I’m Steve Portigal.
I studied HCI in grad school; but I wasn’t prepared to do “design” - which is what a lot of the work out there was about. I had more of a theoretical or critical perspective on the field. I became involved in user research (or ethnography or design research or whatever you want to call it) because it drew me in with a consideration of the larger questions - what should we be making? It wasn’t the activity of field research as much as the opportunity to reframe the question, to identify needs and to figure out how to address them with products or services.
I worked at a consultancy for a few years where we branded this as an “innovation” offering. We struggled forever to define innovation (and frankly I’m not so interested in solving that one - but go ahead if you are!) even though we were offering it as a service, supposedly.
I’ve been running my own small practice (Portigal Consulting) for more than four years now. I describe the consulting work as the synthesis of user research (ethnography), design and business strategy.
I work from a home office, in a small town with no cell coverage and an alpaca ranch around the corner.