Summary
Over the past 25 years, Steve Portigal has seen tremendous growth in user research as a community of practice, as an industry, and as a career. Steve will look at some of the changes that he’s experienced and observed—positive, negative, or otherwise. He’ll share some of the potentially overlooked opportunities to advance our field, issues that demand our limited attention and concern. He’ll also share his perspective on the directions we can drive towards.
Key Insights
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User research origins date back to early industrial studies like Edison’s in-home research and Gilbreth’s motion studies.
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Xerox PARC’s innovations in UI deeply influenced modern computing interfaces, notably through Steve Jobs’ visits.
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The 1980s marked the institutionalization of usability labs within major tech companies like Apple and Microsoft.
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The 1989 Intuit Follow Me Home program pioneered corporate contextual user research beyond usability.
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Figures like Dana Channell and Kate Tassie have shaped government digital services and research role definitions.
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The broad, imprecise definition of 'research' fuels ongoing debate about who does research and what it entails.
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AI and voice recognition have reached human-level parity, drastically impacting research transcription and tooling.
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Remote research post-2020 has lost critical contextual cues like in-person gestures, impacting insight quality.
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Corporate in-house researchers face incentives and constraints distinct from consultants, influencing research outcomes.
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Futures scenarios envision either AI automation decimating research roles or community-driven ethical research collectives.
Notable Quotes
"Historians are fond of saying the past doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes to understand the present."
"We all stand on the shoulders of giants, no matter when or where we come into this field."
"Louis Cheskin’s sensation transference experiments showed how packaging changes perception of the same product."
"In 1989, Intuit created Follow Me Home, the first high-profile corporate contextual research."
"Kate Tassie coined PWDR, distinguishing researchers with training from people who simply do research."
"Corporate capture of research has both enabled growth and complicated the truth to power role of researchers."
"Voice recognition has reached human parity, but tool-generated transcripts come with the curse of good enough."
"Remote research has lost access to in-person gestures and the mind-blowing moments that change perspectives."
"In-house researchers can play the long game, building alliances and persistent influence over time."
"The future is ours but not entirely; we must plan within external constraints and trauma around us."
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