Dollars to Donuts

Hosted by Steve Portigal

Business Management Entrepreneurship Arts Design

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Episodes

Latest episode

Oct 2025

Language

EN-US

About the show

The podcast where we talk with the people who lead user research in their organization.

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10 recent

October 10, 20258 min

Announcing “Off the Path with Sam and Steve”

Sam Ladner and I have a new podcast, called Off the Path with Sam and Steve. It’s a limited series, where we talk about what a research career looks like, even when it goes “off the path.” Our first three episodes are live. Show Links Off the Path with Sam and Steve on Apple Podcasts Off the Path with Sam and Steve on YouTube Off the Path with Sam and Steve on Spotify Episode 1: The Good Enough Career (Apple) Episode 1: The Good Enough Career (YouTube) Episode 1: The Good Enough Career (Spotify) Episode 2: What Do You Do When You Want To Grow (Apple) Episode 2: What Do You Do When You Want To Grow (YouTube) Episode 2: What Do You Do When You Want To Grow (Spotify) Episode 3: Good Interviewing (Apple) Episode 3: Good Interviewing (YouTube) Episode 3: Good Interviewing (Spotify) Sam Ladner The post Announcing “Off the Path with Sam and Steve” first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

March 24, 20251 hr 3 min

53. Remembering Tomer Sharon

Tomer Sharon passed away last week. I’m reposting his appearance on Dollars to Donuts from 2019. Show Links Episode transcript Episode (and show links) from 2019 From LinkedIn, announcement of Tomer’s passing The post 53. Remembering Tomer Sharon first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

October 21, 202431 min

Interviewing Users anniversary and new audiobook!

It’s the first anniversary of the second edition of Interviewing Users, and it’s now available as an audiobook. Listen to this episode for a sample. Show Links Interviewing Users on Audible Interviewing Users, 2nd Edition (print and eBook) The post Interviewing Users anniversary and new audiobook! first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

July 30, 202449 min

52. Emily Sun of Hipcamp

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts, I talk with Emily Sun, the head of Design and Research at Hipcamp. We discuss staying engaged in work, designers doing their own research, and research at a small, growing company. There’s actually a big opportunity with smaller companies. At small startups, you are much closer to the people who are making the long term vision for what the company is going to be. Because we have access to that level of leadership, there is a lot that can be influenced through research. – Emily Sun Show Links Episode transcript Make Things That Matter — Steve Portigal: Improving your user research process Interviewing Users, second edition Emily Sun on LinkedIn Hipcamp The Fun Scale Alyssa Ravasio, Founder + CEO of Hipcamp Sifteo CHI conference 3DR Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 52. Emily Sun of Hipcamp first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

July 3, 20241 hr 18 min

51. Tamara Hale of Splunk

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my conversation with Tamara Hale, the Director of Product Experience – Research & Insights at Splunk. We talk about the long tail of impact, being an anthropologist of work, and having a creative practice. The ‘doing the research’ bit is only about a quarter of your job. The rest of it is all the other stuff that goes around it. It’s about storytelling and influence and developing a vision and creating alignment around who the customers are and creating alignment on what actually are the business goals. It’s your stakeholder mapping. It’s your internal research. It’s your knowledge management. It’s improving how we work. All that stuff is part of research, and if you only think of your job as that quarter, you’re missing out on some of the most interesting and also trickiest parts of the job. – Tamara Hale Show Links Episode transcript Tamara Hale Splunk Tracey Lovejoy Catalyst Constellations Blurring the Lines: Building a collaborative dialogue from the intersection of creative practice, ethnography and business Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 51. Tamara Hale of Splunk first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

June 26, 202458 min

50. Vanessa Arango Garcia of Delivery Hero

In this latest episode of Dollars to Donuts, I talk with Vanessa Arango Garcia, Director UX Research & Research Operations at Delivery Hero. We discuss creating an engaged research community across a global organization, being accountable for impact, and how today’s challenges provide an opportunity for the research progression to grow. We care a lot about our craft and we need to keep the quality up, but we also need to be pragmatic in how we are able to optimize that process of doing research to focus in the next stages. We dedicate too much in doing the research, delivering that report. And later, sometimes it’s very difficult to dedicate time to following up, connecting with the team, sitting together, ideating, thinking about the roadmap, because we don’t have time. We are jumping from research to research to research because every research takes time. – Vanessa Arango Garcia Show Links Episode transcript Rally AMA with Steve Portigal on what makes a research practice mature Interviewing Users, second edition Vanessa Arango Garcia Delivery Hero PedidosYa EuroCopa The new researcher: Navigating the evolving landscape of UX Research Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 50. Vanessa Arango Garcia of Delivery Hero first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

