Steve Portigal presenting "We've Done All This Research: Now What?" at Web 2.0 Expo New York on 11/17 – As designers increasingly are themselves conducting contextual research to inform their design work, they may find they are holding onto a trove of raw data but with little awareness of how to turn it into design. How can designers and researchers work with this type of data to have the most impact on design and business?
Participants in this workshop, collaborating in teams, will learn an effective framework for synthesizing raw data (to be gathered before and/or during the workshop) into insights, and then creatively using those insights to develop a range of business concepts that respond to those insights.
Before we go out in the field we write an interview guide (or field guide), a list of all the topics we want to cover.
Interview guides end up being very linear and structured, but the interactions we have in the field are looser and more conversational. We’ll let the way we pose our questions flow much more from what the person we’re interviewing is saying than from the sequence and phrasings of the interview guide.
Even though we know this will happen, we’ve still been working hard to hash out our questions ahead of time–even the basic ones. It’s like John McLaughlin said about jazz improvisation: you have to learn all the chords so that you can forget about them.
The interview guide is also something for everyone (including our clients) to look at, to make sure we’re all on the same page as we head into fieldwork.
I think getting polluting vehicles off the road is a great idea, but this auto dealership promo installation puts out a message that seems a bit off the mark…
Starting any project means we inevitably come across any number of articles that pertain to the topic or the themes that emerge from the research and synthesis.
Sometimes we’ll dedicate some time at the beginning to collect articles and summarize ‘em, but more often we’ll just do a quick scan and opportunistically look for issues to inform our recruiting and planning for fieldwork.
Here’s what we’re reading now (and we’ll do a part 2 if and when we find more articles of interest):
Among the many complaints made about the shift from reading on paper to reading on screen, perhaps the most common—and most difficult to counter—is that we are moving from a medium that requires concentration to one that sows distraction into every syllable. This complaint assumes that the act of flitting from one reading to the next is necessarily inferior; but what if that were not always the case?
Prominent examples include:
• Plastic Logic (2010)[8]
• txtr by the German start-up txtr (to be presented in the Oct 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair)[9][10]
• Cybook Opus by Bookeen (August 2009)
• Readius foldable eBook reader by Polymer Vision (Will never release due to bankrupt)[11]
• COOL-ER ereader by Interread (2009)
• Digital Reader 1000 SW by iRex (2009)
• Kindle 2 by Amazon (2009)
• Sony Reader PRS-700 by Sony (2009)
• Digital Reader 1000 by iRex (2008)
• Sony Reader PRS-505 by Sony (2007/8)
• Kindle by Amazon (2007)
• Cybook Gen3 by Bookeen (2007)
• Hanlin eReader by Jinke (distributed as “Lbook” in Estonia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine as “BeBook” in Europe; also distributed by Pixelar) (2007)
• Wattpad (2006) for Mobile Java devices and other mobile phones
• Sony Reader PRS-500 by Sony (2006)
• iLiad by iRex (2006)
• Librié by Sony (2004)
Lexcycle today announced that more than 2 million users have downloaded Stanza, the popular electronic book reader application for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, since it was launched one year ago. Stanza’s award-winning reading experience, which features customizable formatting, searching, library management and over-the-air book downloads on demand, has led to more than 12 million book downloads.
These milestones highlight that many people are quite comfortable reading full length books via Stanza on their iPhones and iPod touch.
Wednesday July 29th 2009, 10:02 pm by Steve Portigal
Paul Graham on the "social norm" problem with the Segway – This is a point I made in my interactions column "Some Different Approaches To Making Stuff" – Kamen is the genius who got it wrong, because he focused only on technology and not on culture and behavior.
"The Segway hasn't delivered on its initial promise, to put it mildly. There are several reasons why, but one is that people don't want to be seen riding them. Someone riding a Segway looks like a dork.
My friend Trevor Blackwell built his own Segway, which we called the Segwell. He also built a one-wheeled version, the Eunicycle, which looks exactly like a regular unicycle till you realize the rider isn't pedaling. He has ridden them both to downtown Mountain View to get coffee. When he rides the Eunicycle, people smile at him. But when he rides the Segwell, they shout abuse from their cars: "Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin homo?"
Why do Segways provoke this reaction? The reason you look like a dork riding a Segway is that you look smug. You don't seem to be working hard enough."
Like Nike+ for happiness, iPhone app is data collection for PhD thesis – "At repeated periods throughout the day you'll be pinged by your iPhone either by email or by SMS, and prompted to answer a short one-minute survey. This one asks how happy you are, what you're doing (yes, "making love" is an option, though hopefully it's an activity you'd prioritize over doing some science) whether you exercised recently, whether you're alone, who you're talking to and what you're thinking about." Essentially a "beeper study" but somehow a more viral story ("iPhone"!) than normal.
'True Blood' Beverage – "Inspired by HBO's hugely successful vampire drama series, True Blood, Omni Consumer Products struck a deal with the network's licensing division to releasing 'Tru Blood' the actual beverage..a drinkable product inspired by a beverage meant to taste like blood so that fake vampires from a pay-cable TV show can survive without having to resort to feasting on humans."
People always ask us, “how do you find the people for your projects?”
Figuring out how to identify appropriate people to interview for a project is all-important. For Reading Ahead, we know we need people who are active readers. What constitutes an “active reader?” We’re defining it as people who read books at least three times a week, in multiple locations. We want people who are engaged in the behavior at a level where they will have lots of experiences from which to draw. We also know that we want to look at how people’s behavior changes/doesn’t change/is supported by/is influenced when reading books in print vs. reading eBooks using a device.
