Introduction to User Interviews

Business901 Podcast Transcription
Implementing Lean Marketing Systems
Uncovering Compelling Insights
Copyright Business901
Introduction to User Interviews
Guest was Steve Portigal
Sponsored by
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Transcription of Podcast
Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of
Business901 podcast. With me, today is Steve Portigal.
He is the author of the recent book, Interviewing
Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights and is the
founder of Portigal Consulting, a bite-sized firm that
helps clients to discover and act on new insights about
themselves and their customers. His research is based
on hundreds of interviews from families to corporate
executives and everything in-between. Steve, I would
like to welcome you and mention that I am somewhat
intimidated interviewing someone that has written a
book on interviewing. Please, do not turn the tables on
me!
Steve Portigal: Why would you think that?
Joe: Well, I have that funny feeling that it could happen.
Steve: There we go. Thanks for having me.
Joe: Is there an actual process in interviewing?
Steve: There definitely is, and I think one of the factors about
the interview as a technique, I think delightful and
damning at the same time, is built upon everyday skills
that we have; like having a conversation, like asking
each other a question, like what we are doing right
now, and so it's a little seductive. Well, I talk to people
all the time, I'm a good listener. I can think on my feet.
I can go and interview people and learn from them and
gain insights to help me develop products that sort of
the first take on thinking about the process and to a

certain extent that is true, and then sort of the flip of it
is that there are some ways that to do the best possible
work you can in talking to users that you do things very
differently than what you would do in personal
conversation and it's the naive person that believes in
their social skills in talking to people, but doesn't
understand the elements of the process that are
unique, that's where they kind of get caught up and so
if you follow your interpersonal instinct, it will take you
only so far and the it can kind of trip you up.
Joe: The interview shouldn't be just a basic conversation.
There has to be more?
Steve: It's a really good way of putting it, and I think it sort of
further complicated by the fact that when you, the
interviewer, leave, the participant isn't necessary aware
of that. The successful interview feels to the
participants like they just had a great conversation with
someone. Well, then one of the key difference is, as
interviewers, we do a lot of listening. Meaning, if the
conversation is kind of 50-50 between both parties, an
interview might be, 80-20 or 90-10, where the larger
number goes to the participant. So, when you think
about it, no wonder they feel good. They got to talk a
lot. They got too listened to. It was all about them.
Aren't going to necessary feel like they've just been
interviewed, even though you are making, as the
interviewer, a lot of explicit choices about what to say
and what not to say and when to say and not say
things. That's kind of the process that you ask about
before it really breaks into those sorts of aspects.
Joe: I think this whole process is kind of fascinating now
that people were starting to collaborate between
organizations and in different departments, IT is talking

to IT and operations is talking to the other guys'
operations, and interviewing seems to be a needed skill
set?
Steve: One of my goals was this; is to try to raise the level of
that. People can have conversations and their kicking
the tires or they're filling out requirements
questionnaires, and they are not necessary quick to
hear what's not being said. The things that you don't
know, that you want to hear about. Those are the
pieces that would separate sort of a gap filling solution
to an innovative solution.
Joe: When we talk about Gemba in the Lean world and
Steve Blank in the Lean Startup talks about getting out
of the building. Gemba is going to the place of work. I
think you talk about it in your book that it is important
to conduct an interview at the place of work or the
place of the person you are interviewing. What's wrong
with the phone?
Steve: The phone is hard. So, I can answer, "What wrong with
the phone?" and I can answer "What's great about
going into the environment, going to them?" The phone
is hard for someone when you haven't ever spoken to
them. You don't get a lot of queues the body language
queues about discomfort, excitement, engagement and
even more tactically, the visual queues and the more
subtle queues that say "there's more to the answer if
you want to hear it". When you talk to someone, you
don't really know if you've gotten to the end of the
response. When you've kind of sitting with some, you
build up a little more exchange of pauses and breath
sounds and eye contacts and head posture and those
things helps get to what's difficult to say. If you're

