RM Announcements

Upcoming author talks and a UX London discount

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:05:30 -0500

We've updated our author event calendar; as always, the distance our authors go (and the variety of topics they cover) is impressive, to say the least.

UX London's early bird registration deadline is January 31; they've kindly offered friends of Rosenfeld Media a 10% discount.
Our own Lou Rosenfeld will teach his search analytics workshop on March 1, sponsored by the wonderful people at Etre. Early bird registration is also January 31.

New book signing: "Playful Design" by John Ferrara

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:53:20 -0500

Many designers and developers are finding that their applications and sites are far more engaging when they incorporate game-like qualities. So we're thrilled that John Ferrara will be tackling this topic in his new book, Playful Design: Creating Game Experiences in Everyday Interfaces.

Here's the blurb:

Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they're siblings that grew up in different houses. They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design. This book will show you how.

You can keep up with John's work by visiting the book site and subscribing to its RSS feed. You can also sign up to be notified (and receive a discount) when it goes on sale.

Our last three book signings have corresponding Ning communities, and this one is no exception—we hope you will participate. And of course, you can follow John on Twitter: @ferrarajc

The book is due out in 2011. If you're anxious to learn more about how UX and game design intersect right away, you might consider purchasing John's Future Practice webinar on the topic, Extending Game Design to Business Applications (recorded in July of 2009).

Looking ahead to 2010

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:59:14 -0500

Like everyone else, we're considering how we'd like the new year to be different than the last one. Following are the areas that we're tackling right now. (I won't call them "resolutions"—that just means plans, with little guaranty of actions.) We'd love your input: what's missing from this list? And are we doing enough in each area?

More Books: Remote Research (by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte) will go on sale in January, and we're expecting these additional titles to go on sale by the middle of 2010: See What I Mean (by Kevin Cheng), Storytelling for User Experience Design (by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks), and Search Analytics (by Louis Rosenfeld and Marko Hurst). That'll put us at nine titles total (with, of course, more on the way). For us, that feels significant, but for you, it might not seem like many. We're grappling with the challenge that many new businesses face: should we publish new titles at a faster rate? Would doing so risk quality? Will the community of UX practitioners grow fast enough to support many more titles? And, of course, what new books do you need to help you design better user experiences?
More Ways to Get Our Books Outside the US: We hope we're adequately repaying the patience of our European customers by finally getting European fulfillment in place (out of Belfast, Northern Ireland). This means we now can ship more quickly and cheaply to European addresses, as well as make it easier for you to purchase via retailers like Amazon.co.uk and Lehmanns, the German bookseller. It's been extremely challenging to get to this point, but we hope it will be well worth it. If you're in Europe, we'd love to know if you're noticing a difference; if you're in other parts of the world, please let us know how your experience is and we can look into serving your region more effectively.
More Ways to Buy Our Books: We've been asked many times if it was possible to purchase a subscription for the next year's worth of RM books. Not quite, as we're never sure how many books will come out during a given year. But we are working on a way to bundle—at a good discount—the next four books we publish as a package, whatever they might be. We'll also begin selling the entire Rosenfeld Media library as a package, and also at a nice discount. Expect both of these to become available by March. We're also developing partnerships with companies like Optimal Workshop, Lime Chile, and Usabilla to package our books with subscriptions to their wonderful software services.
More Ways to Use Our Books: Many of you would like to purchase a PDF of our books that you can print on your own A4 or letter-size printer paper. We're in the process of making that an option for all of our books; look for this to be done in Q1 2010. Additionally, regarding mobile devices, we've thrown our eggs into the EPUB basket, and are hoping that all of our books will be available that way by Q2 2010. We're finding more interest in MOBI format for the Kindle, but still believe the large majority of our customers are using other readers, like the iPhone. Are we wrong? Let us know; the beauty (and curse) of having a digital publishing strategy is that you can (and must) change it every six months.
More Ways to Read Our Books: Through a partnership with InSight Books, many of our books are being translated into Korean (Web Form Design and Mental Models are now on sale via InSight). We're about to finalize plans to partner with a Chinese publisher so our books will begin to be translated into Mandarin. And we're in discussions with a potential Japanese partner; are there other languages for which we should be seeking a translation partner?
More Ways for Us to Engage: As a publisher that exclusively serves the UX community, we really hope to create better opportunities for engagement between our books' readers, authors, UX thought leaders, and, ultimately, Rosenfeld Media itself. This is easier said than done. We now realize that book blogs alone are insufficient, so we've been sharing our authors' posts via Twitter as well as RSS. We've also worked with two of our authors to create Ning communities. We're investigating making our books more engaging by making them—and their indices—more searchable. And, working with Infinity Plus One, we're dramatically revamping UX Zeitgeist, fixing the broken parts and looking to make it much easier to suggest UX books and topic ideas. Yet, it never feels like enough. We want to create conversation and, ultimately, learning about UX topics, but always feel like we're not quite there. If there is single area where we could, um, engage with you best, it's this one. So: how can we engage with you better?

