Steve Portigal: Improving your user research process

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:06]:
Steve, good to see you. Thanks for being here. How are you doing today?

Steve Portigal [00:01:10]:
I am doing really well. I'm excited to talk with you.

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:13]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So one of the things that's always fun is to dive in with someone like yourself who has such a broad range of interests and had so many experiences. And I know we're going to get into all the things that you're very well known for about user research and all of that, and we will get there. But I always like to start by having to listen, get to know you a little bit better as a person. And so one of the things I thought would be a fun place to start is I know you have done a lot of writing, you've done a lot of speaking. And when you and I were chatting before we hit record, we were talking about kind of the arc, the journey of storytelling, of finding your voice. And I'm curious to hear how that, how the different ways of expression you've embraced and explored have shaped you in that way.

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:56]:
Because I know you've done, I think you said you've done short stories in fiction. Obviously, you've done a lot of nonfiction work. I think you might have said you did some painting along the way, but I was curious how that all rolls together for you.

Steve Portigal [00:02:08]:
I've definitely not done painting. I wish I had sort of physical coordination and sort of the ability to do visual stuff. I'm much more a words person than a moving. Yeah. Moving items around anywhere. Oh, okay. Sorry. No, that's okay.

Steve Portigal [00:02:26]:
That's okay. If someone imagines that I might have been a painter, that's kind of. I'm kind of complimented by that as a little fantasy to be perceived as that kind of creative as opposed to whatever kind I might be. So, yeah. Your question is kind of about finding your voice and what that might look like for me over different media or formats, right?

Andrew Skotzko [00:02:49]:
Yeah, exactly. I was curious because when we were speaking before this podcast, you were telling me how much you enjoyed some of the recent stuff you've pushed into. I think you said you did a whole history of design thinking talk, but then you also talked about having written short stories in fiction, and I was just like, oh, I want to know more about that. How did those weave together for you? Did one inform the other?

Steve Portigal [00:03:11]:
Yeah, I think I have been a storyteller as a personality type that sort of ask a question, get a story, and that's a. I think too much of that is annoying, but maybe not enough of it is also, like, everything in balance, right? Not enough of it is a little stilted. So I try to. I just. I'm always interested in, like, pulling stuff from different places and talking about it. And I think that's why user research as a profession appealed to me. But I have done, you know, online things related to my profession, like had a magazine column or had a blog and had a newsletter and just all sort of the formats of stuff, mostly work related. I think I hit this sort of a personal crisis a couple of years ago, just being like, a middle aged american man and realizing, oh, I'm kind of isolated.

Steve Portigal [00:04:13]:
Like, I don't have, you know, I have, I think, I think, a healthy amount of social interaction. But, you know, I have a partner. We have a dog. Like, I have a healthy life. And I don't want anyone to feel bad for me, but reach this point of like, well, what's the thing that I do that's for me, you know, I have. My partner runs a meditation group, and despite our advanced age, she's still in touch with college friends. And, you know, and these sort of provide some structure and some outlets for her. And I kind of have, I don't know, my professional network, and I have friends through that professional network.

Steve Portigal [00:04:54]:
I don't have anything that I do that's not sort of under the normal umbrella of, like, eventually you'd make a LinkedIn post about it, like that kind of thing.

Andrew Skotzko [00:05:04]:
Right.

Steve Portigal [00:05:05]:
And I just, you know, part of this was happening during the pandemic, I think, where people were forced to reassess some parts of their lives and where they were finding meaning and connection and creativity and outlet and all that. Yeah, I. And I had one of those moments where I was just sort of chewing over this problem that I was kind of stuck on. And creative writing, like, it just hit me like a bolt out of the blue to be really, really poorly written about it. When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be a writer when I grew up. Ever imagined that when I would grow up and publish a book that it would be a nonfiction book tied to the skills related to my profession? I just had this idea of, like, being a film director or, you know, or being some kind of creative person and that. But I hadn't really written for storytelling forever, like, since high school, probably. Right.

Steve Portigal [00:06:09]:
And, you know, turns out there's a lot of classes. There's companies that, like, sell classes for writing. A lot of people want to be writers. A lot of writing classes. And so what did you start writing.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:23]:
When you leaned back into it?

Steve Portigal [00:06:25]:
Signed up for a, like, creative writing introduction class at UCLA, which at that point, everything was remote. I think they still have a mix of. But they have a huge writing program. And so they were running all these programs remotely. And, you know, it's such an interesting activity. So I think writing class is its own thing, because there's this strong workshop tradition, which is about being part of a group, and, like, it's a crit. Right. But a crit with certain kinds of rules.

Steve Portigal [00:07:01]:
And in this introductory class, their rule was no negative feedback. And that's, as you progress, you're allowed to give negative feedback, but to be forced to only say positive things to somebody else was a huge reframe about being creative, exposing your material, being in a little, small community, how you engage with each other, just to, like. It was a radical idea.

Andrew Skotzko [00:07:31]:
Yeah.

Steve Portigal [00:07:33]:
So we were all sort of learning to give each other feedback, and they teach you, the feedback should be specific. And then we have, in all these classes I took, you have these instructors who have been writing and teaching writing forever, so they know just so many of the patterns, and you see their feedback, and it's like a masterclass, just watching someone give feedback. They can kind of see with a depth into this artifact. You're sort of taking words and a bunch of activities and characters and trying to put it together into something, and you don't know how to do that even though you think that you do. I think anyone can write a really really crappy story. And the path. Being able to write a mediocre story involves making all these mistakes and having them pointed out to you. And some of them are really fundamental things, like when you're learning to walk or crawl, you get very basic rules, which you can break the more you go.

Steve Portigal [00:08:39]:
But our first instructor told us that the verb for somebody speaking should always be said. I walked into the bar, and hello, the bartender said, not whatever verb. Asked, questioned, challenged. Just keep it at said. And that puts some discipline and some structure on the thing where everybody's sort of flailing and trying to do too much, too loud, kind of too far before you're ready. And so I found it really, just really compelling on so many levels to be with this community to see what other people can do. And there's some amazing people just figuring it out kind of where I'm at, and people that are much more skilled and people that want to write genre, they want to write about zombies and airplanes and aliens, and some people want to write about relationships. And you start to see there's just a lot of tropes in any sort of practice of people using their writing class for therapy and so on.

Steve Portigal [00:09:48]:
And so all these things, like, you figure out what your instincts are, and then you have the chance to kind of reflect them against something else. I spent the first, I don't know, let's just say year or so, writing about, like, stuff that I wanted to work out, not memo. There's a. I don't want to write a memoir piece, but I like taking some incident from my childhood or my teenage years and then fictionalizing it. Like, not, like, turning that into. As an inspiration for a piece of fiction.

Andrew Skotzko [00:10:20]:
Sure.