talking to some about a system work or could work or
should work and there is an aspect to it that might
reflect poorly on them, they are not necessarily going
to be as easy to talk about it in a way that may
acknowledge failure. Even though you're not looking to
judge them or harm them and that insight is really
helpful to think about what future solutions could be.
That's a lot easier to gauge into, as an interviewer, to
adjust your questioning tactics and come back to things
later. Find ways to adapt how you phrase your
inquiries. Those really powerful but very soft queues
that you got face to face are really helpful.
The second part is all the bonus stuff you'll get by
going to the environment. You get to see things. You
get to see things that you wouldn't necessarily know to
ask about, or the person is going to say: "Oh, well, I
know we are meeting in this room, but let me walk you
over here to show you this person, to show you this
sign, to show you this artifact. Now, that you
mentioned it, I wouldn't have thought about it if we
weren't standing here talking about it. But here it is
"viola" and there is some sort of insight to that and
then what you, as an interviewer, can do in the
environment is observe all the unstated queues. If you
work with another organization, you mentioned IT to
IT, this is probably not up-to-date language on this, but
looking at how cables are tied and looking how racks
are maintained, it going to tell you a lot more about
your counterpart's culture as an IT organization. Then,
you know, some in it to the power point or whatever
kind of documentation you have. The post–it-notes that
tell you how to do something or remind people in the
lunch room. The art work the people have on their
walls. Those are all indicators, again of things you

wouldn't think to ask about, but can really provide a
really richer understanding of what's going on in a
home or in an environment. They can really start to
take you to a place where you have deeper more
nuanced understanding of that situation in order to
think about what the opportunities are for whatever
you are trying to do or build.
Joe: It adds context for me to get a deeper experience out
of it or maybe ask better questions.
Steve: Absolutely! I think that's what why one of the buzz
word exists contextual research, that's what people call
it sometime. That element of context is the context of
the person. It's the context of the environment and all
those things.
Joe: This concept of interviewing seems to be a popular
discussion lately. Is it because we live in this digital
world that we have to talk about it and kind of force
ourselves to do it now?
Steve: My theory, and this isn't backed up by anything but just
sort of anecdotal experiences is that this kind of
research and insights about people that we're designing
for seems to be sort of a half step, kind of a ride on the
coat tail or a little bit about the UX world. The
inception of this kind of work is around other kinds of
design and marketing and product development if you
think about sort of pre-web and then with the web
came the user experience field which really brought, I
think it helped bring the term design into consumer's
vocabulary, producer's vocabulary, obviously the things
that Apple did really, helps make the notion of design
very common. I think that changed the conversation

and the awareness and the idea of interviewing as part
of that has followed along. Where it was sort of what
we do design, or we make things, but we don't do
design and now we make things and we do design. It
has evolved to the point when people talk about
design, some sense of input about users form what the
opportunities are. This has been the latest thing. I
think, early on testing what we have designed is sort of
where user research was and I think it has expanded to
there is a sense that this process fits into a larger
design approach. Again, that is kind of anecdotal but
that seems to be where I think it's coming from.
Joe: Do you still need the traditional surveys and customer
focus groups? Are they complimentary or not?
Steve: I think they are complimentary. It is fun to harsh on
focus group because we've all been, we've all observed
them or lead them or had to deal with the result of
them or, fight someone not to do that and do
something else. There are so many methods, and you
can continue invent more methods or combine them.
I'm always interested on how different pieces either
support each other or one thing can explain something.
We've done work where we use a large quantitative
study to tell us what do dive into. We've done things
where we've informed something that's more
quantitative where the questions that are being, they
are trying to create some measures around, came from
the output of something more qualitative. The dynamic
between those two I think can be, where quantitative
and things like surveys where you have some stats.
Where you have some larger sample size, although, I
guess focus groups fit under qualitative. I think it’s
about being smart and looking at what the questions

we have. What is the information we need to move our
project forward? What are the tradeoffs between the
different types of approaches that we have? I don't
want people always to interview users of their context.
Nor do I want them to be doing focus groups. I think
it's just a having a range of approaches and being able
to choose wisely between them. I don't feel like there is
a magic solution.
I think in the book, I showed a couple of diagrams
other folks have created to try to wrap their head
around that complexity. If you’re here, do this. If you
are here, do that. That may work for some people, and
I think it's nice that we are always trying to create that
map. I think there are so many new ones and so many
constraints in any emerging questions that it's a little
bit of magic to try to craft, to try to figure out what's
the approach that makes the most sense. Is it
interviewing? Is it a focus group? Is it a survey? Is it
combination? Is it something we're going to invent
right here? You know, all of those.
Joe: When I think of capturing the information in the
interview, I think of two things, either I come in with
my Sixty-Minute camera crew, or I go out in the car
after the interview and write it down in a notepad what
I just learned. Both of them have pros and cons, but is
there a certain way, I should be capturing information
or something you can help the listeners with?
Steve: There are all those things that come up, and there’s a
big gulp between what was actually said. I challenge
anyone to go back and watch an interview and compare
your notes. You’ll see sometimes critical, sometimes
not, it depends on what the issues are. You’ll see some

