Nodes of Design#67: User Interviews by Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal helps companies to think and act strategically when innovating with user insights. Over the course of his career, he has interviewed hundreds of people and helped many organisations to understand their users. He’s also the Dollars to Donuts podcast host, where he interviews people who lead user research in their organizations. He is also the author of two famous titles - Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights & Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories. He has been a keynote speaker on various occasion like CHI, IxDA, Lift, SXSW, UIE, UPA, UX Australia, UX Hong Kong, UX Lisbon, and WebVisions. 

In this episode, Steve shared wonderful insights on user interviews and why we do user interviews in design; we then discussed the framework of interviews using which we can gain great insights from users and few tips on actively listening and note-taking during interviews. In the latter part, steve recommended five do's and don'ts that designers/researchers must avoid while doing user interviews. We then concluded the show by steve recommending few tips on how could we combine all the insights and convey them into a narrative across teams that can create an impact. 

Takeaways - What are user interviews, Meaning of insights, Combining insights to narrate a story. 

Books by Steve - https://portigal.com/books

Dollars to Donuts - https://portigal.com/podcast

Resources shared by Steve Portigal

The organization’s design research maturity model-Chris Avore

The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket - Benjamin Lorr

It Chooses You - Miranda July

Communicating the New: Methods to Shape and Accelerate Innovation - Kim Erwin

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This podcast aims to make design education accessible to all. Nodes of Design is a non-profit and self-sponsored initiative by Tejj.