Steve Portigal [00:10:21]:
Yeah. I spent quite a long, you know, many semesters of these different classes and writing circles before I started to just feel like I'm just gonna make stuff up, right? Like, it doesn't have to be a thing that happened to me. It could have nothing to do with me. And that was kind of liberating. Like, I'm not saying now I'm a better writer than I'm not doing x, but just realizing, oh, there's other paths. If our question here, which I'm still blathering about, is, like, finding your voice, it's just having these chances to try different things and see your instinct is to try x, and then you can see how that goes, and then you have these models in front of you to do something else and trying and failing or trying and feeling more comfortable with it. And, in fact, I am now writing, I was sort of talking about people that do genre. I started off trying to write a New Yorker stories, and now I'm trying to write genre pieces.

Steve Portigal [00:11:22]:
Although somewhere there's a synthesis of them both. They're like sad stories about aliens or comedy stories about country bumpkins who are involved in a planetary invasion. Like, I'm just. I'm still having fun playing with it. Anyway, long answer.

Andrew Skotzko [00:11:38]:
When you said that, if you read the. I'm blanking on the name of the Sci-Fi series, but it involves a snarky beer can AI named Skippy. And when you said the country bumpkin, do you know what the series I'm talking about?

Steve Portigal [00:11:50]:
No, I don't.

Andrew Skotzko [00:11:51]:
I think it's called the. Oh, it's the expeditionary Force series. It's just like some of the most fun. Like, it's my version of, like, reality tv, right? It's like Sci-Fi don't have to think about it a lot, but there's like 18 books, and it's really fun and involves, like, the snarkiest asshole beer can you've ever met. That's like the most all powerful AI of all time. But anyways, now that I've revealed some of my nerdy hobbies, I'm curious. One thing you said there that was interesting was this idea that you only could give positive feedback. And I'm wondering, how did practicing that.

Andrew Skotzko [00:12:26]:
How did putting in reps, just doing that. Did you notice any changes in yourself, whether in your relationships or in the way you approached your work by taking on that practice?

Steve Portigal [00:12:38]:
Yeah, there's a magical answer where, yes, food tasted better and my relationships got better and everyone loved me when. Before they hated me. I don't think so. I think. But there is a certain empowerment to realize that there are different choices that you can make, that you can hold back on certain things. So, I don't know. I guess I feel maybe makes me more mindful of the choices that you give. There is so much gravity towards giving critical feedback, and I think starting you out with that discipline to hold off on that is really, really interesting.

Steve Portigal [00:13:24]:
And I think that instructor was recognizing that gravity. Everyone always wants to criticize everything. I'm going to teach them the other piece. I still need to remind myself to give the positive feedback, and I think other people model that better than I do, because when I'm on the receiving end, like, it really feels good, it feels authentic and sincere. When you're part of a community of any kind, a community of practice, people are fans of yours and they believe in you and they support you and they support you kind of unconditionally. Right. I'm in groups where we all write stuff that the others don't like and wouldn't write and don't read. A.

Steve Portigal [00:14:06]:
But we're just really happy for that person. So it's maybe like a. There's kind of a cultural motivation there to care for each other, care about each other and these tangible things that you can do to make that experience better, because sharing something's vulnerable.

Andrew Skotzko [00:14:23]:
Totally.

Steve Portigal [00:14:23]:
And, you know, you expose yourself to, you know, and yet we need to see what our mistakes are so that we can improve them. So I think where I'm at now is to have trusted relationships with people where I don't need to kind of pad out my criticism with sort of unnecessary enthusiasm to kind of whatever the. What is it, the Oreo method, where you kind of tell somebody like, yeah, here's what you did great.

Andrew Skotzko [00:14:52]:
Yes.

Steve Portigal [00:14:53]:
Here's what you did wrong. But again, here's what you did great.

Andrew Skotzko [00:14:56]:
Yeah.

Steve Portigal [00:14:58]:
And I think there's more trust when you have established relationships, but anytime you start giving somebody feedback and you don't know them, you know, I've been doing. I've been involved in giving talks where we're giving each other feedback. The whole cohort of presenters is giving each other feedback. And it's tricky at first because you don't know me, and so you don't know what my intentions are versus how I come across. So I think, if anything, it made me just mindful of the importance of positivity to build trust in a new relationship as kind of a bridge to, like, you know where I'm coming from. When I say no one's going to understand that you don't feel bad. You're like, oh, good. And that we know how to talk to each other and hear each other.

Andrew Skotzko [00:15:47]:
It reminds me of two different feedback models that I learned. There was actually a previous podcast guest on here, Christina Woodkeye, who I think you're familiar with as well, and she taught me about this difference between a gasp and grow model of feedback and the one that. And we'll link to all this stuff in the show notes for the listener. But the idea of the Gasp model was if you're giving feedback on a work item or an artifact or a story or whatever it was, starting with understanding their context. The GA in gasp is goals and attempts of what is this person trying to do? And then does this thing, does this attempt to line up with that? And then from there, you talk about successes. That's the s of like, oh, what's good, what's working? And then you close it out with possibilities of like, okay, given all that context, given what you're trying to do, what you've done, what's working, how could this be even better?

Steve Portigal [00:16:42]:
Right?

Andrew Skotzko [00:16:43]:
So it's almost like it kind of puts you side by side with the person instead of attacking the work. You're standing shoulder to shoulder going, hey, how can I help you make this thing as good as it can possibly be given your goals?

Steve Portigal [00:16:55]:
Which is why they asked you for your feedback in the first place, right?

Andrew Skotzko [00:16:59]:
Hopefully.

Steve Portigal [00:17:00]:
And was there another one? Gas was one.

Andrew Skotzko [00:17:03]:
Oh, gas, yeah. The other one was grow that she taught me that one's a little bit more for like helping. It's a little bit more of a coaching framework for helping people think through a situation of like, okay, what's the reality and the options and all that. But I, I think another feedback framework, just to share that, that I found useful on specific work items I learned from another guest on the show, Sahil Lavinia, and he taught it to me as the ABCD framework. And so it was like, a, what's awesome, b, what's boring, c, what's confusing? And D, what did you not understand? Or like, what did you not believe in what they said? And so it's like you give this sort of very holistic feedback of this is very actionable. If youre the recipient of that feedback, youre like, okay, I could do something about this.

Steve Portigal [00:17:48]:
Those are great. Yeah. And those definitely apply to the context that were talking about this. Not, I mean, unless youre a professional writer, its a non work thing that were talking about, for sure.

Andrew Skotzko [00:18:00]:
Well, im curious just to start to pivot this into more of how this comes into the workplace where so much of the work you and I do and spend a lot of our time thinking about, when we were chatting recently, we were talking about the idea of, I think we were talking about Rick Rubin as a producer and this idea that it's almost how do you create these conditions where the thing emerges, where the creativity emerges? When I start to think about storytelling and finding your voice and criticism and feedback, all these things, it starts to feel like these are all part of this bigger picture around creating the conditions where creativity can come forward. And I know you've done, you know, you've done lots of training, you've done lots of coaching, you've done all kinds of stuff. But I guess just to throw you a really broad question, but like, how do you think about that in terms of creating the set of conditions where people can, can actually do, like, risky, vulnerable work that, you know, might just really move the needle.

