview, you need to cultivate a professional interviewing mindset. Steve Portigal has been doing this for years, and he has written a book to help other researchers and designers conduct better interviews. Now in its second edition, Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights (available at a 20% discount through December 15 by applying the code ELLESS at checkout), covers interviewing techniques, of course, but also research best practices, how to document your work, and how to make sense of your discoveries. We talked about: his work at his UX research consultancy the elements of a good interviewing mindset checking your own world view at the door embracing how others see the world building rapport listening the difference between chatting and interviewing how to stay mindful as you transition from one mode of communication to another, and the need to consciously cultivate new rituals in the modern, non-stop Zoom world how to keep the business intent of your interviewing activities in mind, in particular the relationship between the business opportunity at hand and the research-question planning that best aligns with it how to kindly share with colleagues relevant new discoveries that emerge in your research work how to balance the amount of domain knowledge you bring to an interviewing project the importance of knowing and keeping in mind the scope and importance of documenting, analyzing, and synthesizing your interviews Steve's bio Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher who helps organizations to build more mature user research practices. Based outside of San Francisco, he is principal of Portigal Consulting, and has conducted research with thoracic surgeons, families eating breakfast, rock musicians, home-automation enthusiasts, credit-default swap traders, and real estate agents. His work has informed the development of professional audio gear, wine packaging, medical information systems, design systems, video-conferencing technology, and music streaming services. He is the author of three books: the classic Interviewing Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights (now in a second edition) and Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories. He’s also the host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast, where he interviews people who lead user research in their organizations. Connect with Steve online LinkedIn Portigal.com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/r4sYIXSEd0c Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 167. Talking with another person is the most natural thing in the world. But when you're interviewing someone for a business-focused research project you have to set aside many of your natural conversational instincts and adopt a professional interviewing mindset. Steve Portigal has been doing this for years. He's also written a book to help to help other researchers and designers conduct better interviews and discover new opportunities and actionable insights. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 167 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Steve Portigal. Steve is probably the best known interviewing expert in our field, and he's a user research consultant in the Bay Area. Welcome, Steve. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Steve: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's nice to be here with you and get to talk to everybody. I run a research consulting practice. I've been doing that for a little more than 20 years, which is a long time, but been learning and learning and lots more to learn. And I learn through different kinds of work. I run research studies, I work with clients and help them learn things about their users and their customers and figure out what we're going to...