That's what we're up to, and where we're looking to move forward in 2010. We appreciate your support in getting us this far, and would love for your suggestions as we move ahead. Many thanks and best wishes for a wonderful new year!

Hello Europe!

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:16:30 -0500

Until the past week or so, we've shipped all of our books from a facility outside Detroit, Michigan in the US. While a quick perusal of our shipper ratings at Amazon.com suggests that this arrangement has worked well, many of you have asked us to find a way to lower the price and shorten the shipping time to European addresses.

We've been working hard to set up such an arrangement for many, many months, and we're glad to let you know that we are now successfully fulfilling orders from a Belfast, Northern Ireland facility. When you enter a European shipping address in our cart, you'll automatically be provided with appropriate shipping options.

Naturally, there will be some glitches, and we appreciate your patience and feedback as we squash them. Please comment here and let us know how we can improve the process; many thanks!

Update, December 22: ...and now you can purchase our books via Amazon.co.UK!

Upcoming Author Presentations

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:36:47 -0500

We've just updated our author events calendar, and as usual, Rosenfeld Media authors will be all over the place: Portugal (UX Lisbon), Germany (UPA 2010), the UK (the Etre Get Together), France (Webdesign International Festival), and many US venues, not to mention virtually as well (at the UIE Virtual Seminar series). We'll be in force at Interaction10 in Savannah, Georgia, with appearances by Keven Cheng, Luke Wroblewski, and Todd Zaki Warfel. We'll also be visiting the IA Summit, SXSW, Microsoft MIX 10, and many other events.

Check out the full calendar here.

Mental Models now available in Korean

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:14:48 -0500

Our Korean partner, Insight Books, has translated Indi Young's Mental Models book. You can learn more and order the book at Insight's web site.

Todd Zaki Warfel's "Prototyping" now on sale!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:55:47 -0500

It's here! Well, technically, your copy of Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide is sitting in a crate in our fulfillment center in Ypsilanti, Michigan, awaiting swift shipping and tender handling on its way to your loving hands. Order your copy today to learn the ins and outs of this most practical design tool in a most practical fashion. Todd Zaki Warfel covers the gamut of prototyping approaches, from low-tech (paper prototyping) to high-tech (Axure and its ilk).

While you're hemming and hawing, read what some really smart people think about Todd's work, check out the book's 100 illustrations via Flickr, and track what people are saying about #prototyping in Twitterspace.

And then please order your copy; it comes in one of two packages: either our lovely full color paperback plus a DRM-free screen-optimized PDF; or two DRM-free PDFs (one for reading on your screen, the other for printing).

WUD promo: 50% off our sustainable design book and webinar

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:29:39 -0500

The theme of this year's World Usability Day, which takes place on November 12, is "Designing for a Sustainable World". WUD is a truly global event, and sustainable design is certainly a global issue. It's also a personal issue for UX people; whether you're testing a web site or designing a new mobile device, your work will have an impact on people, the environment, and economic systems. What can you do to ensure your solutions leave the smallest possible footprint on our planet, promote social justice, and contribute to stable, sustainable economies?

Nathan Shedroff provides a framework to help you answer this question in his book Design Is the Problem (and in its accompanying webinar). According to Nathan, "usability professionals have an incredible opportunity to build more sustainable solutions across the widest possible criteria and type of solutions. I'm thrilled that this community is so authentically interested in making a difference to the world over and above traditional customer needs."

To help publicize Nathan's work and support this year's World Usability Day, Rosenfeld Media is offering a 50% discount on both the book and the webinar. Code WUD09 can be redeemed in our storefront until November 15.

Don't forget to visit the WUD site to learn more about this year's many events and how to get involved.

Upcoming author events (and discounts)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:40:00 -0500

We've just updated our calendar; looks like Rosenfeld Media authors will be mostly in North America during the rest of 2009, with stops in Boston (Donna Spencer at UIE 14), Toronto and the Bay Area (Nathan Shedroff, who apparently lives on a plane), and Savannah (Kevin Cheng).

We also have some discounts to share: use code 'AEALOU' for $100 off An Event Apart in San Francisco (where Luke Wroblewski will present), and 20% at the UX Conference in Lugano (use code 'RMuxCH').

Our first book in EPUB format...

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:42:03 -0500

...is now available! Donna Spencer's Card Sorting can now be read on your iPhone, Sony Reader, Android, or... who knows what else! These ebook sands seem to shift hourly! In any case, we optimized the design for Stanza, and checked on Bookworm and ADE, so it should work fine in most cases.

And best of all, you can't beat the price: US$5. So download a copy now, and please comment here on how this first effort might be improved.