big, big, big differences. You need to know for sure
what they said. How many they said if it’s a list of
things? What sort of unstated were noticed? You would
have to go back and tease that apart because you’re
not just interested on what’s on the face or what the
word that comes out of their mouth. You need to dig
into it a little bit more. That’s why you need that
definitive record, and it doesn’t have to be a sixty-
minutes camera crew, it can be, when flip cameras
were a thing, people were really kind of into those for
their easiness portable HD quality hard disk cameras
keep coming down in price and in size and I think, the
quality of that, or an easy audio recorder, those things
are so small as long as you have plenty of batteries,
you can kind of set them and forget them, and that
would be what I would tend to do and recommend. You
are not producing an Oscar nominated documentary on
this. You’re just going to capture a reasonable fidelity
and then tools are available to that very, very well.
The thing I was going to come back to was that note
taking process that you just described whether you are
doing during or doing it after, people find that really
valuable as a way to kind of sort through. I can’t see
you right now, but I can imagine you scribbling things
about what I am saying or someone listening to the
two of us talk, might be kind of jotting notes. It a way
that people process information and that filter,
although, it distorting, it’ also really important because
that’s the way that you start making sense and thinking
about what the implications are. So, sitting down after
an interview and saying to yourself or your colleagues
what are the five most important things, what surprised
you, you can facilitate that debrief or you can set
yourself up to take notes during as a way to help you

start processing all that information. But you still want
to do some processing with that definitive record.
Joe: I want to step back for a second and as a manager,
let's say, I send three people out to interview or just
watch the experience. They can come back and give
me completely different interpretations. So, how much
value can I put in this?
Steve: I love that. That's a great way of putting it. I think that
unique perspective is one of the things I enjoyed about
doing fieldwork and trying to make sense of it. I think
about setting up a study, series of interviews with
whoever the team is going to be so that there's some
chance for success and you don't want to stand one
person off to see customer A or one person to see
customer Q and so on and then have them make
overarching conclusions about what the need is or what
the opportunity is. There has to be a way of combining
that. It's nice to do an interview in teams. But then
that debris of two is really a nice size and then that
conversation afterwards. What did you see? What did
you see? It is really cool because people will see
different things and that conversation it’s not really a
battle about what's right. It is really more of a way to
conglomerate what those different impressions were
and align on that and then to have if different people
are talking to different customers, to have them come
together and report things and so then what this
conversation often include is people saying, "Oh yeah,
our guys said the same things and for him it’s because
of this and this and this".
You start to find commonalties and then you start to
find contrast and part of what you want to do is
understand why are those contrasts are. Well, of

course, this customer didn't have this problem because
they are, in this kind of situation in their life cycle or in
their technology or whatever that is. That hashing it
out between the different people who have seen
different things starts to uncover what the critical
factors are and then now you are doing, now it's what
you do with the interview. Now, you are thinking about
how we get to the implications for our product or
design. I love that contrast. I loved that people are just
messy. We have to kind of bring messy people in to try
to deal with that and have a conversation. There’s
process to that, just like you asked about interviewing.
There's a process to doing some of this sense-making,
and I just give you a little scaffolding for how you
might kind of bring these pieces together and to start
to kind of line commonalities and contrast. You could
structure it, but it is still kind of messy and it just
reflects the nature of what we are starting with which is
people.
Joe: If I'm an introvert, can I still interview people? Am I
going to do well at this? Or, do we need to be an
extrovert to do this?
Steve: That's a great question. I had a long talk with people
about this. Just the other day, which is continuing to
email, one of the observations we are making. We were
speaking to a group on this topic, and it seemed like
from observing the room that there were a lot of
introverts. It caused me to comment that among
people that who described this is their profession, there
seemed to be a lot introverts. There seemed to be
disproportionally introverted. I don't have any stat for
that, but it’s just a sense that I have, and we are just
trying to unpack why that is. Why are introvert drawn

