Steve Portigal, Principal

Steve is fascinated by the stuff of a culture – its products, companies, consumers, media, and advertising. All these artifacts and the relationships between them are the rules that define a culture -- the stuff makes the culture, but it is the culture that makes the stuff.

Steve has an informal Museum of Foreign Grocery Products, a fun diversion that celebrates cultural differences through mundane consumer goods.

Steve takes pictures steadily whether for consulting work, travel, or as part of everyday life. Photography helps him discover another "frame" on our surroundings and to practice seeing the world differently.

Steve built one of the first online communities (Undercover, a Rolling Stones fan group) in 1992, nurturing it from a time when the Internet was an underground academic technology through to today, as part of a global info-infrastructure.

Connect with Steve: LinkedIn   Flickr   Twitter



Tamara Christensen, Consultant

Tamara loves to talk to strangers and is intrigued by how people narrate their lives and what their stories reveal about how they make meaning. She is driven by a desire to uncover everyday creativity in the way people establish rituals and relationships. Fluent in Italian, Tamara's years of teaching and travel provided the foundation for her abilities to curate stories and translate them into actionable insights.

While directing research efforts, Tamara earned the nickname "the bonding agent" for her abilities to facilitate and integrate innovation efforts across research, design, engineering, and manufacturing departments. She has conducted research, facilitation, and training for clients in consumer products and packaging, advertising, and the public sector. Tamara has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Kansas and Arizona State University and offered workshops and talks at various conferences. Tamara has undergraduate degrees in Italian and industrial design, as well as a Master's degree (and soon PhD) from Arizona State University.

Tamara exercises her own everyday creativity by inventing new and hybrid words. She is also quite fond of singtalking, belly laughs, and bold gestures. In a recent survey of those in the know, Tamara was metaphorically described as a hotpot, a glass of Prosecco, an Energizer bunny, a Sharpie, and a whirling dervish.

Connect with Tamara: LinkedIn   Twitter


Past Speaking Engagements
  • About, With, and For at the Institute of Design (2002 - 2005; 2004 slides here)
  • Adobe Systems (2005) - the challenges of being a creative inside a corporate environment
  • Creative CanUX (2005) - seminar on ethnographic methods
  • DUX05 poster - user research for the HP Home Cinema Digital Projector (PDF link to paper)
  • DUX05 tutorial - innovation, ethnography and improv
  • IDSA-SF (2005) - facilitated panel discussion on design entrepreneurship
  • BayCHI - Kawaii: Adventures in a Parallel Universe (2004)
  • CHIFOO (2004) - innovation, ethnography and improv
  • eBay (2004) - Global User Experience & Design Summit (review)
  • Fisher-Price (2004) - Design Summit
  • IDSA Western District Conference (2004) - facilitated panel discussions on i) design stories and ii) radical changes in our world
  • IFL - Swedish Institute of Management (2003, 2004) - Beyond Market Research
  • LIMA Licensing Trade Show (2004) - facilitated panel discussion on trends
  • Masterfoods (2004) - R&D Excellence Week
  • PDMA-SoCal (2004) - Learning about Customers, Demystified
  • SF-AMA (2004) - international ethnography
  • Art Center College of Design (2003) - introduction to ethnographic methods
  • DUX03 (with Lynn Shade) - international ethnography (PDF link to paper)
  • FX/PAL (2003) - Beyond Market Research
  • Google (2003) - Designer Tea Time
  • IBM Make IT Easy (2003) - Discovering Customer Value
  • Institute of Design (2003) - international ethnography
  • Thought At Work (2003) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (review here) - introduction to design research
  • Chemical Senses Day (2002) - introduction to ethnographic methods
  • Shure (2000) - training in ethnographic methods
  • Stanford Design Program (1998 - 2000) - lecture on ethnographic methods
  • BayCHI - Building Meaning Into Products (1998)
  • Stanford Graduate School of Business (1996) - lecture on building usable products
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