Steve Portigal [00:18:58]:
Yeah. I've been doing all kinds of workshops and training and facilitation as part of my work for a long time. And I. It's not about feeling like an imposter, but like, lecturing and training or lecturing and workshopping are so different. And sometimes I might be at the same event or with the same. I worked with a group yesterday and I did both a lecture and a workshop, and they feel similar. You know, you kind of get invited to do both if you're, you know, a person who's published books and so on. I still am still coming to grips with how different they are because the lecture is me talking, and it's like me telling you what I know in as clear and engaging a way as possible.

Steve Portigal [00:19:53]:
So you can capture all that and go off and do something with it when we're all done. And, you know, there's any, there's many different kinds of workshops, and I've done, maybe over the last few years, any number of sort of workshop type experiences where the percentage of time that is me talking and going through slides is low and the percentage of time which is people either working on their own or sharing and getting feedback from each other and feedback from me is high. And so the, the almost imposter aspect is like, well, I just did something and I didn't, you know, it was 4 hours and I only talked for 20 minutes. Like, they're paying me for this, or people pay to attend this, right? It's like, am I getting away with something? Like, you're not getting 4 hours of Steve's brain just like shooting out at you. But yeah, I am really interested in the conditions, and I sort of sit back and watch what happens in these workshops, and I am amazed at what people can do, how they can be vulnerable and creative. And, you know, I wish I was some kind of, you know, thought leader type to come on here and say, like, oh, I have a four letter acronym for how I create those conditions. I don't. I think in some ways I'm just operating with maybe a less examined belief structure about, yes, it's giving positive feedback, it's making jokes, it's being light, it's starting off myself before people are comfortable talking.

Steve Portigal [00:21:37]:
It's having some structured activities and some back and forth so that they talk, they work, I talk. All those kinds of things are part of designing a good session. But every time I'm in one of these things that I'm responsible for and something incredible happens, I never take it for granted. I'm not surprised in a way that's about self doubt. I'm just really delighted. So, yeah, we create the conditions in that role, and then people show up because they care about this. I mean, they physically show up to the thing, but in that way, how do you show up? People bring their passion for the topic, and I love that. I think that feeds me to keep doing it.

Steve Portigal [00:22:26]:
But again, a thing happened towards the decline of the most serious part of the pandemic, where we started to do on site, in person, in office kinds of activities. And I found myself in the midwest being the only person within, like a, I don't know, 100 miles radius wearing a mask. But I did start to do some things in person at that period in time. And, wow, I'd sort of forgotten what a rush that is to bring in some improvisation, to be kind of loose and reactive and let the group's energy determine kind of where my energy is up and where it's down and engage the quiet person in the room and help everybody laugh and feel comfortable. And so it's all about creating the conditions for sure. Right. You have some motivated people. You have an objective that we care about and just kind of bringing the force of your personality or belief in how to kind of be with groups into there and see the stuff that happens.

Steve Portigal [00:23:37]:
So it's great to be in these writing classes and be on the receiving end of it. And it's very specific to the topic and how those people do it. And it's amazing to be given these chances to, I guess, hone that myself and see, yeah, just see the magic stuff that people come up with and be like, oh, they're paying me to do this. Feels like a cheat. I mean, yes, it wouldn't have happened otherwise. I'm not trying to be self deprecating, but there is that. Yeah. You open up a box that has magic in it and, like, it's amazing every single time it happens.

Andrew Skotzko [00:24:12]:
Yeah. Yeah. One of the insights I learned about workshop design in the last year or so from a really good book called the Workshop Survival Guide, which, for anyone who's designing a workshop, go check that out. But what I think I used it. I think what I had wrong about it was I used to think, like, okay, as a facilitator, I have to. And I think this applies, by the way, for the listener to, like, you don't have to be running a workshop. This could be, you know, facilitating a big team meeting or an important conversation with your team or the executives. But I used to kind of think that I, as the facilitator, had to, like, make it happen.

Andrew Skotzko [00:24:46]:
Right? I had to, like, come with, like, all the right stuff and, like, so much energy. And, you know, certainly there's something to that. There's something, like, there is some truth to that. But what I found was that, as if you design it better and create the conditions, right? Like, the magic happens from them, from the people. You set the table, so to speak, they'll bring the rest, and it's almost like, yeah, just get the right people in the room, get the right shape of this thing, and then it's almost like, don't get in the way. Curious what you think about that.

Steve Portigal [00:25:14]:
I mean, I think it's. Yes, and I think. Because I think the ways that we don't get in the way vary. Like, I had a woman work for me for a few years who was very extroverted. Like, just extremely extroverted. Like, had needs to interact and so on. And we would co facilitate, or I would watch her facilitate. Like, we did different projects together, and it was amazing to see what she could do or how she would kind of choose to approach things.

Steve Portigal [00:25:47]:
You know, if you're in a group, she might, you know, notice that somebody's energy is low, and then look at them, say their name and say, yeah, you're looking right. You know, Andrew, you're looking a little uncomfortable right now. Is there something that's going on for you, or, Andrew, I'm going to walk over and hand you the marker. Why don't you come up to the board and, you know, engage in this activity? And she was very comfortable with that, and she was charming, and she pulled it off, and it worked. People responded to her. Even just describing that kind of, that feels a little confrontational to me. Even just describing that, I feel super uncomfortable, like, imagining myself doing that.

Andrew Skotzko [00:26:30]:
That is not my style.

Steve Portigal [00:26:32]:
Yeah, but it's really cool to watch somebody else do that and see what's not my style work. So I think there's a lot of paths to get there. So you set the table, but I don't know. I ruined your metaphor, but, like, there's a lot of ways to serve, or there's a lot of ways to kind of. To let it happen and. Yeah. Back to your question about finding your voice. There are a lot of the really great creative work is there's an individual aspect that it isn't like, be more like one of us.

Steve Portigal [00:27:06]:
It's like, be like yourself. There are tactics, and you can sort of see these people that are great in a way that's authentic to them, and you can try to emulate them, but you can also make a choice and be like, I'm never, I'm probably never going to hand somebody the marker and invite them explicitly by name to contribute, but I have some sensitivity to that because I saw this person do it and I saw it work. So there's just a lot of different paths to get there. And I'm just a big fan of, like, yeah, I'm glad that you started this off with finding your voice. Finding your voice and all this stuff is hard, but super exciting, too. And I guess having that confidence to be like, okay, I'm not gonna facilitate the way Steve is describing, but I am gonna facilitate in a way that's true to me, with some knowledge about, hey, there's like, eight or ten different ways to kind of go about this that are all consistent but unique and feeling, you know, that's, I think, some maturity that we build if we kind of start to understand what that feels like.

