 In this episode, we'll be talking about how we can use storytelling to further improve our practice, what would happen in the design process if we started to listen to ourselves more, and when will researching the problem become as important as creating the solution? And here's the guest for this episode. Hi, I'm Steve Portagall, and this is the Service Design Show. If you're trying to design services that have a positive impact on people's lives and are good for business, then you've come to the right place. Hi, my name is Marc Fontijn and welcome to the Service Design Show. My guest in this episode is Steve Portagall. Steve is a user research consultant and advisor based in San Francisco, and he's written several books on this topic, which I'll tell you more about in a second. And he's running a Rolling Stones email group, which is still active since 1992. His latest book is called Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries, User Research War Stories. And if you want to get your hands on that book, you can use this discount code ServiceDesign18-20 to get 20% off that book. You can also find this discount code down below in the show notes. In the next 30 minutes, Steve and I will be talking about how we can use storytelling to further develop our practice. We'll be talking about how the design process would change if we would actually start listening more to ourselves. And finally, we'll talk about when will researching the design problem become as important as actually creating the solution. We post new videos on this channel on a weekly basis. So if you haven't done it already, I would love to have you to subscribe and click that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos are out. And if you'd like to learn how to explain Service Design without actually confusing people, check out the free course that I've got for you. Click over here or check the link down below in the description of this video. That's all for the introduction. And now let's quickly jump straight into the interview with Steve. Welcome to the show, Steve. Thanks for having me. Awesome to have you on. We're in the worst possible time zones to actually make this fit. But we made it fit, so I'm really happy with that. I think a lot of people know you from the books you've written, presentations you've done, and it's a lot on user research. But this is called the Service Design Show, and I'm really curious, do you remember the very first time you got in touch with Service Design? Is that a term that's on your mind? Yeah, for sure. I don't know if I can remember the first time that I heard the term. I remember the first service design event that I went to. Oh, really? Although, if you're going to ask me to name it and say when it was, I don't know if I can do that. I went to some international, I'm going to be really unfair to the organizers and not remember their particular brand, but it was the International Service Design Conference, which I think is the main one, was in San Francisco a number of years ago. Maybe it might have been eight or 10 years ago at this point. And there were a lot of my pals, people that I might see at design and user experience conferences, at user research conferences, that were speaking, that were attending, and then it was really great because there was lots of people that I didn't know that were outside my main network. But the familiar people and even some of the stories, a lot of us are doing different work maybe under slightly different, sorry, similar work under different labels, and not to say there wasn't anything fresh there or different lens, but it was pretty, it was very reassuring to see like, oh yeah, this is not, like I belong here, this is, we're doing a lot of the same stuff. There's a lot of research happening here and so on. Yeah. And I think what's great and what I try to do with the show is sort of connect all these adjacent fields that overlap, but maybe not necessarily talk to each other. So again, this is a great opportunity to do this in the next 25, 30 minutes. We have three really awesome topics to talk about. You send me your topics, I've sent you a few question starters we're going to improvise and co-create as we go along. The only question is, are you ready Steve? Yes. Okay. Let's go. Topic number one, and we already, we're talking about stories and this topic is really short and it's called storytelling. Do you have a question starter and can you show it to us that goes along with this topic? Drumroll? Yes. All right. This is like the special effects portion. How can we? What's the question? Right. I mean, it's an area I'm really interested in. How can we use storytelling? How can we kind of embrace storytelling and accept it as a valid tool and an effective process for, I mean, really what I'm thinking about is developing the practice. I mean, so we talk about storytelling as an interview technique. You're interviewing me here. I already told a story. It's going to be sort of a mode of interaction, a mode of discourse. We talk about products that tell stories, service experiences that are stories, but I'm really interested in some of what you're trying to accomplish here. When we bring professionals together, people that are in a community of practice, I'm really interested in storytelling as a valid and effective tool for, you know, evolving a shared understanding of best practices, communicating the nuance of what it's like to be doing that work, you know, and I, this is, I mean, I don't want to cut you off here. You're like... There are really so many questions because one of the things is what, you said something like to make it a valid tool or a valid method. What do we need to actually make it valid? Isn't storytelling by default valid or, you know, how does it need to evolve? I suspect that storytelling is kind of discounted culturally among certain professionals, especially as a thing that we do together. I