into this work? Because as you said it, it sounds very
extroverted. The thing about introverts is that introvert
do extrovert looking activities if they play a role and
there's nothing like an interview with the structure. It is
a meeting you had some tools to follow. You have some
processes that have been scheduled, and you show up
with your video camera, your Sixty-Minute crew.
There is a role that you can play of the interviewer, and
I mean, for me, it lets me do really wonderful things
and meet fascinating people that I couldn't just do
without that. That is leg up that the interviewer role
gives me. I was saying to someone that one of the
things that introverts do is kind of hold back and watch
and observe and a try to interpret it, make sense
without necessarily participating in. So, for me to have
a conversation where I say 10% and the person say
90% but I'm so active in observing and intuiting and in
interpreting and planning what I'm going to say, that to
me is kind of a dream for an introvert to get to do that.
I think the introvert does very, very well here. I think
being armed with the tools as opposed to just go to
talk to people that's a terrifying way for the introvert to
approach it. Both sides of that continuum can do very,
very well in very different ways, I think.
Joe: Can I learn from watching someone on TV? Can learn
from Oprah?
Steve: I think it's great to watch other people interview. It's a
good model for learning, and obviously, media
interviews are different from design/informing
interviews. I think you can learn, good and bad, from
all of those and think about how they are choosing
what to say next and how is the person responding and

what are they doing to uncover more than just sort of
surface information. Documentary films are fascinating
for this, one's that are interview based and one's that
aren’t' even. Look at that as a tool to dig into a story
that is previously hidden where the person uncovering
it didn't know where it was going to go, what they were
doing to try to get out of that. That's fascinating to me.
Joe: Well, I think your book covered a lot of area, just not
the questioning, but the preparation and also how to
get the most out of the interviews and I think you did a
very nice job with it, and I want to complement you on
that.
Steve: That's so nice thank you.
Joe: What do you have upcoming for yourself?
Steve: This is my first book, and I'll talk about sort of where I
am at with that. I've got this body of work that I'm
very proud of, and I think people are interested in. So,
I'm spending time talking to people about this and sort
of thinking about what's next. I don't mean, what book
is next, I think that's a way off, but you know as much
as I am out there, doing workshops and working with
clients, on these types of things. It sort of puts me into
a post book stage, what would be the topics that will
excite and challenge in the next three to five years and
not, I don't mean where the baby walrus come from, I
mean, in this space that we are talking about, about
how we innovate and how we, understands problem,
understand ourselves. I feel like there are some
threads that are kind of intriguing me.
Joe: Where can someone find the book and find you?

Steve: The book is published by Rosenfeld Media, I'm not
going to dictate a url, and you can find it in Google.
Interviewing Users from Rosenfeld Media is probably
the best place to get that. You can order the hard copy
or the epub, and I think if you order the hard copy, you
get the digital version for free. And me, I will dictate
the url. It's my last name portigal.com that's my
business, that's my blog that we have. You can find me
on tweeter.
Joe: And Portigal is spelled?
Steve: P-O-R-T-I-G-A-L
Joe: I saw a couple of the Flicker pages about the book that
had mind maps on it which were intriguing. I actually
printed one out for the interview and have it front of
me.
Steve: Oh, cool. That's great.
Joe: You also can be found on LinkedIn, I assume.
Steve: Yes, I think its Steve Portigal on LinkedIn. The unique
part of Steve Portigal, That's my tweeter handle, that's
my LinkedIn domain.
Joe: Well, I would like to thank you very much Steve. I
enjoyed the conversation. You have a good book with a
lot of good information in it. It was a good read. When
I started preparing for the interview, I started re-
reading the chapters and find all kind of things.
Steve: That's awesome. Thank you so much.

Joe: This podcast will be available on the Business901
blogsite and the Business901 iTunes stores. So, thanks
again Steve.
Steve: Thank you very much.
Joseph T. Dager
Business901
Phone: 260-918-0438
Skype: Biz901
Fax: 260-818-2022
Email: jtdager@business901.com
Website: http://www.business901.com
Twitter: @business901
Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in
bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and
marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty
years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies
it through Lean Marketing and Lean Service Design.
Visit the Lean Marketing Lab: Being part of this community will
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Introduction to User Interviews

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