Andrew Skotzko [00:28:10]:
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I'm appreciating about what you're saying is this idea of, we can see someone else do something that is like, it's not how we would do it. And we're like, wow, I'm not even sure how they did that or I didn't understand what they just did, but, whoa, something awesome came of it. And being able to appreciate what it leads to, even if it's something we didn't understand, didn't do, wouldn't do. And we were talking earlier, and I want to pivot in this direction now about the relationship, the sometimes fraught relationship that executives have with research practice. Right? Because that description I just gave, I swear, I have seen that on the faces of so many executives who are looking at research being presented, going like they're smiling, but you see in their eyes, they're like, I don't know about this. I'm really not so sure. They're worried there's something like that.

Andrew Skotzko [00:29:03]:
And so I'm curious just to start off exploring this and sort of the relationship between research and how you work with that as a leadership team. How do you, when you have a group of folks, let's say it's an executive team or a leadership team, and they need to understand and start to appreciate something that is totally out of their wheelhouse, let's say none of them have any sort of research background at all? Nobody there has a background in design or product. Maybe some engineering, but that's it. How do you start to set the table and create those conditions for them to actually appreciate this thing that is a little bit foreign to them?

Steve Portigal [00:29:39]:
Right. The conventional wisdom these days is very much about, no one cares about research as a thing. They care about what's important to them, the decisions, the implications, the consequences for their business. And they shouldn't have to care. So it's incumbent on people that are sharing research information, findings, recommendations, whatever, with leaders to. Oh, right. Speak the language of business is this kind of cliche that gets thrown around, and that's how you get the seat at the table. Another phrase that gets thrown around is kind of go where they are and speak their language.

Andrew Skotzko [00:30:21]:
Meet them where they are.

Steve Portigal [00:30:23]:
Yes. And. Right. Those are all. I mean, that's sort of a good life lesson or a good mantra approach for everything. I guess I just want to hold out a little possibility for taking people with you.

Andrew Skotzko [00:30:41]:
Say more about that.

Steve Portigal [00:30:43]:
Yeah. And I think moderation in everything. I interviewed somebody the other day, and they were talking about using. They have a social science doctorate, and they talked about using theories from social science in understanding what they were seeing with their users as a research. Research leader.

Andrew Skotzko [00:31:04]:
Okay.

Steve Portigal [00:31:04]:
And I asked them, like, did you bring that into what you shared? They're like, absolutely not. Like, it was a way to help me make sense of it, but that wasn't relevant to them, and I don't disagree with them. I think sometimes those like information about, let's just like a social science theory or, you know, some way that you made sense of a pattern. I think sometimes it can be helpful to give somebody, like, some scaffolding to understand something and that you educate somebody about a principle, right? So, I mean, there's a million principles, right? It's like the. Since the gladwellization of our world, right? These things are everywhere. What's the peak end rule? Right. Peak end rule says the last thing that happens, I think, is the one you kind of remember. So if you have a great meal, but you wait to get your bill, you give a crappy tip.

Steve Portigal [00:32:03]:
And so the sort of. They don't need to know it mindset says, like, never tell anybody the peak end rule. Just tell them how they should redesign their service experience. Peak end rules, the thing that we hold. Right. But peak end rule is like, it's an enlightening bit of information about how the world works. And if you. I don't see why I can't help somebody learn that pattern.

Steve Portigal [00:32:34]:
Let's just call it, like, a bit of theory. And this is me. I'm not an academic. I don't sort of come from that tradition. But I think teaching somebody something in a low key way to help them understand that what we're seeing for us is not just for us. It's like it fits a larger pattern. There's a reason for this, and then we can't, you know, brute force our way around it. Like, the peak end rule is the peak end rule.

Steve Portigal [00:33:02]:
Like, you got to design with it, not design as if I love it. So I want to just hold out the possibility of sometimes sharing some things that are new, that are adjacent, but help people not have that look in their eyes that you were describing. And I think there's a terrible way to do this. Show up.

Andrew Skotzko [00:33:25]:
What's the wrong way? Let's start with the wrong way. So we all know what not to do, right?

Steve Portigal [00:33:30]:
Right. In 1876, the so and so was studying this group, and they did this and this and this. And what they found was I.

Andrew Skotzko [00:33:41]:
The oral lit review of the field.

Steve Portigal [00:33:43]:
Right. Lit review of the field. Right. And so this is where I think I sort of made fun of Gladwell. But, like, Gladwell's a great example. He takes these theories, and whether we think they're good or well founded or not, he's really good at sort of popularizing that, condensing it, and making us see how it's in the world around us. And so that is. That's not just tell me what the findings are.

Steve Portigal [00:34:08]:
Tell me what the recommendations are. It's, you know, give me a little bit of empowerment, help me see this new way. Yes. Right. And I think, you know, I think I sort of grew up in research where that's what we were trying to do was like. It was, you know, make people smarter, you know, empower them with some things that they knew they needed to know and some things that they didn't know that they needed to know. Again, the conventional wisdom is not to do that. I may be out of step.

Steve Portigal [00:34:37]:
I may be hearkening back to ye olde days with that. And again, everything in moderation. So what's a way to sort of say what we did? Oh, and by the way, this is just like the peak end rule. You probably read that in blink, and last time you had a crappy table service, you at a restaurant. I think there's ways to sort of humanize things that you're sharing so that smart people who are well read and have experienced the world and think about it. That's why they're in the role in their business that they're in, can kind of engage with you and connect with you. So is that about setting the table? You know, I think maybe it is, but it's also, it's finding your voice. It's kind of how you conduct yourself and how you treat people with compassion and respect, which is giving them something that they can feel excited about and new ideas and new frameworks to kind of talk about stuff.

Steve Portigal [00:35:35]:
That doesn't mean you have to make everyone a researcher or make them kind of go through all the work that you've gone through. But there is some kind of, there's literacy, right. I think the people that you're describing with those looks on their face is like they haven't, they didn't walk into that room with sort of the research, consumer literacy, and maybe they're not being given like that scaffold to kind of get there. So I just want to hold off on the sort of the full throated. We have to go where they are. We can also take them slightly out of their cloistered zones and give them something else in a way that's additive. You know, that's, and it could be a little uncomfortable, but those are learning moments, and I think, I think, I think it can work out really, really well. And so I just want to, I don't, I don't.

Steve Portigal [00:36:28]:
Those looks on their faces you're describing, that's horrifying. Right. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for the person that's trying to share. I feel bad for the profession. We can't really have impact if we're making people feel that way.