mean, I don't think that we give enough space to professional development. When we do, it's very goal-directed. I mean, if you have ever been asked to write a proposal for creating a training, you're asked to create, what are their terms like, the educational outcomes or the learning objectives? There's sort of a lot of formalism in that and I don't mean to, I'm not trying to be negative about that. I'm sort of saying, in addition, when you do, when you tell stories, there's things that happen and maybe it's okay and maybe that's good and maybe it's better or it's different, but we have to allow for that. That's kind of what I'm, so I want stories to be recognized and accepted and embraced and given space and yeah, that's kind of what I'm aiming for. And that's not going to happen by itself, right? How do we get there? Well, I'll tell a story about something that I did, so this is about modeling. I think one way to get there is to, how do we create repetitions of behaviors we're interested in, we'll do them and talk about them. So let me just be specific, an area I've been interested in, user research specifically is that it's a very messy process. It's a process that involves interactions between humans and again, we can have our bolted list of learning objectives but things always happen and over the years of my career I've been interested in talking to people about stuff that happens, like that's just what it's like and then maybe those exchanges are valuable. So I started a project probably about four years ago to collect war stories from user researchers and I think I got about 70 stories or something like this over a number of years and then I wrote a book about those stories, which it collects these stories from researchers about the things that happens and it talks about what we learn. So I think there's all these different levels. One is just sort of unsynthesized, uninterpreted stories. Stories are just told and so for years you could go to, you still can go to this place, this area of the blog and my website and just read stories about what happens and in editing these stories I kind of pushed researchers not to make everything into a lesson because we're trained to do that and I wanted them just to say what happened and sometimes people need a little help in storytelling, what's the setting, where were you, who was there, why were you there, describe what happened, what's the moment, I think they call it sometimes the inciting incident, what's the point at which something happened and then what did you think about, what did you feel, what did you do and then where did we go and then people sometimes want to wrap that up and say well here's what to do differently in the future and I've really been interested in certain kinds of stories about research especially there is nothing that you could have done better and so there's stories of failure but by telling these stories over and over again it starts to reframe the notion of failure and just teach us some bigger ideas around acceptance, around preparing for failure doesn't mean preventing failure, doesn't mean you know and so the book was a lot of fun to write because I just looked at all these stories and see oh there's a whole category of you know people put into ethically challenging situations, there's a whole category of people being concerned about their safety and so you take all these stories and everyone handles them in a different way, the story, the circumstances are different and the rationalization and the problem solving process which may just be accepting that you can't solve it excuse me is different and so again that's kind of the second level is synthesizing these stories and seeing what lessons we have from them so I think it works on two levels like if we just tell stories we create you know there's catharsis that's why we tell stories it's a very human thing, they engage people in a practice that is more complicated than what's in a presentation of mine or what's in somebody's book or medium article it is very personal it's very human and so these stories start to accrue in a way that characterizes the practice in a very authentic way that no bullet points can and if we start to look at those stories for what they teach us they start to you know provide ways to kind of level up the practice of user research I think in a profound way and in a slippery and elusive way like things that fall between the cracks of what you're gonna learn in training and even what you will learn in the field if you don't ever reflect on it so it's bringing that reflective learning and just saying like hey here's a space for it yeah so that's kind of been my exploration with stories and with war stories about research do you also think that we as a design community should be more deliberate and practice and practice storytelling in learn the structure learn there learn the basics learn the basics of storytelling in just instead of just doing it by intuition yes I mean this in this fall under the category of should designer do X yes that's maybe a better question do you think it's a fundamental skill yes it's not an it's not naturally occurring in everybody which I think is kind of what getting at right I think many of us are right we're all storytellers it's just to think a very human thing some of us may be more shy or more uncomfortable or not feel confident about it some of us may have in you know intuitively grasp the structure of a good story and others may just need to have it kind of articulated you know so my experience in curating and editing lots and lots of stories you know taught me more specifically what some of the best practices were many many many kinds of stories right I created I I formalize this idea of the user research war story but that's not the only kind of story there is and you could you know generate hundreds of types of stories but I think practicing storytelling you know creating