Insights and Interventions with Jill Fruchter

Jill has been listening to customers and clients for over 20 years. She has worked for organizations like Etsy and Blue Apron, and has since started Field Notes Consulting, a research and strategic planning practice serving both public and private sectors. She is method-agnostic, harnesses full-stack research, and interrogates all data to get to the real data or the root cause.

While hard data and numbers are important, data alone does not equal insight. Making sense of the data often requires listening to customers, human-scale frameworks of things like journeys and experience mapping, and, of course, minimizing researchers’ biases. It’s often the outside-in perspective that brings it all together to give us insight that will highlight consequences and implications.

Jill is a champion of what she calls “interventions” and doing interventions across silos. She shares an example from her time at Blue Apron that beautifully illustrates how one research silo can lose direction without insight from other silos.

Some interventions Jill recommends include:
• Remember that everyone in the organization is on the same team and after the same goal
• Encourage observation
• Bring cross-functional teams together
• Fit KPIs and OKRs in the story of the user

Jill will be leading a session, “Inconvenient Insights: The Researcher’s Role is to Stay Curious,” and a workshop, “Holistic Insights: Collapsing Functional Silos for Maximum Impact” at the Advancing Research Conference March 27-29, 2023.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
• How Jill defines insight and why it won’t be uncovered from hard data alone
• How “interventions” across silos can help everyone in the organization win
• A taste of what Jill will cover in her talk and workshop at Advancing Research 2023

Quick Reference Guide
[00:00] Introduction of Jill
[01:50] Jill’s role at Advancing Research Conference March 27-29th, 2023
[02:27] Jill’s love-hate relationship with data
[07:25] How we get insights from data
[09:36] Lessons from Blue Apron
[14:13] How to perform or support interventions
[21:54] On interventions outside your area of expertise and considering the interconnectivity of the entire organization
[30:43] Looking back on information and library science school
[34:52] Jill’s book recommendation
[36:49] Jill’s session and workshop at the upcoming Advancing Research Conference in March

Ren Pope on Ontology in the Digital Age

Ren Pope has a passion for all things data, information, and knowledge, and he strives to make them more accessible, organized, and enduring. You may be surprised that this conversation about information architecture takes us back to classic Greek philosophy, specifically ontology, which is concerned with the nature of being—that is, what is real and not real.

What is inside a computer cannot be seen, yet it is real in the sense that it has value and can impact reality. And as a modern ontologist, Ren wants to make information accessible and useful. That often starts with assigning names to things—nouns and verbs to label the functions of an organization so that things can be indexed, searched, retrieved, crosslinked, and so that relationships can be defined through metadata.

It’s a complicated process for small businesses and consultants, and the challenges rise exponentially for enterprises with multiple departments and silos.

With 60 years of shared experience, Ren and Lou remember when companies were dependent on Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint to manage the complexities of a living and evolving organization (many still are!). Today there are multiple options for organizing both structured and unstructured data, and thanks to ontologists like Ren, the tools are getting better.

Lou and Ren’s discussion spans from the philosophical to the practical. Ren shares some concrete ways to use ontological thinking in your everyday work:
• Find all the nouns and verbs your organization uses to describe its functions.
• Define what you are trying to accomplish.
• Focus your scope. The narrower the domain, or the more specific the task, the easier your task will be. If you don’t have a narrow, well-defined scope, you will probably over-collect data.
• Find how the nouns and verbs interact.
• Have a method for maintaining your data.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
• About classic ontology and how it relates to the digital age
• How information architecture has evolved over the last 30 years
• What is ontological thinking and how to incorporate it into your work
• The relationship between information architects, engineers, and the end user
• About the upcoming Enterprise UX Conference in June

Quick Reference Guide
• [0:00:58] Introduction of Ren Pope
• [0:02:17] Ontologist vs information architect vs interactive designer vs knowledge manager
• [0:06:00] Ontology within organizations and particular challenges for enterprises
• [0:09:50] Metadata for structured and unstructured data
• [0:14:01] LLM summaries, single metadata terms, abstracts, summaries – they all have their place and all can work together
• [0:18:50] How normal people can benefit from ontology or better IA at an enterprise level
• [0:23:28] Data needs to be captured, managed, and represented
• [0:27:41] A glimpse of the back-in-the-day solutions, like Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint, and how far we’ve come
• [0:29:40] The scale of volume and complexity of the enterprise environment keeps growing. Is technology keeping up?
• [0:35:08] Ren’s gift to the audience – Mettle Health