Andrew Skotzko [00:36:39]:
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's kind of bad for everybody. Right. Because it's, it's bad on, if you're, I love what you said a second ago about we want to help them become smart consumers of this stuff. The same way if you were going to go buy a car, you'd do some research and you'd get smart about what's important in this field. Actually, I want to explore that here in just a second of how might we help these folks be better consumers and more aware, wise, intelligent, discerning consumers of research? Because I think when I've seen this, because I'm usually engaging with this through the product side of the house, I'm seeing it's a product leader or a senior PM or somebody like this sometimes if it's a head of design or a designer and they're presenting something. And when this doesn't go well, you just see the whole thing starting to fall apart. And that's where I'm trying to intervene usually.

Andrew Skotzko [00:37:28]:
And usually if it's gotten there, I've missed it and I should have fixed it earlier, so it's too late and now I have damage control. But it's almost like on both sides. And so I think in this conversation we're going to focus more on the, the consumer side of that. But it's also very much, from my perspective, on the provider side of it. If you're the designer, the product person, whatever. Because if we don't learn how to communicate this stuff effectively and help them be good consumers of it, a lot of our work gets wasted. And that sucks. That sucks for everybody.

Andrew Skotzko [00:37:59]:
And so it just ends up, I think, feel like that's sort of, I've seen that happen enough times that it's kind of what got me thinking about this whole question in the first place, because I was like, all right, how do we get ahead of this and start to change the culture of this conversation?

Steve Portigal [00:38:13]:
Well, you made a really great observation that when you are trying, when you see this happen and try to intervene, it's something that should have happened earlier.

Andrew Skotzko [00:38:24]:
Yeah, I learned that the hard way.

Steve Portigal [00:38:26]:
I think a lot about insomnia. Cause I don't sleep that well. I don't know if it's technically insomnia, but whenever you wake up in the middle of the night and you wanna go back to sleep, the thing to do to fix that is something that should have happened six or 7 hours ago and the problem surfaces at some point. But the best time to deal with it is earlier on whatever. Don't look at blue light, or do look at blue light, or don't have a nap or whatever that is. The crises emerge in research readouts or reporting or whatever you want to call those sessions, but the time to address them is before you start to do research. So I think there's just lots of questions about who's determining what research is going to happen, what lens are they bringing to it. We talk a lot about scrappy research and getting everyone with a certain amount of skill so they can gather some data.

Steve Portigal [00:39:29]:
I think, is research a job or is research a skill or a practice? One of the things that more experience brings you is problem framing is like, at what point should we do what research with what method to address whatever kind of business challenge. So the less sophisticated any of those things are, you have more of a chance of sort of getting caught in those meetings with, like, why are we talking about this? What does this have to do with anything? And so I really encourage people to understand early on, like, what are we as a business trying to do? And what question do we want research to answer so that we're empowered to make a decision about that? And what research method should we employ in order to gain that knowledge which will help us make that decision? That takes a certain amount of experience to do well. And the people that sometimes see the need and raise the flag don't necessarily have that experience. We're about to ship this. So can you do an A B test to see if this works better, that works better, and maybe that is or isn't. Sometimes that is the right question and it's the right approach, but sometimes there's things behind that and things behind that and things behind that. And the more we can all come together and figure out, like, have alignment about that choice, then when we're having, if you want to prevent that look in people's eyes, like, what the hell is going on here? It'd be great to sort of align at the beginning. Like, what decisions do you need to make? Okay, and what information do we already have, and what are the risks if we don't make decision or we don't get it wrong? What assumptions or aspirations which are very different, do we have about either this behavior or this solution or this need or expectation? Like, we can talk about the product or we can talk about the people or both, you know, unpacking all of that and then picking the approach, at least picking the starting approach, it sometimes evolves as we go and we realize, oh, we didn't, we didn't even, we didn't ask the right question, and now we know what the right question is.

Steve Portigal [00:42:02]:
You know, again, you want to have all those conversations where the investment is lower, where you haven't, you know, put a lot of miles on the project to get that information.

Andrew Skotzko [00:42:12]:
Yeah. Do you think that's something that, like, does that need to be facilitated by a research leader? Do you think that's something that, you know, because I'm almost imagining that the, maybe one of the best times for this is like, you know, the leadership team meeting, where a lot of the folks who are the most expert in these questions are not in the room. Right. The person who knows the most about research, probably not in that room. So let's say I'm listening to this and I'm a CEO of a startup, right? Or I'm not the person who knows all the answers to all these questions and knows all these methodologies in and out. How can I facilitate a smart conversation when I'm not an expert in this domain? Right? So how do, if I'm listening to this, and maybe I don't even have the kind of help, that would be amazing, right? Maybe I don't have amazing research staff. How can we do a good job, or at least a good enough job of this in that kind of context?

Steve Portigal [00:43:03]:
Right. I think you can still work on the framework even if you can't fill it out. So here's the decisions we're going to be making. Like, it's looking ahead, right? Here's the decisions we're going to be making. I wonder what kind of research we could get. Well, that's not even the right question. It's not about research. Here's the decisions we're going to be making.

Steve Portigal [00:43:26]:
We have some.

Andrew Skotzko [00:43:28]:
Is there an example you could walk me through that would illustrate this? Because I know you've seen so many different companies, but I think that might bring it to life a little bit.

Steve Portigal [00:43:36]:
I had a conversation a few years ago with the person that was running research at Udemy, and what they did, which is not going to work for your CEO, but what they did was they had organizational okrs that were forward facing. Here's what's going to happen. And so the people that worked for this research leader were looking into those and were examining, here's what's going to happen with these different teams. And because they had that ability to sort of synthesize and prioritize and say, if we do this research at these times, we're going to get information that we can feed into those decisions. And so they put together a proposal which they shared with leadership. Right. We're gonna. Here's our research plan for the next year.

Steve Portigal [00:44:28]:
Some proportion of it is always held aside for reactive. Right. Stuff that we don't know that we're gonna need to go sort out. But some large. The lion's share of it is intentional, based on visibility into what somebody else is gonna do in the okrs, the.

Andrew Skotzko [00:44:49]:
Teams are going to be pursuing, and they're saying, okay, this is where the company's trying to go, what do we need to do research wise to support that?

Steve Portigal [00:44:58]:
And I think that ability to say, what do we need to do research wise, that's a skill set of somebody with experience and research. I think a CEO can ask the question, which I think, and I don't want to minimize that. I think that's huge. I think that's a more mature approach to research. Even if the CEO doesn't know, they at least know what they don't know. Yeah, progress, which is huge. That's a huge progress. So to say, here's what our okrs are, here's what our key initiatives are.

Steve Portigal [00:45:35]:
Research questions always come up and we try to answer them in whatever ways. But how do we go from being reactive to proactive? What would the research look like if these are the decisions and these are the business initiatives that we have? That's a great question to maybe the CEO doesn't answer. Who in that company, in that organization, has some experience that could answer that question? That's an amazing question to be given. The tradition in less mature organizations is to be reactive. So someone that takes a proactive approach is giving themselves and whatever research function they have. That's a gift. That's a huge kind of shift and it's very hard to overcome. I would love to see that come from the top down.