and telling your own stories listening to other stories and kind of peeling apart their structure and so on is is really great it's a it's a powerful creative tool like it's good for communicating it's good for I mean you know like I said before we we make things that tell stories or that you know help people experience stories and so having a grasp of those different narrative structures I think is you know is powerful because it helps us reorganize information in different ways and and receive information in different ways and kind of re you know you that's a lot of what my work is is kind of taking things in and re reorganizing them structuring them and then you know sharing them back out that's that's a sort of a master level of storytelling that you have to be able to do all right storytelling let's close off this topic and see what the other ones bring us because those are at least as interesting for me I think as the first one let's leave that one for the end topic now with you I've picked this one listening to ourselves we have a question starter and it may be the same one as you used before that's okay you can use the wildcard it's up to you what do we get this time my question starter is I feel like I need a little bit of drama here my question starter is what if what if we were better at listening to ourselves you know this is I guess kind of a hopeful or an encouragement framing for it and when I say listening to ourselves it's it's what's in our heads in our hearts that is unrecognized you know I think you see this in your work you see this in your relationships the more we are in touch with what we hope or what we believe or what our biases are the more we are open to creating something new so I think you know this is sort of this works at various levels right I mean this works I think of this very practically in interpersonal interactions so interviewing job candidates interviewing user research participants in a meeting with our colleagues our clients our stakeholders but I think sometimes we catch I think we know this experience when it breaks down right when we are like the phenomenon of being anxious about something and not realizing that we're anxious until the relief comes like you're expecting a negative results in interaction and the person says you know gives you some approval and you realize oh wow it's like I have been in my jaw and my shoulders and my chest I've just been stuck I've been so kind of clenched on fearing a negative outcome that and now I feel the relief and you know of course that's we don't perform in our best when we are when we are stuck like that when we are just so locked down you know if you want to you know interview a participant and sort of engage with what their life is like for them and you are sort of caught up in what you have to do next or what you hope that they say or what you believe the right outcome is for some testing or for some exploratory work then it's it blocks you from being open to what they're really telling you and if I mean if you've ever sat in with somebody doing this you can really it's harder to see in ourselves it's easy to see in somebody else you know when they're they're asking questions and they're just sort of listening to the information that they've already decided that they needed as opposed to being more open and so it's great to say well be more open be a good listener I'm sort of raising this what if question about listening to ourselves because my thesis is my thesis I don't I don't mean to claim this I mean I'm sort of echoing things I've heard and learned in red and experienced myself that the better you are at hearing what your what's what's not what's blocking you or just where you are already framed if you know that about yourself then you are in a better place to see the other person for where they're at and and to give of yourself in kind of the richest most authentic way to build that connection to have that interaction to solve that problem together at the whiteboard or to be creative with somebody else or to you know to to jam you know to do your guitar jam you know with with your your fellow musician whatever it is if you're blocked you can't kind of get there and if you hear yourself and I'm not saying don't have biases don't have fears don't have judgment like that's who we are but if you can hear those things about yourself then you can choose how to handle any of these situations work creative interpersonal that you find yourself in so that's my kind of what if for myself for sure we can ask the same question as we did in the previous topic we talked about what we said storytelling is like a skill or tool do we need to master is this also a tool or skill listening to ourselves yeah yes I mean I think you know we can't go to a conference now in our fields without there being a session about mindfulness right it's become and I mean I've given a talk about mindfulness I don't mean to be negative about that that topic I think it's real obviously think it's interesting but I think mindfulness is sort of another label for what I'm talking about being presence and you know you don't have to delve very so yes I think it's a it's a skill and a process or to use the language of mindfulness they call it a practice right it's you have a mindfulness practice or a meditation practice and I love that word because it kind of tells you you know it tells you that what you're doing is always practicing like that's what it means to do it not that you you know check it off a list of accomplishments but you just you just work that cycle you just do it and the practice is the thing that you're doing but if you don't have to look very far into mindfulness to get to like actual tactical things that you can do to be more present and so you know a lot of it is about the body versus the mind and you know listening to your breath and you know there's how to meditate is about you know separating