Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization

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


Position yourself
Click to edit Master title style

Upon hire


Position yourself

Upon hire


Can to succeed, given your
Clickyouedit Master title style positioning?


Joseph edit Master title Hero’s Journey”
Click to Campbell’s “Thestyle

Image: Wikipedia


Kotter’s Change Model

Image: changecards.org


Prochaska Master title style
Click to edit& Diclemente’s Stages of Change

Image: @symplicit and @jodiemoule


Diagnose, then target response

Tactics: http://www.cellinteractive.com/ucla/physcian_ed/stages_change.html
Image: @symplicit and @jodiemoule


Diagnose the organization to
Click to edit Master title style check yourself

Image: Jess McMullin, bplusd


Organizational culture


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
•
•
•


Company cultures
Belkin, 2012

Belkin, 1982

Belkin, 1983

Change the culture

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


Thought leadership

Through thought leadership, create
influence outside the company to
grow your credibility internally.

Benchmark your efforts against
those of your peers.


Develop alliances

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


Treat this like a design style
Click to edit Master titleproblem


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.


Consider resources

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).


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.


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.)


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.


Part to edit Master title impact
Click2: Maximizing your style


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


Take them Master title
Click to editin the field style


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) “


Make your process title style
Click to edit Master visible


Make your output relevant

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.


An example of delivering research findings

http://www.portigal.com/blog/reading-ahead-research-findings/


“Research” Master title style
Click to edit playing nicely with “design”

Understand Create



Create

Understand Create

Create

Create



Understand
Create

Understand Create
Understand

Create Understand

Create

Also see: http://www.slideshare.net/andrewharder/critique-dont-complain-talk-by-andrew-harder


Make ideation part title style
Click to edit Masterof research


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.


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.


Coming in October!

A book by Steve Portigal
The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/


Let’s to edit Master title style
Click discuss



Thank you!

@steveportigal Portigal Consulting
steve@portigal.com www.portigal.com
+1-415-894-2001

Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization

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