Yes, we’re hiring a Design Researcher. It’s a full-time position at our office in Pacifica, CA, one block from the ocean and 15 minutes from San Francisco.

The job
First, as a researcher, you’ll work on consulting engagements (sometimes a few at a time) where we are gathering new insights about people to help inform the product and service decisions our clients are making. That means planning the details of a study, finding participants, developing fieldwork methodology, interviewing people, analyzing data, synthesizing findings, preparing presentations, and delivering results to teams.

Second, as a member of the Portigal team, you’ll be sharing your expertise and point of view through blogging, speaking at conferences, and writing articles.

Requirements
You have at least 3 years of professional experience in all aspects of user research work. On your own you can do any of the tasks a project requires, such as writing a screener, preparing a field guide, leading an interview, analyzing and synthesizing data, preparing and delivering a presentation.

You can write clearly for a professional audience.

We’re especially interested if
You have experience as a consultant and are familiar with working in a professional services environment.

You have a history in thought-leadership, sharing your professional expertise and perspective through blogs, articles, conferences, etc. You may even have a set of topics that you are especially focused on.

About Portigal Consulting
Founded in 2001, Portigal Consulting is a bite-sized agency that helps organizations to discover and act on new insights about their customers and themselves. We are a small business but we work for very large businesses, giving us some of the best of both worlds. We have the good fortune to be hired by passionate individuals at top firms in consumer electronics, software, finance and other industries. Critical to our success is the strong relationships we’ve built with clients, containing a nutritious mix of leadership, talent, good customer service, and collaboration. We’d expect that you share our enthusiasm for establishing and maintaining those relationships.

To apply
Send an email to jobs AT portigal DOT com with your resume and

1. Why you want to work at Portigal
2. An overview of your user research skills (include examples if possible)
3. A writing sample that might fit at http://www.portigal.com/blog
4. The topics you’d like to explore, as a thought leader, at Portigal
5. If available, links to your blog, conference presentations, publications, or other examples of your thought-leadership
6. In This Week @ Portigal, we talk about what we’re consuming. What are you consuming?

Please and thank you
No phone calls. And we’re only able to consider people who have legal permission to work in the USA.
 
 

Brody takes a break from the action at Portigal

• So, You Want to Do User Research: Characteristics of Great Researchers [UXmatters] – One of the best things about user research is that anyone can do it. On the other hand, it takes real commitment and a lot of personal development to do user research well. People commonly assume that research is research—and doing any kind of research is better than doing none at all. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Not all user research is created equal. Flawed research can be a significant liability to the success of a product, as well as the company developing it, so it really is important to get it right.

  To be effective, there are certain personal characteristics a user researcher should have. Whether you are a dedicated user researcher, a student who is considering a career path in user research, a UX designer or software engineer who sometimes gets called upon to do user research, or a stakeholder looking for research support, this column will help you to understand the personal characteristics that really make a difference to a user researcher’s success.

• 'Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed' inventor dies at 92 – The inventor of the "Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed," which brought weary travelers 15 minutes of "tingling relaxation and ease" for a quarter in hotel rooms across America during its heyday as a pop culture icon in the 1960s and '70s, has died.
• Vending machines for Gold? – While it's just a plan at this point, it seems that the idea is more about disruption and promotion than simply "vending."
• Let’s Embrace Open-Mindedness – My article published at Johnny Holland, considering the challenges in living up to the standard we set for ourselves. And there's a story about cheese, too!
• Why some cultural products and styles die out faster than others – To investigate how cultural tastes change over time, Berger and Le Mens analyzed thousands of baby names from the past 100 years in France and the US. (Because there is less of an influence of technology or advertising on name choice, baby names provide a way to study how adoption depends on primarily internal factors.) The researchers found a consistent symmetry in the rise and fall of individual names; in other words, the longer it took for a name to become popular, the longer it took for the name to fade out of popularity, and thus the more staying power it had compared to names that quickly rose and fell. The effect was robust, occurring in both countries and across various time windows.

  According to the results, the quicker a cultural item rockets to popularity, the quicker it dies. This pattern occurs because people believe that items that are adopted quickly will become fads, leading them to avoid these items, thus causing these items to die out.

  (via Lone Gunman)