kind of this from from this and so there are there are ways to do it so I think you know yes and to what you said yes it's a thing that that should be learned and can be learned and and then there are tools and practices to help us achieve that we started with a question what if we do this but if you think about this topic what is the thing that still puzzles you or that you would like to explore regarding this topic yeah I mean you know I know I'm sitting here in California and I don't want to sound like like like some some hippie 30 years later or something because I don't think I am that person but but sort of what's stopping us how can we be better at it you know it's those two things I think do you know do we know and I say this about myself I mean you know I don't want to sound like this is the hippie thing that I'm sort of you know telling everybody what they should be doing I mean these are certainly challenges for me you know what because if you explore it you start to understand how you can be just more comfortable and more effective but there's a lot of forces that we subject ourselves to that that pull us away from that so what is that how can we help ourselves or help each other just take advantage of some simple things to just work better more calmly more productively more creatively you know how to and how does that fit how does that fit into sort of the the structures of work life where we talk about speed we talk about results we talk you know we listen efficiency yes that's really like these gods that we kind of worship now and you know when we do work that that needs us to be reflective that needs us to have time that doesn't fit onto a calendar you know in the typical way you know what how do we how do we do that for ourselves how do we support that I don't know I mean I am definitely these are things I struggle with like everybody else I think but I will be in touch in a year or something like that and see how far you've gone regarding that question I'll just be extra I know expounding about it maybe a new book maybe a new book who knows ready ready to move on to the final topic all right this one is called making versus looking and I had to narrow it down so it's more cryptic than it was and what question starter did you pick yeah all right when will when will we give equal time if not greater time to the to the looking part and so maybe I can explain what making versus yeah looking me and then then I then I can say what when will looks like yeah you had you had to get it down to one sheet I think there are there are many different approaches to putting new things services products experiences designs technologies whatever the thing is there's a lot of there's many approaches to putting it out in the world but it seems like the default one that has the mind share is that is sort of a maker's first approach you know I'm interested in a topic and so here's my best shot at solving this or creating a better experience for somebody so let's make that let's put it in the world and I think you can be very shallow and like you can tweak it to improve it or you can use that thing that you put out in the world as a tool to help you understand the world better like to me that's the best form of of experimentation or of interventions but what seems to get less you know less love and less utilization is looking first so you know it's so the maker is kind of primary but I'm interested in looking first because that's what I do and I so often have these really wonderful experiences of looking at a behavior like what's the relay you know I we did a project a few years ago where we looked at where people have strong emotional relationships to products services brands categories we looked at that emotional linkage and so it was really really interesting to explore behaviors the motivations and then pull lessons and design principles out of that to say you know for the organization we were supporting here's how you could change the way that you make things in order to leverage these principles and so and I get involved many times where they've done the making first and never ask the question about what is this thing what does it mean what are the goals you're trying to accomplish and so now we're sort of faced with trying to improve the thing that's already been made when maybe if we had done a we would have made a different thing if we had started you know from a different view so you know when will we learn when will you know the relationship between sort of research and design if you will get to the point where we can leverage all the power of research to really make much greater and more effective things if we just switch the order around a little bit that's my that's my plea and you know and it also makes sense from an economical point of view right we I always tell my clients that we need to balance sort of the time and investment we put into the problem space versus a solution space that's what you're calling making I think we had this you had this down in the original line the problem space is you know we should spend half our time there before we actually start creating stuff making solutions become because sometimes the solution might be actually did not do something at all or to to to find a new path or so from an economical standpoint it makes a lot of sense to actually spend a lot of time in the looking in there in the in the problem space right I agree and what's holding us back well I think there may be sort of a maybe an economic fallacy in that we have people whose core skills is making you know normally that's like designers engineers apps websites have them idle right we got to have them doing something so let's get them working right and so you know the more they're working and so we're you know being able to iterate rapidly seems like maybe a compromise that includes some of this philosophy so we're not making the perfect thing we're making