Understanding the Challenges of User Research in the Tech Industry

This week, I’m chatting with Steve Portigal, who is the Principal of Portigal Consulting and the Author of Interviewing Users. We discuss the changes that prompted him to release a second version of his book 10 years after its initial release, and dive into the best practices that any team can implement to start unlocking the value of data product UX research. Steve explains that the key to making time for user research is knowing what business value you’re after, not simply having a list of research questions. We then role-play through some in-depth examples of real-life experiences we’ve seen from both end users and leadership when it comes to implementing a user research strategy. Thhroughout our conversation, we come back to the idea that even taking imperfect action towards doing user research can lead to increased data product adoption and business value. 

Highlights/ Skip to:

• I introduce Steve Portigal, Principal of Portigal Consulting and Author of Interviewing Users (00:38)
• What changes caused Steve to release a second edition of his book (00:58)
• Steve and I discuss the importance of understanding how to conduct effective user research (03:44)
• Steve explains why it’s crucial to understand that the business challenge and the research questions are two different things (08:16)
• Brian and Steve role-play a common scenario that comes up in user research, and Steve explains an optimal workflow for user research (11:50)
• The importance of provocation in performing user research (21:02)
• How Steve would handle a situation where a member of leadership is preventing research being done with end users (24:23)
• Why a consultative approach is valuable when getting buy-in for conducting user research (35:04)
• Steve shares some of the major benefits of taking imperfect action towards starting user research (36:59)
• The impact and value even easy wins in user research can have (42:54)
• Steve describes the exploratory nature of user research and how to maximize the chance of finding the most valuable insights (46:57)
• Where you can connect with Steve and get a copy of v2 of his book, Interviewing Users (49:35)

• “If you don’t know what you’re doing, and you don’t know what you should be investing effort-wise, that’s the inexperience in the approach. If you don’t know how to plan, what should we be trying to solve in this research? What are we trying to learn? What are we going to do with it in the organization? Who should we be talking to? How do we find them? What do we ask them? And then a really good one: how do we make sense of that information so that it has impact that we can take away?” — Steve Portigal (07:15)
• “What do people get [from user research]? I think the chance for a team to align around something that comes in from the outside.” – Steve Portigal (41:36)
• On the impact user research can have if teams embrace it: “They had a product that did a thing that no one [understood], and they had to change the product, but also change how they talked about it, change how they built it, and change how they packaged it. And that was a really dramatic turnaround. And it came out of our research, but [mostly] because they really leaned into making use of this stuff.” – Steve Portigal (42:35)
• "If we knew all the questions to ask, we would just write a survey, right? It’s a lower time commitment from the participant to do that. But we’re trying to get at what we don’t know that we don’t know. For some of us, that’s fun!" – Steve Portigal (48:36)

• Interviewing Users (use code DATA20 to get 20% off the list price): https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/interviewing-users-second-edition/
• Personal website: https://portigal.com
• Publisher website: https://rosenfeldmedia.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveportigal/