Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization
Steve Portigal
@steveportigal
1

Introduction: Where this comes
Click to edit Master title style from
Consultant for 18 years
• Hired by organizations that have at
least some buy-in
• Observe their best practices
Interviewed corporate leaders
Part 1: Getting to do research
Part 2: Maximizing the impact
• Because success sells
Starts high level, but gets
more specific
2 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Part to edit Master title asking
Click1: This is not about style for permission
3 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Position yourself
Click to edit Master title style
Upon hire
4 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Position yourself
Click to edit Master title style
Upon hire
5 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Can to succeed, given your
Clickyouedit Master title style positioning?
6 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Can to succeed, given your
Clickyouedit Master title style positioning?
7 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Joseph edit Master title Hero’s Journey”
Click to Campbell’s “Thestyle
Image: Wikipedia
8 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Kotter’s Change Model
Click to edit Master title style
Image: changecards.org
9 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Prochaska Master title style
Click to edit& Diclemente’s Stages of Change
Image: @symplicit and @jodiemoule
10 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Diagnose, then target response
Click to edit Master title style
Tactics: http://www.cellinteractive.com/ucla/physcian_ed/stages_change.html
Image: @symplicit and @jodiemoule
11 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Diagnose the organization to
Click to edit Master title style check yourself
Image: Jess McMullin, bplusd
12 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Organizational culture
Click to edit Master title style
13 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Culture edit Master title style
Click to defined
How a group of people make sense of the world, through
common
• Experiences
• Beliefs
• Knowledge
• Values
• Attitudes
• Behaviors
• Meanings
• Patterns
• Symbols
•
•
•
14 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Company cultures
Click to edit Master title style
Belkin, 2012
Belkin, 1982
Belkin, 1983
15 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Change the culture
Click to edit Master title style
To start a culture change we need to do two simple things:
1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the
culture we want to create. Then let other people tell
stories about it.
2. Find other people who do story-worthy things that
represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories
about them.
We can change our stories and be changed by them.
A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture, Peter Bregman, http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2009/06/the-best-way-to-change-a-corpo.html
16 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Thought leadership
Click to edit Master title style
Through thought leadership, create
influence outside the company to
grow your credibility internally.
Benchmark your efforts against
those of your peers.
17 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Develop alliances
Click to edit Master title style
Reach out – across
organizational hierarchies –
to others who also advocate
for contextual research
• Newly hired leaders bringing in
certain best practices from previous
jobs
• Isolated designers/researchers
elsewhere in the corporation who
are looking for peers
• Managers who know there must be
a better way to reach users but don’t
know where to start
18 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Treat this like a design style
Click to edit Master titleproblem
19 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make the case (for title style
Click to edit Master outcomes, not process)
Don’t lead with “We have to talk
to customers!”
First investigate to understand
• What information does the team need
to do their work?
• Do they have that information?
• What has been tried? What worked?
What didn’t work? Why?
Your recommended approach
must be rooted in that context.
Your emphasis is on solving
the business problem.
20 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Consider resources
Click to edit Master title style
2-3 weeks 2-3 weeks 2-3 weeks
Who do you What do you Do
want to talk want to do Fieldwork something
to? with them? with the data!
Screening Methodology, Interviews, self- Analysis,
criteria, recruiting field guide, reporting, synthesis, design
stimuli debriefs
Educate others what it takes to accomplish this. Resistance may be
based on naïve assumptions (e.g., seeing “every” customer).
21 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

When time Master title style
Click to editis a constraint
1 day?! 1 day?! 2 days?!!
Who do you What do you Do
want to talk want to do Fieldwork something
to? with them? with the data!
Who can you Wide-eyed Small sample, Debrief
get? Co-workers, observation, massively
intercepts on the winging it parallel data
street or in the gathering
mall, etc.
Make your stakeholders aware of tradeoffs. Develop expertise in
project planning and propose the right-size approach.
22 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Treat this like a special style
Click to edit Master title skill
Beyond “talking to people”
this thing you are advocating
for is its own thing
• Training for you can give credibility
• You can train (or bring in training) to
give method credibility and lead
through empowering others
When partnering with
external research vendors,
highlight their expertise
(mobile, teen media
consumption, medical, etc.)
23 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Proactively Master title style
Click to editfind opportunities to learn about users
Don’t wait for requests
• These may be tactical, not strategic
Instead, look for design and
business questions
• Propose research that will serve
multiple teams and future initiatives
Siloed research that turns
out to be redundant is the
enemy of adopting these
methods.
24 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Part to edit Master title impact
Click2: Maximizing your style
25 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Engage the Master title style
Click to edit organization in research process
Pull your colleagues in
throughout the process
• Setting the research agenda
• Detailed planning of a study
• Joining you in the field
• Reading transcripts
• Analysis and synthesis
• Topline reporting
• Final reporting
• Ideating on impact to design/business
26 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Take them Master title
Click to editin the field style
27 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make your process title style
Click to edit Master visible
When a client couldn’t get a meeting
room for a massive fieldwork
debrief, they took over a kitchen
area. Many people walked by and
peeked in, intrigued, to see what
was happening.
Image: Norman Rockwell’s “Tom Sawyer (Whitewashing the Fence) “
28 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make your process title style
Click to edit Master visible
29 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make your output relevant
Click to edit Master title style
Will you have the most impact
by (say) telling stories or by
defining needs or by
specifying requirements or
by producing prototypes?
• From Users need it to be easy to
clean to Use elastomeric surfaces and
ensure all part joins are flush
• Another team added a high-fidelity
prototype master who delivered
research findings exactly as the
developers needed them
This is on you to figure out.
Don’t wait for requests.
30 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

An example of delivering research findings
Click to edit Master title style
http://www.portigal.com/blog/reading-ahead-research-findings/
31 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

“Research” Master title style
Click to edit playing nicely with “design”
Understand Create
32 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

“Research” Master title style
Click to edit playing nicely with “design”
Create
Understand Create
Create
Create
33 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

“Research” Master title style
Click to edit playing nicely with “design”
Understand
Create
Understand Create
Understand
Create Understand
Create
Also see: http://www.slideshare.net/andrewharder/critique-dont-complain-talk-by-andrew-harder
34 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make ideation part title style
Click to edit Masterof research
35 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make outputs and outcomes
Click to edit Master title style visible
36 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make outputs and outcomes
Click to edit Master title style visible
37 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Make outputs and outcomes
Click to edit Master title style visible
Another client of mine built a
“museum” from our research in
Japan that included miscellaneous
consumer items and household
equipment, pamphlets and
advertisements, photographs, and
printed pages from our research
report. This display was in place for
over a year and prompted
conversations for years beyond that.
38 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Get face time with teams that
Click to edit Master title style will use your research
Spend some time each week
in their location, if it’s different
than yours.
Sit in on meetings, even if you
aren’t “invited.”
As topics come up, share the
insights you already have.
Be on the lookout for
opportunities to gather
additional insights.
39 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Coming in October!
Click to edit Master title style
A book by Steve Portigal
The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/
40 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Let’s to edit Master title style
Click discuss
41 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com

Click to edit Master title style
Thank you!
@steveportigal Portigal Consulting
steve@portigal.com www.portigal.com
+1-415-894-2001
42 - Championing Contextual Research @steveportigal www.portigal.com