a thing that we can change quickly we have to look busy but we're still making I'm sorry we have to look busy yes yes yes it goes back to that other piece about you know we can't sort of be reflective or engage with the problem we have to be we have to be busy that's efficiency right if you've got staff so it's like the tail wagging the dog right you have staff that have certain skillset so your process has to be kind of crafted to give them things to do to your point that doesn't always get you to where you know the the right thing it could be no thing but it's a little late one of the comparisons I tried to make when sort of talking about the problem space is like archaeology you know we need to get out there and do a guesstimate of where we think the old ruins might be and just start digging and looking around and looking looking trying stuff you know and looking for clues right and with an archaeologist we all understand that that's how it works and that's the only way to actually get value to get results right and I see the same in the regarding research you need to get out there you need to start digging you need to start looking finding clues and as soon as you do that you will get a step further there is no substitute are you hopeful that we will be able to pull this off that at some point will actually get this in balance yeah I think you know I alternate between being pessimistic and hopeful just you're just watching some of the discussions that go on in different platforms or different events you know I think the thing that's happening in user research that I'm excited about and frankly intimidated about is a kind of a coming of age of the practice there's just there's so many people doing research work I mean it's I think lots and lots of professionals that might call themselves something else do research but there's more and more researchers and so the discussions are elevating you know I think you need to sort of have a critical massive individuals with a certain amount of experience to start taking on some of these process things I just saw as kind of a small signal somebody put on a webinar or a conference call about what does it mean when you're a researcher and you're managing designers and so just think about you know how teams are structured like that's not something that could have happened just based on populations a number of years ago and now it's a common enough problem that people want to know what are the implications of that so I think you have more researchers you have more reflections you have more researchers in leadership roles and so you know addressing these questions of how do we best practice there's more people to advocate for different approaches so that gives me some hope or some you know some encouragement that you know these people get it and they want to make change and we can you know we can work on this together initiatives like this just help to accelerate that because you know it's innovative in inevitable and we it's only a matter of how fast we'll get there and let's hope our talk contributes to that right right and let's just put the caveat in not every problem requires one approach like I said there's multiple approaches and I think you know make to experiment is valid but it's not the only approach it shouldn't be the only approach and you know how to choose how to go about it Steve this is your opportunity to ask the people to ask the mass audience of the service design show a question that you would like us to think about reflect upon and comment on on this episode what is that yeah I want to go back to the the storytelling theme and you know because you you kind of challenge in a good way like is this should this be kind of considered a valid thing and and and what sort of getting in the way I guess I'd love for people to think about it and I'd like to hear from people about you know it's the researcher question like when is it worked when is it not worked what are the barriers that's kind of how right how you structure a lot of questions if you think about a lot of the scenarios we explored you know collaboration leadership kind of in the organization itself developing a practice advocating for best practices you know when is storytelling been effective in getting towards that and and then through the the counterpart is you know in situations where it hasn't been effective what's got in the way what's what's been the blocker I'd love to you know reflect on that a little bit because I'm I'm holding it up as this thing but people there's a lot of experiences people have that I think we could dig into it a little bit so let's talk about effective storytelling and then we we're into the effective part again when is storytelling effective and let's not define effectiveness let's just let that be defined by people who've who've you know had some objective or had some outcome that maybe was a surprising outcome beneficial awesome yeah let's hope a lot of people comment on this question we'll we'll challenge them to do that you know time flew by Steve I really want to thank you for sharing what's on your mind challenging us to think about some of this stuff and if they want they can get your books and dig more into this and check your website your presentation so thanks again for making the time to be on the show thank you very much that was really great discussion and I hope it's valuable for people awesome so what is your tip for making storytelling work leave your comments down below if you enjoyed this episode please give a thumbs up I'd really appreciate it and of course if you know someone who might benefit from what we've just discussed please share this video with them and if you'd like to learn how to explain service design without confusing people check the free course that I've got for you over here or see the description of this video thanks again for watching and I look forward to see you in the next video