Steve Portigal [00:46:25]:
Cool. And just be like, yeah, we're doing all this stuff. Hey, can we. You could hire a consultant to come in and build you a quarterly plan or an annual plan based on those things. And you know you don't have to. Right. As consultants, we know some of this work gets done by consultants, not by staff.

Andrew Skotzko [00:46:45]:
Yeah, totally.

Steve Portigal [00:46:47]:
It is asking those questions. I don't think you can facilitate the response to that without being able to have the vocabulary.

Andrew Skotzko [00:46:55]:
Yeah, you need to know what's in the toolbox, what's good when, and to.

Steve Portigal [00:47:00]:
Ask the follow up questions. Well, wait, what do you mean by more efficient onboarding? What do you mean? Like, what would that look like? What do you mean? Who are these different customers and why do we think that they are these different segments? And what's the meaningful difference here? What are all the assumptions that are behind these objectives that we have? That's like, as researchers, that's our job. We're good at. We're not just good at getting data from people, we're good at understanding problems. It's the same skill set. You just dig below and dig below and dig below. And then you're like, okay, I got it. This is connected to this.

Steve Portigal [00:47:35]:
So I don't think you can only go so far without some of that expertise, but you still can go further than just ignoring it.

Andrew Skotzko [00:47:44]:
Totally. So let's jump ahead now. Let's assume wonderful, happy case where the CEO or leadership has been more proactive. They've set up the organization in a really positive way to proactively go out and figure out what they need to learn before they desperately need the information. So let's say that wonderful stuff is happening. And now I feel like I want to flip to the other side where you have, whether it's, regardless of who did the research, whether that's designer, product, person, consultant, whatever, but all of a sudden you have the readout, you have the, hey, here's what we found. We've been working on this for six weeks or a month or whatever. Here's what we're learning.

Andrew Skotzko [00:48:23]:
This is, I think, another one of those key moments where I see folks who don't have a research background struggle to be wise consumers of it. They don't quite know how to evaluate what they're seeing. And I'm curious, what are a few ways, even if it's a few simple rules or guidelines, you could offer for those people to engage in a better way with what's being presented to them, to think more critically about it, even though they don't personally have that research background and they don't know, oh, you did something attitudinal and you should have done something behavioral or whatever.

Steve Portigal [00:49:01]:
This is a question that has never come up. The question is always, what can the researcher presenting something or the designer presenting something do to get around that? So I love this question, and I think the answer is very much about the softness and the humaneness of being in that seat. Hearing something that challenges your worldview is hard. And depending on your availability, we talk about structuring programs so that people share their presumptions ahead of time. But sometimes leaders aren't available for that. You only see them at the end of this process. Um, so I would say to that people should have a compassion for themselves and they should be able to hear themselves. If you are a leader, you have a lot invested in.

Steve Portigal [00:50:01]:
This is the path, this is the problem. You're talking to investors, new hires, leaders. You're, you know, preaching, right? You have a view of the world, you have a vision, and that's often, I think, what people are rewarded for and why they're successful the way that they are. And research can sometimes feel like it contradicts that vision. And so this sometimes falls. I have this talk I've been doing that I did yesterday called. We already knew that, which is about that cognitive bias where people actually, they reject what you're telling them as not being new. And there's just lots of reasons, most of which fall upon the researcher kind of do, to do better.

Steve Portigal [00:50:48]:
But if we think about the recipients, you know, what is it like to get bad news? Here's something that you disagree with. Here's something that you don't think is true, or do you have an investment in yourself, in your identity and what you just wrote in an all hands email this morning? So how do you create for yourself, like, a safe space, like a learning space, to engage in sort of the possibility of what's being presented, regardless of whether it's being presented to you as, like, this is the fact and this is what we have to do. I think. Could people invite themselves to be, like, going to this meeting with some intention, like, I'm going to hear some stuff that's going to confirm what I believed or confirm my strategy. I'm going to hear some things that at first blush seem like they don't make any sense, but maybe if I engage with them, I'm going to understand the delta between what I assume and because I think there's often nuance that gets lost if you don't pay attention. I have an example of a client that was making a product that was being used by audio installers, and it was a smart product, and they were all excited about smart meant that it was going to be faster because it was automatic. And in the research, people talked about it. Being smart meant that there were fewer errors and so you didn't have to go back and fix it.

Steve Portigal [00:52:24]:
So smart had some nuanced interpretations about what the value proposition was. Everyone agreed that it was smart and it was smart.

Andrew Skotzko [00:52:32]:
We have a dictionary problem. What do we mean by this word?

Steve Portigal [00:52:35]:
Yeah. And so if you're the, if you're the owner of that smart vision and I'm coming and telling you, like, yeah, people liked that it was smart because it reduced errors. You know, how do you. Yes, it's on me to create a learning moment for you, but how do you create a moment for yourself where you're like, oh, we have a dictionary problem. I have a. I just learned something new about what smart means to my customers. Like, how do you feel good about that? And I hope this doesn't sound patronizing. Right? There's a reasons why we spend all day seeking new information and rejecting so much crap.

Steve Portigal [00:53:14]:
That's our job, is to filter stuff out. And that's a survival mechanism with a lot of overload. The busier you are, the more of a leader you are. That's your life. So this is not a report from the auditor. This is a creative activity to engage in sort of different sorts of perceptions and possibilities about things that you don't even know that you have assumptions about. So that's, that's a mindset. I would love people to be able to kind of bring that mindset in and be like, okay with like, huh.

Steve Portigal [00:53:50]:
I don't know how I'm gonna feel about that. And like, but I'm gonna use, this is a safe place. I'm gonna hear some things, and then we have time after to process it. I mean, it depends on the nature of the stuff. Sometimes it's like the button goes here, you're like, great. Button goes here, ship it. But sometimes it's like, oh, we have a different value proposition around smart, or there's actually another customer we should prioritize or whatever those kinds of implications are. And the CEO is going to see implications that the researcher wouldn't.

Steve Portigal [00:54:21]:
Yeah, so it's not just, it's not just create a space where you can tolerate this thing which is new to you. It's like, give yourself a chance to absorb it and reflect on it, and then, oh, my goodness. Like, dig in and see what you can do with this. Like, this is like, this is fuel for you. Yeah, but there's a mindset there, I guess, is what it comes down to.

Andrew Skotzko [00:54:44]:
So I love the mindset you're laying out, but to ask you a possibly annoying question, or maybe it's a two part question that I've seen a lot of executives who don't have research expertise struggle with, even though this isn't exactly how they articulated it, basically boils down to how do I know good research when I see it? So what's good versus bad research, and how do I know we have enough research?

