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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   FriendFeed   Dopplr



Dan Soltzberg, Consultant

Dan brings a background in design, facilitation, anthropology and communications to his work at Portigal Consulting.

Dan’s ability to “go deep” in his investigations supports a focus on generating provocative, actionable ideas, and creating processes and tools that empower client teams throughout the project lifecycle and beyond.

As a consultant and facilitator, Dan has worked with cross-functional and cross-cultural teams across a wide variety of industries and organization types.

Dan’s other loves include skateboarding and snowboarding, playing the bass, dogs, and old objects.

Connect with Dan: LinkedIn   Flickr   Twitter



Julie Norvaisas, Consultant

Julie considers consumers as artists, their marketplace choices as their palate, and the world they create for themselves as a creative act that reflects not only their individuality but also their society and culture. She revels in dissecting these choices to reveal patterns, needs, value and meaning. Julie is passionate about bringing this humane vision to the table as a way of collaboratively tackling business problems and driving innovation.

Julie's experience has toggled back and forth between a focus on product development and business strategy in a variety of categories, including medical devices, financial services, consumer packaged goods and communications.

Julie is the proud owner of a collection of vintage cookbooks, loves nothing more than a film festival and is, regrettably, a fan of the Chicago Bears.

Connect with Julie: LinkedIn   Twitter


Tap into our network

We have an extensive network of partners available to support specific project requirements.

We work with specialists in qualitative research, interaction design, industrial design, and others as well as teams around the world (including India, China, Latin America, Russia, and Europe) as part of REACH: The Global Design Research Network.



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
  • 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
  • Stanford Graduate School of Business (1996) - lecture on building usable products
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