RM Announcements

Discount for UX Lisbon

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:51:10 -0500

We're proud to sponsor the first UX Lisbon conference, which takes place May 12-14. Rosenfeld Media authors Luke Wroblewski and Donna Spencer are on the program, as is editorial board member Steve Krug. Early bird registration (deadline is February 28) saves you €200, and being a good personal friend of Rosenfeld Media saves you another 10% (use code ROSENFELD2010).

Free RM book with Websort purchase

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:48:20 -0500

Our friends at Websort, whose software enables you to perform remote card sorting studies online, are giving away copies of Rosenfeld Media books with each purchase! Choose from Card Sorting, Prototyping, and our newest title, Remote Research. Learn more here.

Free copy of Remote Research with purchase of Usabilla

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:24:27 -0500

Ready to learn about and then do some remote user testing? Then purchase a Usabilla license and you'll receive a free copy of Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte's Remote Research.

New RM book: Remote Research

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:31:02 -0500

We're absolutely thrilled to announce the publication of our sixth book, Remote Research: Real Users, Real Time, Real Research by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte.

When it comes to remote research, there are many skeptics, and their criticisms are fair. In their book, Nate and Tony more than answer these criticisms, and make a strong case for something that is beginning to seem inevitable. After all, the tools for performing remote research—to which the authors devote an entire chapter—are becoming more powerful and more specialized. And the increasingly global and distributed nature of our users is perhaps the strongest case for becoming literate with remote research.

Here's the book that will help you do so—in 266 beautifully illustrated pages, as well as two DRM-free PDF versions (one screen-optimized, and one for you to print yourself). The illustrations are all available under a Creative Commons license via Flickr. And you'll find lots of other useful material on the book's site, including wonderful testimonials from such folks as Jared Spool, Mike Kuniavsky, and Chauncey Wilson.

Finally, you can take 15% off your purchase. How? Follow @rosenfeldmedia on Twitter, and we'll instantly DM you the discount code.

Enjoy! And please pass along the news to anyone who might be interested in learning more about remote research.

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!