Steve Portigal [00:55:09]:
I was discussing the quality question with somebody today as like, this is kind of like, feels like a sort of a third rail topic in research right now, because I think it's a good question and we don't have sort of standards. And, you know, you and I were having this conversation, and I'm picturing something like a report that I might give, and you're picturing something like a reporting that you sat out, sat in on. And, like, we don't even know if they're the same or how to even compare and contrast that. You know, we sort of know, we know really bad research when we see it, but we might also know really poorly presented research that might be mediocre. So, yeah, I don't think we have, I think it's a growth area for the profession itself around sort of quality. But you could kick that question back. Just the part. One part here and like, well, how do you know good code? And I don't know.

Steve Portigal [00:56:03]:
Does code have, like, a standard metric? There might be, but, you know, directors of engineering, let's say they know what it is. Like, vp of sales probably doesn't know probably that. So how do we know if we're shipping something and maybe there are metrics for that? Someone presents a marketing plan, like, how do we know if that's good? I think a lot of work comes down to trust and communication and relationships and seeing the build over time. So if you have me do some research and you don't know how to assess it, but we start to implement some of it, and it plays out, there's other kinds of confirmation that happen, and then the next time we can go further and go further. And so what you might learn is they're like, oh, Steve does good research. I don't know that that ladders up to, like, I understand what good research is. Right. I think there is literacy, and I see this on social media a lot, maybe less about user research, but just, like, journalism being critiqued, because I think I read something in the paper, I'm like, oh, well, you know, I guess this thing is, like, really bad for kids.

Steve Portigal [00:57:18]:
And then someone writes and sort of critiques the method or points out the bias or points out other sources, and if I don't follow those conversations, I just take everything that comes from authority as being true. I don't know how you kind of bring that into this. So what is inherently good? I mean, it's great when there's a discourse from some different perspectives. Right? That's something. And so, yeah, like, don't throw your research reports into a shareholder and ask them to be read. Like, I think that meeting where somebody's face screws up is better because they can push back and they can ask and they can. It doesn't have to. That can be a good thing, right? There can be criticism, a lack of understanding.

Steve Portigal [00:58:06]:
What was part two?

Andrew Skotzko [00:58:07]:
Yeah. So essentially it was a quality and quantity were the two questions, right? Yeah.

Steve Portigal [00:58:13]:
Because have we done enough?

Andrew Skotzko [00:58:14]:
Have we done enough? Because I actually saw an interesting case of the company I was supporting last year where. Well, I didn't see it actually happened before I got involved, but I heard the story where they had actually, just because the executive team didn't understand research that much, they just kept asking for more and more and more and more and more. And the team just kept. I mean, the team did it right. But it was like, basically they ended up wasting a lot of time and a lot of cycles. And it's like, yeah, they could have pulled the Ripcord much earlier. And so the question is, how do they think about what is enough research?

Steve Portigal [00:58:52]:
Right. I think it's about risk and decision making. My colleague Greg Bernstein, for years gave this presentation called be more certain. I think I'm saying it right, and that he was just sort of framing research as, like, enough certainty to make the decision, and sometimes very practically. Right. You might do some qualitative research, like some interviews, to understand what an issue is, but then you might want to understand how widespread is that issue. So you have a customer base of thousands users, and you talk to, like, eight people. You choose your sample very carefully to get some representation, but you see some behaviors, some blockers or something like that, or some aspirations in those eight people.

Steve Portigal [00:59:42]:
Yeah. How common is that? If we're going to invest in that, how common is that? Well, quantitative research is a tool that can answer that. So you might answer, you might say, what are the issues? And then how prevalent are those issues? So you might use sort of two rounds of different methods to feel like, okay, this is an interesting, exciting issue. That's a challenge for us. Let's make sure that it's sized in a way that validates the investment we're going to kind of make in it. So putting two pieces together is one thing. I think sometimes you might do some qualitative research on a behavior or part of a process, like onboarding, and you might identify some things to act on, like, oh, this part of the flow is confusing, or our language is inconsistent, or their intention, when they come, is not matched with what it is that we're giving them. So we can improve that.

Steve Portigal [01:00:39]:
But that research and onboarding is going to probably raise some other questions, like, what is the intention? People are coming to our product, which is like, what's our brand? What's our position? What's our story? You could go do that research. I don't think it's part of the initial assignment of, like, we need to get this onboarding piece sorted out, but it might go, and any good research leader or research managers going to keep track of new questions that emerge that then go into that OKR planning process. So, like, research always answers some questions and raises new questions, but doesn't mean that you do them right now and that you should be able to have enough certainty. If you've planned properly, you should be able to say, we think these are the top issues. We think these are the ways to fix them. And maybe we even have an idea about how prevalent they are, or we actually have data we've already got that we can confirm that this is worth the investment to fix it. While I love doing research and doing research leading to more research, if it's not, it shouldn't be wasteful and it shouldn't be spurious. It should be deployed at the right time.

Andrew Skotzko [01:01:53]:
Yeah. So just to start to wrap this part up, one of the guidelines that. I've always had it in my head, but it's sort of this. I think I first got this guideline many, many years ago when I read don't make me think by Steve Krug about usability testing. And it was the guideline of effectively, if you have five good interviews, in about five, you typically find something like 80% of what's there to be found. And I've seen, you know, other guidelines like that, whether they're exactly the same or sort of in that neighborhood. And I'm curious, like, have you found that to be true? And for folks who don't, like, I think you could say, I've said that to executives before and had them be like, what? That doesn't make any sense. Like, how could we possibly know off five people? How would you.

Andrew Skotzko [01:02:38]:
How do you think about that? How do you address that? That kind of question?

Steve Portigal [01:02:42]:
Right. And I think. I think it's Nielsen that, like, came up with the n equals five thing that has been cited forever and occasionally gets pushed back on. And if I remember, like, around the time, I could be wrong on this, but around the time that work was starting to come out, there were also some analyses that looked at, like, an expert audit or a heuristic audit, which is taking a usability professional and having them use something and having them identify sort of defects or bugs or errors, and that. That performed pretty well. Like, I think there was something where there was some percentage of things that were found. So, yeah, n equals five. I don't know.

Steve Portigal [01:03:34]:
I mean, just to loop back to where you're trying to go with this, that's about a certain kind of research goal, right? Usability is more closed ended, maybe more objective. You can either get to the future or you can't. You can either sign up for an account or can't. So, yeah, you can debate the n equals five thing. And I don't know, enough sort of usability hardcore math magic to kind of say whether or not it's true. I just want to add that what happens for me in research is it's not just what data is revealed, but it's the experience that I go through as a researcher. So when I'm doing research, and again, I don't do as much usability as I might talk to people about their expectations or their experiences, is that I start to have shower thoughts and dog walk thoughts and falling asleep thoughts, where I start to see patterns and connections. I start to synthesize while I'm living with this data and make sense and sort of understand something that no one actually explicitly said.