When we have established the criteria for participating in the research, we typically use a specialized recruiting company to find people. We write a screener, which has a series of specific questions to identify people who meet our criteria.
Screener excerpt, Reading Ahead project, 2009
Finding the right people can be quite complex, and for some projects, we’ve written screeners that are more than 10 pages long. If we’re looking for people who do activities X and Y, in locations 1, 2, and 3, but have never done activity Z—well, you get the idea!
In this project, the criteria are simpler, and we’ll be doing our own recruiting. In fact, if you’re in the Bay Area and an avid reader or Kindle user, let us know and maybe we can talk with you!
Update: We put together a representative screener that is formal enough to be given to a recruiting firm, even though we aren’t doing that for Reading Ahead. You can download it here.
Wednesday July 29th 2009, 3:02 pm by Steve Portigal
Liz Danzico of the School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design asked several people to create a 30-second video response to this prompt:
So you’re thinking about becoming a designer? If I could tell you only *one thing* about going into the field, my advice would be ___________ .
The results are compiled here and are really fun. As you’d expect, everyone’s video looks different, everyone interpreted the question a little differently and everyone has different advice. It’s about 7 minutes of content across 15 or so videos and you’ll get a kick out of ‘em and maybe even learn something. Check it out!
Tuesday July 28th 2009, 10:02 pm by Steve Portigal
You Can't Innovate Like Apple (the best summary of Apple's approach to innovation/domination and why it's tough to replicate) – The point is not to go ask your customers what they want. If you ask that question in the formative stages, then you’re doing it wrong. The point is to go immerse yourself in their environment and ask lots of “why” questions until you have thoroughly explored the ins and outs of their decision making, needs, wants, and problems. At that point, you should be able to break their needs and the opportunities down into a few simple statements of truth.
We’re very excited here at Portigal Consulting to announce the start of a new self-funded project–Reading Ahead.
In Reading Ahead, we’ll be exploring the evolution of reading and books from a consumer perspective–what it means to be a reader, how artifacts from traditional books to devices like Amazon’s Kindle affect the experience, and what the future might hold for readers, product developers, and beyond.
Over the course of the project, we’ll be blogging both about how we work and what we see and learn.
Steve Portigal (left) and Dan Soltzberg, project kickoff, July 27, 2009
Understanding our client
One of the first steps in any project is figuring out what the project is really about. So the first piece of research we do is often focused on our client.
As we work with our clients to establish the scope and approach of a project, we also interview key stakeholders in their organization to better understand what they know and what they need to know. (This doesn’t always map to what they think they know and what they think they need to know, and it’s important to suss out the differences.) These interviews help us understand the dynamics of the team and the organizational culture.
In this case, we’re our own client, so we sat down and asked each other some fundamental questions
What is it we want to know that we don’t know now?
What are we going to do with what we learn?
What are the people, places, things, behaviors, etc. that we think we want to focus on.
How broadly or tightly do we want to draw the scope of the exploration (at least at the outset—this can change as the project moves forward). In this case, to what extent might we want to be looking at bigger categories like content, entertainment, free time?
The way we answer these project definition questions will have a huge affect on how the work unfolds. As in most projects, we’ll be looking for the sweet spot that is constrained enough to give the project a clear focus but open enough to leave room for the unexpected.
I just got back from a medical leave, and while I was off work, I had to face an interesting new dilemma.
I usually post at least a couple of tweets a day on Twitter; it’s part of my work and how I stay in touch with people, events, and general whassup.
Because our work encompasses such a wide range–technology, pop culture, behavioral trends–there’s not much in my life that isn’t relevant content, but during this period I had a lot of downtime where I really wasn’t engaged with much beyond my morning coffee, my dog, and a couple of favorite movies.
I had to really think about to what extent I wanted to share my purely private, personal life on the Net.
After a tweet or two to let people know my general situation, I found that I just naturally disengaged from Twitter and Facebook. It was the first since I’ve started using these tools that I was only interacting (for the most part) with my immediate surroundings and people who were physically present, and I have to say that it was refreshing and relaxing.
Now that I’m back in the fray, it feels just as natural to be getting involved once again in all this communication, but I feel like it was really valuable, for a little while, to have a retreat.
As sociologist Sherry Turkle said during a discussion on the NPR show On Point, “In some ways we come to technology expecting to be nourished by it, and in some ways it’s eating us up.”
The Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market is an amazing experience for San Francisco locals and visitors alike. In front of the Ferry Building they have an information booth that features a large photograph of the building on a metallic surface, with magnets representing the different booths. Obviously, as businesses come and go, or don’t show up on weekend, or are moved, it’s easy to update the map. And the use of the building itself as a backdrop reduces the abstraction typically found in a floor plan.
Excellent Rob Walker "Consumed" on Lululemon Athletica and the idea of a "lifestyle brand" – Anybody who is honest about consumer behavior knows that often what we buy is not simply some thing but some idea that is embodied by that thing. “Conceptual consumption” is the name given to this practice in a recent paper with that title by Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University (and author of the book “Predictably Irrational”), and Michael Norton, an assistant professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School, in The Annual Review of Psychology. Their notion has various subsets, one of which is the consumption of goals.
From a recent Fresh Air is a profile of the Tobacco Underground, an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity about how money from cigarette smuggling is sometimes used to fund terrorism. Of note is Jin Ling, a smuggled-only brand “virtually unknown to the authorities three years ago, [it] has grown so rapidly that law enforcement officials say it now rivals Marlboro as the top smuggled brand being seized in the European Union.” Of course, underground brands are unlikely to pay attention to intellectual property rights, hence the familiar packaging design, with the Camel camel replaced by a goat.