Creating Insights through Analysis and Synthesis with Steve Portigal

Believe it or not, Steve Portigal’s UX research classic Interviewing Users came out ten years ago, back in 2013. A few things about user research have changed since then, to put it mildly, so we at Rosenfeld did two things: we convinced Steve to write a second edition (coming out October 17), and to join us on the Rosenfeld Review to discuss all the things that have changed.

In addition to being an author, Steve is a user researcher, consultant, and teacher. He helps companies grow their businesses, culture, and brands by interviewing users. He also helps companies build more mature in-house research practices.

Having been on both sides of the interviewing process – as both interviewer and interviewee – Steve can empathize with both roles. Over the last decade, he has seen user research evolve from a focus on consumer products to company culture and supportive technologies in the B2B space.

Effective research, in addition to data gathering, involves analysis and synthesis. Steve defines analysis as breaking bigger things into smaller things and synthesis as putting what was broken down back together into a new framework, or insight. This is where the magic of research happens. A chapter dedicated to the art of analysis and synthesis is one of the profound additions to this latest edition of his book.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
– About Interviewing Users and what’s new in the second edition
– About Steve’s work as a researcher, author, and consultant and how his work has shifted over the last decade
– Changes in the research field and why most of us are researchers to one degree or another, even if it’s not in your title or job description
– How analysis and synthesis are different and why both are needed for insights
– About the “We already knew that” response many researchers get and what it really means

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:19] Introduction of Steve Portigal
[0:04:30] Experience on both sides of the interview process
[0:08:06] Shifts in language and jargon Steve has noted over the last decade
[0:12:13] The evolution of user research – less with consumers and more within businesses or B2B
[0:15:10] Speculation on where the leading edge of user research will be – or perhaps more importantly, who will be doing it – in another 10 years
[0:19:02] Rosenfeld Media Communities
[0:21:17] What’s new in the 2nd Edition version of Interviewing Users – analysis, synthesis, and insights
[0:28:38] “We already knew that” phenomenon that researchers often encounter
[0:32:20] Steve’s gift for listeners

Harry Max on Managing Priorities

Harry Max is an executive coach, consultant, and hands-on product design and development leader. He’s also the author of the forthcoming Managing Priorities: How to Create Better Plans and Make Smarter Decisions.

For individuals, teams, and organizations, from managing things, people, places, rules, activities, and projects, Harry’s new book Managing Priorities gets to the heart of how we prioritize and make and implement decisions, whether one-off or events that happen on a regular basis.

Harry uses DEGAP, a design-thinking framework that he says he didn’t invent but discovered, to explain how successful organizations and leaders set, implement, and execute priorities. DEGAP closes the gap between a current state and a desired state:
D – decide
E – Engage (commit to the process)
G – gather (collect information and items to prioritize)
A – arrange (sort and create frameworks)
P – prioritize

Harry and Lou also discuss the importance of flexible thinking (a superpower of designers) when it comes to prioritization, communication, and implementation.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
– How Harry went from technical writer to designer to executive coach to SXSW speaker to author
– What DEGAP is, why it makes a difference when dealing with prioritization, and how Harry discovered it
– Why DEGAP is like a design-thinking framework
– The unique prioritization challenges designers face
– The unique gifts designers bring to addressing prioritization

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:26] Introduction of Harry
[0:01:59] A discussion on prioritization
[0:04:27] Orders of prioritization
[0:07:39] Distinguishing priorities of the individual, team, and organization – DEGAP
[0:12:26] More about DEGAP at the individual and organizational levels
[0:15:39] Advancing Research 2024, March 25-27
[0:17:13] Review of Harry’s career path
[0:23:47] Unique prioritization challenges for designers
[0:26:25] Harry’s gift for the listeners

Research as Knowledge Curation with Robin Beers

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Why do so many organizations struggle to learn and evolve? Robin Beers, an organizational psychologist and founder of Ubuntu Culture Company, argues that businesses have been stuck in a transactional mindset—hoarding knowledge rather than embracing it as a dynamic, social process. In this conversation, she explains why researchers must shift from simply delivering insights to becoming knowledge curators, helping organizations not just understand their customers, but also reflect on their own strategies and structures.