Steve Portigal [01:04:43]:
So this is the subjective kinds of data. It's the why, not just the sort of the what with the product. And you've got to live in the realm of the research for a little while. And my envelope number is eight. Like, if I do eight interviews, I start to have more interesting thoughts than just sort of then just, like, tabulating the, like, top features and requests or breakpoints, but start to make something new. That isn't necessarily what you want to do with a usability test. Depends on sort of what the thing you're trying to address. But so I do have sort of my number that I give out with lots of caveats because it's like, it's about the point at which I start to feel immersed and sort of more creative and understanding what's going on that's different than, like, I found all the issues.

Steve Portigal [01:05:37]:
It's more like I have enough immersion to start to make sense of all this messy stuff.

Andrew Skotzko [01:05:43]:
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I also should have given a little. I should have been more specific about the context I was imagining when I. When I was framing that question, because to your point, a lot of that comes out of the usability world. And where I've seen the question come up more frequently is in much more generative research, much earlier stage research. Imagine executive team is exploring some strategic opportunity. We're doing some research on it. We're thinking about making some big bets against this with maybe our next annual planning cycle or whatever the case may be.

Andrew Skotzko [01:06:15]:
That's more of the context I was thinking about. Because to your point, usability research, it's much more. I hate to use the word objective, but it's more bounded, maybe I'll say it that way.

Steve Portigal [01:06:30]:
Yeah. And I think in making big bets, it's. What's the set of activities that you're going to do? So. Yeah, some exploratory blue sky kind of research with people about what's going on in their lives or their work, you might do eight or ten of those, and maybe you want to synthesize those. And rather than coming up with a research report, come up with some sketches or some lowercase p prototypes, something that you can have the same conversation with people, either the same people or other people, that is, hey, imagine this thing exists. How does it change this part of your life? And so then you understand the problem. And you understand, like, when you produce a prototype, that's an assumption about what the problem is. And with that assumption is like, how to solve it.

Steve Portigal [01:07:23]:
So showing somebody a lo fi prototype challenges not only is this a good solution, but did we even understand the problem to begin with? And if I show somebody something, it's a way to prompt a more nuanced reflection on what that problem actually is. Those are still low investment pieces. But is it more research as continuing the research and feeding into another thing? And maybe at that point, then you want to do some kind of quantitative sample to be like, okay, we understand the problem, and if we intervene this way, it might have this impact. We're not building a solution and testing it, but we might take these, we might have new quantitative questions to kind of put out there, and then we maybe have enough information to decide to invest in this and then go through a proper, like, research, design, development kind of process.

Andrew Skotzko [01:08:19]:
But yeah, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense, and it fits with kind of what I've seen people do that. I think I've been asking you some hard questions because there aren't simple answers to them, and there's so many variables at playdead, you know, I often end up talking about how different, different methods get you different data which can enable different decisions or different kinds of decisions. Right. And so it becomes very not subjective, but it becomes very context dependent or context specific of, like, well, what are our unknowns and what are our assumptions? And, like, how big of a, you know, what's the cost of being wrong and how, you know all these things? And it's like, well, okay. That all those things play into why one might choose a certain method versus a other. Yeah, yeah. So I really appreciate the way you're kind of unpacking some of the nuance of that. I want to go and start to close out here.

Andrew Skotzko [01:09:12]:
And one of the questions I wanted to just ask you, is there a quote that's important to you or a guideline or a phrase like some saying that helps you do what you do that you kind of come back to often? I'm curious. So if there is, what is that? And what is it about it that speaks to you?

Steve Portigal [01:09:30]:
I know we're in an audio only format, but I'm going to show you this Andy Warhol. It's not an Andy Warhol print. It's a picture of Andy Warhol that somebody else has made. And it says on it, the world fascinates me. And I got really excited when I saw that. It sort of straddles some of the things we've been talking about. It's research and it's arthem. Andy Warhol was a certain kind of artist that was sort of making products.

Steve Portigal [01:10:01]:
I mean, making art as products and making art with the process that one makes products. And, yeah, you think of him as more of a. I don't know. It's interesting how he was a maker, but he also was an observer, and he, like, you know, made a movie of somebody sleeping and so on. He sort of took observation down to its. Down to the studs. So it just. It kind of excited me as just something to think about.

Steve Portigal [01:10:31]:
And, yeah, the world does fascinate me. I mean, I think it also fatigues me. And I think I have this up here maybe as a reminder that the world is fascinating and to sort of hold on to that, you know, after a few years of, you know, of being isolated and, you know, losing access to some of the in person kinds of work environments that we've talked about, where, you know, there's nothing like getting on a plane and flying to the midwest and getting, you know, going to some restaurant you've never been to and meeting people you haven't met to met before. Like, we work in really amazing environments with interesting people in different places, and it can be really, really stimulating. But if some of that, if we're spending more time in our homes and our computers in our neighborhoods, I guess I want to try to keep that fascination with the world. And whether that's me looking at Warhol or me looking at somebody trying to figure out how to tell a story, or me looking at someone trying to learn about research, whatever that is, or me looking at a research participant, that stuff's all fascinating. And I. It also is incumbent on me to remind myself that it is fascinating and to keep letting myself be fascinated by it and not sort of check out on it.

Andrew Skotzko [01:11:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. I really love that as a practice. Like, what a beautiful way to almost like a mantra to kind of guide you through your day. Right. Whatever. Wherever you are, whatever's going on, there's something fascinating if you look for it. I really like that as a practice.

Andrew Skotzko [01:12:14]:
Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Well, Steve, it's been an absolute pleasure having here. Thank you so much. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out or follow your work? And how can listeners be helpful to you?

Steve Portigal [01:12:24]:
One of the best places to find me and see what I'm up to and what I've been up to is my own website. It's my last name, portugal.com. and there you'll see things like the books that I've written and also the podcast that I run where I talk with talk with research leaders. So I encourage people to follow that there. Or hey, in your favorite podcast app, if you really want to get into research on a super nerdy way, these are the people talking about it, but also about leadership. So we cover research and we cover leadership of research. It does span a lot of things. And, you know, I blog there about, I'll post this podcast there.

Steve Portigal [01:13:10]:
I share things that I'm doing or that I've been doing. But also LinkedIn is probably my platform of choice that's relevant to, I think, the stuff we're talking about there. And yeah, if you know my name, you know how to find me on LinkedIn. And I complain about stuff and share funny stuff and raise issues and yeah, send, send recommendations about these kinds of topics there as well. So I would love to hear from people and be connected on LinkedIn.

Andrew Skotzko [01:13:39]:
Fantastic. Well, we will put links to all that in the show notes so you can open that and whatever podcast player you use and click right on through. So, Steve, thanks again for being here. An absolute pleasure. Keep doing what you're doing.

Steve Portigal [01:13:49]:
Okay, thanks. Same to you. What a great conversation.