After 7 years, Steve Portigal returns to CanUX in 2019

Fellow Canuck Steve Portigal returns to CanUX in 2019

Stop Solving Problems
Nov 3,2019 10:00am / 45 MINUTES

The old maxim says we should “Find a need and fill it;” while at a one level that is certainly true, even in this era of fetishized disruption, organizations seem to easily fall in love with the idea of being in the problem solving business. Steve will review a number of different mindsets for creating products and services, consider their benefits and risks, and challenge you to go beyond a fixing mentality.

Speaker Bio: Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal helps companies to think and act strategically when innovating with user insights. He is the founder and Principal of Portigal Consulting, a boutique insights and strategy firm headquartered on the foggy coast south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Steve also speaks about culture, innovation, and design at companies and conferences across the globe, the author of two books: the classic Interviewing Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights and Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories.

In the past 20+ years Steve has interviewed families eating breakfast, rock musicians, credit-default swap traders, and radiologists. His work has informed the development of music gear, wine packaging, medical information systems, corporate intranets, videoconferencing systems, and iPod accessories. He is a fellow Canadian (he has a graduate degree in HCI from the University of Guelph) making his 3rd appearance at CanUX events, and is an avid photographer who has a Museum of Foreign Groceries in his home.

Steve was also featured in Business Week, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. Way back, Steve also 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.

You can follow Steve on Twitter @steveportigal

Prior Presentations:

DIVING DEEPER: CUSTOMER RESEARCH FOR DESIGN (CanUX 2005)
Sep 24, 2005 9:00am / 3 hrs

THE POWER OF BAD IDEAS (UXcamp 2012)
Oct 13, 2012 4:45pm / 45 min

*Image credit: @steveportigal