A book in progress by Steve Portigal. Publisher: Rosenfeld Media. Anticipated publication date: 2012
As we seek to understand the people we're designing solutions for, substandard interviewing means we don't have all the insight we could have. Interviewing is frequently used but it's not used well. But because it's based on skills we think we have (talking or even listening), it's not taught or reflected on, and people tend to "wing it" rather than develop their skills. Results may be inaccurate or reveal nothing new, suggesting the wrong design or business responses, or they may miss the crucial nuance that points to innovative breakthrough opportunities.
The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing will explain how to succeed with interviewing, including:
- Why and how to embrace how other people see the world
- How to build rapport to create engaging and exciting interactions
- How to listen in order to build rapport.
With this book, Steve Portigal uses stories and examples from his 15 years of experience to show how interviewing can be incorporated into the design process, helping you learn the best and right information to inform and inspire your design.
Posted by Steve Portigal
on May 11, 2012
For a little Friday Fun, here’s Mike Birbiglia‘s new short film from This American Life LIVE (if you are in the US, Canada, or Australia, I highly encourage you to find a screening near you for this next Tuesday; truly a wonderful entertainment and storytelling experience). In this short and gently comedic film, Birbiglia pokes [...]
Posted by Steve Portigal
on May 9, 2012
Last week I visited Mozilla’s beautiful, dog-friendly offices to talk with their user researchers and designers. They’ve just posted the video from my presentation of We’ve done all this research, now what?. Note that the start is cut off, and it kicks in at 11:47. Note: the slides are included in the video but for [...]
Posted by Steve Portigal
on May 9, 2012
Fill out my online form.
Posted by Tamara Christensen
on May 7, 2012
My first trip to New Jersey for fieldwork involved two memorable events: a blizzard and a bathroom blitz. Two days before we departed for New Jersey I received an email request from my client to rent the biggest SUV available. A huge snowstorm was pounding the Northeast and he wanted to feel safe as we [...]
Posted by Steve Portigal
on May 3, 2012
My colleague and I showed up to learn about our research participant?s smart house. In the initial part of the interview, just trying to learn a bit about the family before we learned about the house, the participant (I?ll call him Jon) told me they home-schooled their kids. I was young and naïve enough that [...]
Posted by Steve Portigal
on April 30, 2012
We love stories, and in our work as ethnographers, we love war stories about fieldwork. These experiences ? the crazy household, the dog that does his business on your shoes, the GPS failure – are inevitable and are often (at least in hindsight) hilarious. Exchanging these stories is a way of socializing our technique and [...]
Posted by Steve Portigal
on March 5, 2012
From this past Sunday’s New York Times, a review of Craig Taylor’s “Londoners”: Taylor devoted five years to collecting the material for ?Londoners.? He gathered stories from all 32 boroughs, conducting formal interviews with more than 200 people, running through 300 tape-recorder batteries and taking down enough notes to generate transcripts of more than 950,000 [...]
Posted by Steve Portigal
on February 14, 2012
I’m cited in Developing Your Interviewing Skills, Part I: Preparing for an Interview, with a set of question types. The article suggests those question types are helpful in preparing an interview guide. I think they are also very helpful in the interview itself, as you will often have to probe a number of different ways [...]