Robin explores how organizations often present themselves based on internal hierarchies—rather than how customers actually engage with them—and how researchers can help bridge this gap. She also discusses the critical need for sense-making, the skills researchers should develop to navigate complex systems, and why UX research must expand beyond just improving digital products.

As a speaker at Advancing Research 2025, Robin will offer practical strategies for researchers to drive real change within their organizations.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How a transactional mindset and rigid knowledge management systems prevent companies from evolving and making smarter decisions
• Why researchers must move beyond producing reports and instead act as catalysts for organizational learning and reflection
• Why many companies structure their communication and services based on internal silos rather than customer needs—and how researchers can help fix this disconnect
• Why the most critical challenges in delivering great experiences aren’t just about interfaces or technology, but about strategy, culture, and alignment within the organization
• The key competencies researchers need, including critical thinking, sense-making, and the ability to navigate complex organizational systems
• Practical advice on positioning yourself as a strategic consultant, influencing decision-making, and ensuring research findings lead to meaningful action

Quick Reference Guide:
0:00 – Meet Robin
2:35 – Researchers are knowledge curators, and knowledge is social.
6:01 – The problem of organizations being transactional with knowledge
9:35 – Research should prompt reflection, and what it looks like when it doesn’t
14:55 – Designing with AI 2025 – June 10 & 11
17:13 – What it means to be a curator of a multi-siloed environment and how researchers need to adapt
26:35 – On research repositories
31:36 – Robin’s gift for listeners

Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake

For many in Design and UX, news that your company or organization is adopting the Scaled Agile Framework can feel like the beginning of the end for fully integrating design and design teams in the software development lifecycle. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I will talk about how Design and Business Agility built a deep and cross-functional partnership at USAA to bake a human-centered approach into the Scaled Agile layer cake resulting in: SAFe Coaches who advocate for design, a Lean Business Case that uncouples business and user outcomes, and a shared definition of value that aligns whole teams on the best outcomes.

Keeping Design Weird

Within large rigid corporate cultures, Design is encouraged to accommodate the dominant practices of business and technology. While some accommodation is necessary to successfully partner with other functions, going too far risks leeching the humanistic power from the practice, reducing Design to a mechanistic function.

Design Ops may inadvertently enable this accommodation with the business demanding it focus on increasing effectiveness and efficiency. However, DesignOps is underutilized in this capacity as it is uniquely positioned to protect and advance design practices, culture and growth.

In this session, we’ll advocate for how Design Ops can provide a deeper connection and commitment to championing the sparkle and verve of actualized Design practice through business and cultural practices, programs, and structures.

But Do Your Insights Scale?

Overcoming stakeholder objections and positioning qualitative data as an input to business and product strategy. When stakeholders have access to real-time data about millions of user interactions, how can qualitative researchers articulate the value of small-sample studies for product and business strategy? In this case study, we’ll show how we used our insights chops to understand stakeholder motivations and concerns, and get qualitative research a seat at the table shaping Google Assistant’s 2020 strategy. We’ll share learnings about how human-centered researchers can effectively collaborate with functions like data science and business strategy, and how to persuade analytically-minded stakeholders to embrace rich qualitative data about people’s needs and motivations as an input to business strategy.

The Blind Spot of Innovation: a Chat with Nathan Shedroff and Steve Diller

Most companies innovate backwards–focusing first on what features or products they can build. In reality, you’re in the relationship business. Authors Nathan Shedroff and Steve Diller talk about new tools they’ve developed to help businesses innovate with customer relationships in mind.

Steve Sanderson and Lou Rosenfeld discuss how big organizations can hatch bold ideas.

Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Sanderson break down ways designers can use experimentation as a tool for innovation in enterprises. Steve also gives a preview to hot topics to be covered around innovating in big business at Enterprise UX, San Antonio, TX, May 13-15.