June 19, 20241 hr 11 min

49. Sarah Gregory of Coinbase

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my conversation with Sarah Gregory, Director of User Research for Consumer at Coinbase. We talk about research comms, archiving user research, and doing research that no one is yet asking for. Our email is designed for one very specific leadership stakeholder, and it is tailored to how that person likes to consume information. There’s a different stakeholder that hates email. That person, I use Slack. Another stakeholder tends to listen very well when they’re live in a regularly recurring monthly meeting. And so I make sure that research always has one or two slides in that meeting. You have to know exactly who you want to be listening, and you have to change your techniques depending on who that is. Which is really just understanding your user, right? – Sarah Gregory Show Notes Episode transcript Rally AMA with Steve Portigal on what makes a research practice mature Interviewing Users, second edition Sarah Gregory Coinbase The Basics about Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Blockchain Ethereum McDonald’s Theory Sian Townsend Jobs To Be Done Human-Computer Interaction Becoming a Level 1 Sommelier Drops of God NFT Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 49. Sarah Gregory of Coinbase first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

June 7, 20241 hr 13 min

48. Jamika Burge of Capital One

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Jamika Burge, the head of research for Data and AI at Capital One. We talk about her journey through academia, discovering user research, and intersectionality. Doing good – for me, as a researcher, and as someone who wants to do good in the world, it means understanding people’s needs in context and providing opportunities for them to succeed. That’s what that means for me. Success can mean different things to different people. I can guess what success means from a business perspective. I can even guess what success means from a researcher perspective, but ultimately it’s that end user who tells us whether or not we got it right. I want that person to feel as an end user, free to share with us when we got it wrong, but also when we got it right. – Jamika Burge Show Notes Episode transcript Interviewing Users, second edition Steve Portigal on the UX Podcast Jamika Burge on LinkedIn What is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule? (PANAS) Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center John M. Carroll at Penn State Mary Beth Rosson at Penn State Office of Naval Intelligence DARPA Spelman College blackcomputeHER #blackcomputeHER conference National Academies Capital One Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 48. Jamika Burge of Capital One first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

June 4, 20241 hr 10 min

47. Akshay Verma of Duolingo

This episode of Dollars to Donuts features my interview with Akshay Verma, the head of User Research at Duolingo. We talk about being qualitative focused in an experimentation-driven organization, research team structures, team rituals, and sharing knowledge between researchers. I don’t actually want to bemoan or belabor this concept of a room that we’re invited to or not. At Duolingo, I feel it pretty acutely just because we do have a lot of rituals and traditions at Duolingo around how product gets built. And it’s great. It works. It works really well. But, you know, I could spend a lot of time and energy going crazy, being like, “How do I get invited to these rooms?” and then get upset when it doesn’t happen? I actually don’t. I try my best, but I think our energy is probably spent elsewhere.” – Akshay Verma Show Links Episode transcript Akshay on LinkedIn Duolingo How Duolingo is using its ‘unhinged content’ with Duo the Owl to make people laugh on TikTok FigJam IDEO Stanford d.school Calendly How the Underground Dance Music Scene Makes Me a Better User Researcher Get Familiar With Detroit Techno: 10 Essential Songs Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 47. Akshay Verma of Duolingo first appeared on Portigal Consulting.

May 24, 20241 hr 6 min

46. Daniel Escher of Remitly

In this episode of Dollars to Donuts I speak with Daniel Escher, Director of UX and Research at Remitly. We talk about more ways for researchers to add value, business questions over research questions, and the things that researchers worry about. Where I think collective identity can be limiting is when someone thinks of themselves as a researcher and says, “Therefore, that means this is my small box of things that I do and ways that I contribute.” And what I always want to do is push that box to be bigger, right? I’m not at all saying that the box doesn’t exist in any way. But we as researchers can drive far more decision-making, far more strategy, far more hypotheses than I think we realize. I think that we tend to want to hand off work to other people when actually what I encourage my team to do is figure out where are the places where actually a handoff doesn’t make sense, but a handshake makes sense. There’s some contact there. Or where does hand-holding make sense, where there’s really extended involvement? – Daniel Escher Show Links Episode transcript Steve and Inzovu – Storytelling workshops Formats Unpacked Daniel on LinkedIn Remitly Nazir Harb Michel on LinkedIn Savannah Young on LinkedIn Angelina Erine Theodorou on LinkedIn José G. Soto Márquez on LinkedIn James by Percival Everett Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing (and Jobs to be Done) RITE Method Help other people find Dollars to Donuts by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.The post 46. Daniel Escher of Remitly first appeared on Portigal Consulting.