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 do about it. I teach teams to be better at doing research, elevate the user research maturity of their practice, that's researchers and the other people in the organization who do research.
Steve:
And yeah, I do a lot of workshops and facilitation and helping teams get unstuck on whatever issues they have going on. Sometimes that's really directly related to the work of user research that I think we'll probably talk about today, but sometimes it's about other things as well. I've helped teams with storytelling. I've helped them with trying to change the dynamics in their organization around the research. Anyone that's a consultant knows, "Oh, we've got to help our clients figure out their problems and come in and be creative with them about how we can address their problems." But the baseline I think is always about understanding customers and users, and how we do something with that.
Larry:
Yeah. And that's why we have user researchers and love you all so much. At least I do. I think most of our colleagues do, but we don't always have access to you. And one of the things, the reason I wanted to have you on the show now is that you just revised your book, 'Interviewing Users'. It's out in its second edition now, and a lot of us are tasked with that specific part of doing user research and don't have the training and background that you do. So we really appreciate the book. And one of the things I'm hoping to talk about is just how... We're obviously not going to be you anytime soon, but how to cultivate that mindset that a good interviewer has. So what are the top characteristics that a person needs to get in that mindset?
Steve:
I think there are some fundamental skills, orientation, mindset, and I list four of them in the book as a recipe. One is about suspending your view of the world, check your worldview at the door is the first one. So, you work on a problem, you work for a team, you work on something that's got you out there trying to learn from people, doing some interviews. So trying to set that aside. You have maybe hopes, aspirations, pressure on you from the rest of the organization. And we can be very kind and call these hypotheses. Sometimes they're not formalized as hypotheses, they're just assumptions, organizational truths. So, one thing to do is to just set those aside. Don't dismiss them. They exist, they're part of you, but to be fair to yourself, how do you just create a little space, set them in that space and then go talk to somebody. You can always pick them up when you come back.
Steve:
The second one is embrace how other people see the world, which is the corollary. So I'm going to take my worldview and I'm just going to set it aside, but I have to embrace how other people see the world. And I think that verb embrace is really, really important. I picked a word that's very active, almost aggressive, like the bear hug. It's not be tolerant of or receptive of or even be curious about. It's embrace. It's like, Go get that view that somebody else has and really just grab it and pull it in towards you, so you really bring this new piece in.
Steve:
And then three and four are kind of related. Three is about building rapport, and that's the difference between asking a bunch of questions in sequence and having a conversation where it builds and grows and you're not forcing someone to tell you something, you are creating space for them that they are filling, because they want to give you insight and information about themselves. So that's the whole dynamic of a great interview.
Steve:
And the fourth one is listening and an obvious one, but for the naive person, listening is what we are told as kids. Mouth shut, ears open. But we have phrases like active listening, all the things that we do to show that we're listening, all the ways that we ask questions. So there's lots of tactics for all of those, but I don't need to go on too long. But as a mindset, it's set aside your worldview, embrace their worldview, build rapport and listen, are the fundamental elements that I think can make someone be much more effective in talking to other people to learn from them.
Larry:
In all those, especially the second one, the embracing their worldview, that really speaks to the empathy that we're all eager to bring to the table. And so, I love that framework. One of the things somewhere in there, it reminded me, part of that mindset is one of the things you talk about in the book is going from chatting to interviewing. And I love that and I think I feel it right away, but can you talk a little bit about the difference between those and how to make the transition if you find yourself chatting?
Steve:
Yeah. And chatting is, it's a crutch. And I don't mean that in an unkind way. If people haven't spent time learning this and practicing it and reflecting on it, I think people go pretty far by being friendly and open and conversational, and I think that's a good start. But in chatting, for example, we share about ourselves, "Oh, you like cats? Well, I also like cats and I have two cats at home and one is named Binky and one is named Winky." That's seen as, it's a chatty rapport building technique. And I think that's one I see people relying on and I don't think they should ultimately, that the interview is about the other person and that...
Steve:
So, yeah, if you're new, you tend to think, "Oh, I can build rapport with you by showing you how I am like you." "I like that too. I hate that too. Oh, that happened to me. My cousin also has that problem with Facebook," whatever the thing is, you try to share something about yourself, but actually that takes focus away from the other person. So that embracing how they see the world means you want to spend time on them. So when someone says, "I have two cats," you can say, "What are your cats' names? When did you get them? Are cats part of the content that you share on social media?" If that was our topic.