(Kindle owners, why are we leaving you out? Well, our books have full color interiors and complex layouts; the Kindle isn't good at presenting that kind of content, at least not yet. But Amazon recently purchased the company that developed Stanza, the primary EPUB reader, so perhaps that'll change soon.)

Our authors at SXSW 2010

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:46:27 -0500

Heading to Austin in March? We're hoping to as well. Three of our authors have proposals for panels at SXSW 2010, and you can help them get on the program by voting for their panels via SXSW's panel picker:

Marko Hurst: Site Search Analytics
Nathan Shedroff: Made It So (Interface Makers in Movies)
Nate Bolt: FAIL: When User Research Goes Horribly, Horribly Wrong
Lou Rosenfeld: The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book!

Please vote early and often; thanks for your help!

IDEA 2009

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:10:25 -0500

Rosenfeld Media is a silver sponsor of this year's IDEA conference. It takes place in Toronto, Canada, September 15-16 (with a September 14 pre-conference). Our own Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design, will speak on "The Impact of Social Models". Hope to see you in September!

Delve: 3 authors and a discount (NYC, August 5-6)

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:23:53 -0500

Rosenfeld Media is proud to be a sponsor of the first Delve:UI—two days of master classes that take place in Brooklyn, NY August 5-6. RM authors Todd Zaki Warfel, Anders Ramsay, and Lou Rosenfeld are on the program; other presenters include Josh Porter, Robert Hoekman, Jason Santa Maria, and RM board member Liz Danzico. Even better, the first 15 people who contact the Delve folks will receive a 20% discount off the event.

Meet Indi Young at Interaccion 2009 (Barcelona)

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:30:28 -0500

Mental Models author Indi Young will be presenting and teaching a workshop at Interaccion 2009, which takes place in Barcelona September 7-9. We've secured a 20% discount off the standard registration rate for friends of Rosenfeld Media; use code "ROSENFELD".

Also be sure to take advantage of the early bird registration rate, which ends on July 31. Most of the presentations will be in Spanish, but invited speakers (like Indi) will present in English; if you need help from an English speaker involved with the event, contact secretaria@ipcongressos.com

For other appearances by Rosenfeld Media authors, check our events page, updated monthly.

Future Practice Interview: John Ferrara

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:30:46 -0500

As part of our Future Practice webinar series, we're interviewing presenters to give you a preview of what they'll cover. Next up is John Ferrara on Extending Game Design to Business Applications. An information architect at The Vanguard Group, John has been published in Boxes & Arrows, Interactions, and presented at venues including the IA Summit and EuroIA. His work is featured in the upcoming Rosenfeld Media book, Search Analytics.

John's webinar takes place on July 16, 2009, 1-2pm EDT. Use code RMWBNR for a 20% discount off your ticket purchase.

Lou Rosenfeld: John, why should a user experience designer care about video games?

John Ferrara: For a few reasons, one of which is their vast popularity. In recent surveys, researches found that nearly all American kids between 12 and 17 and a little more than half of all adults play video games. More people play games than go out to the movies, and the industry takes in more than double Hollywood's revenue. This is becoming a primary way that people seek out entertainment, and a primary way that they interact with machines. Working in the user experience, we want to capitalize upon interfaces that people already have a lot of experience using. If gaming is so ubiquitous, we'd be terribly remiss in not paying careful attention to it.

But there's also just so much innovative work going on in games right now. Game designers are viciously competing with each other to create unique, engaging experiences, and you see rapid development of new ways of interacting. There's really exciting work being done in motion control, voice control, gesture-based interfaces, and online collaboration, as well as elegant solutions to significant design challenges in unassuming games. I think these things make games impossible to ignore.

Lou Rosenfeld: What's the profile of the typical gamer?

John Ferrara: That's becoming harder to define. It's still more male than female, young than old, but that's changing as game makers look for ways to gain share in broader markets. The Nintendo Wii was specifically designed to be accessible to people who aren't traditional gamers, and it's now common to see it in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Teenage girls and boys play games in nearly even numbers. And people who grew up playing games in the '70s, and '80s have continued playing them into adulthood, so every year the demographic gets larger and larger.

Lou Rosenfeld: To what extent do issues in game design overlap with issues in the design of conventional UI's?

John Ferrara: Tremendously. A few years back I designed a bunch of simple games for a technology company to send out to clients as holiday greetings. We started with wireframes and storyboards, conducted user testing, drew upon our knowledge of affordances, Fitts' law, information scent, and so on. It was just like any other project. And working in user experience, you design for such a broad variety of tasks anyway—one day you're designing a cargo logistics system and the next it's a mobile social networking app—that the design issues unique to games really aren't that much of a departure from the normal variability in your work.

Lou Rosenfeld: Are there existing examples of conventional UI's that draw heavily from games?

John Ferrara: More and more all the time. You see it in two ways, first in applications that borrow from the patterns you see in games. These are often subtle touches that are there to add interest to the interface. TurboTax is one example, which displays a running tally of how much you're getting back or paying in taxes this year. This leverages one of the most important themes in games: uncertainty of the outcome. No one's going to say that TurboTax is a game, but it does play with revealing whether you've won or lost.

Then you see applications where the interface is completely re-imagined as a game. One of the best examples is Fold.it, which is a puzzle game where you fold chains of proteins. By playing it you're actually doing real work for medical science, because this is one of the biggest challenges in biochemistry. Why do people volunteer to help out? Simply because they enjoy playing the game. Though this is also a special case, because it's one of the few games you can play where there's the off chance of winning a Nobel Prize.

Lou Rosenfeld: Do you think elements of game design are showing up in business applications unconsciously, through the subtle influence of our wider experience with games and game-influenced applications?

John Ferrara: I think there is a cultural background that makes game-like design both more common and more acceptable. That makes a lot of sense, because designers are playing games and their experiences with them can then color their approach to business applications. As more and more users play games these applications will be more successful in usability testing and make their way into the market, in turn adding to that background and promoting more such designs.

But in some cases the presence of game elements is clearly deliberate. Luis Von Ahn, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, has created a whole website of "Games with a Purpose" specifically as a means to achieve real business objectives. One of those games was picked up by Google and turned into its Image Labeler application, which is a really brilliant way to get people to submit tags to improve their image search technology. So designers and businesses are both looking more seriously at games as a way to get things done.

Lou Rosenfeld: Are there situations where it's a bad idea to draw on game design?

John Ferrara: Well, I think it's like any source of inspiration—there are situations where you'll find games more helpful and others where they'll be less helpful. They're especially useful when you want to motivate users to do something in which they might not otherwise take that much interest—whether that's making it through their taxes, tagging images, or folding protein chains. They might be less appropriate in situations where there are already well-established conventions for how to do things, or where users will only have a fleeting interaction with a website to achieve a specific task. But of course the point of my presentation is that game design is helpful in many more situations than you might suppose, and I wouldn't want the idea that they're less useful here and there to discourage people from considering them.

Lou Rosenfeld: So ultimately, is this all about just having more fun?

John Ferrara: You know, I think that "fun" is kind of a slippery concept, and it isn't always easy to see how it factors into games. Personally, I find "Bejeweled" to be a special kind of torture—the task is endlessly rote and tedious—but for some reason I can't stop playing the damn thing. I tap away at the screen compulsively like a pigeon in a Skinner box. And that's what really interests me about games: the behavioral aspect. They have a famously addictive quality to them, with some people dedicating hours upon hours playing something like "World of Warcraft".

When we talk about the qualities of a conventional user interface, we don't commonly talk about its "addictiveness", but that's an integral part of game design. In the presentation, I talk about applications for personal finance and education where that can actually be a valuable consideration in the way you build the UI. If someone describes that as "fun," well then all the better.

Lou Rosenfeld: Is time spent playing games well spent?

John Ferrara: Absolutely, I think it makes a lot of sense for user experience professionals to spend time playing games. We should be immersed in user interfaces of every type, especially those that are very familiar to the people for whom we're designing UI's. There are broader questions about whether games promote a sedentary lifestyle or can have corrosive social effects, and those are debates worth having, but they're quite separate from the discussion I'm encouraging.

Lou Rosenfeld: If I don't have a lot of experience with games but am interested in getting exposure to them, what would you recommend as a good place to start?

John Ferrara: Start with your PC. Some of the more accessible games with extremely interesting UI's include "The Sims", "Civilization", and "Sins of a Solar Empire". If you want to try the online experience, then "World of Warcraft" is really the place to go—although it's probably more game than a casual player really wants.

If you're interested in trying a game system, pick up the Nintendo DS and a copy of "Brain Age". This was an incredibly popular title and it does such a great job of motivating players to work these brain challenges into their daily routines. It's the kind of game that's easy to bring into work and share with your colleagues.

If you happen to have a Nintendo Wii and don't mind looking a little ridiculous, I can't recommend "Wario Ware: Smooth Moves" highly enough. This is a collection of microgames, which each last just a few seconds. You receive an instruction and have just a moment to carry out the correct task, which may be turning a crank, stirring a pot, or pumping a balloon full of air. It's a really interesting exercise in perceptual psychology, because players need to pick up on the right affordances very quickly and translate them into the corresponding physical action. It's very, very UX.

But above all you should play something, even if it's just Windows Solitare or online chess. Video games of all types provide a different way of thinking about the user experience, and one that's increasingly the norm among users of everyday applications.

Lou Rosenfeld: Thanks John; I now feel a little better about all those hours I've invested in playing Tetris on my Razr...