Readmill + your iPhone + our books

Ever since those “Send to Readmill” buttons appeared on our site, we’ve been getting lots of thank yous from our customers.

Now that Readmill has launched its iPhone app—this morning—as in just a few minutes ago!—we expect even more. After all, your iPad is handy, but your iPhone is handier—so now you’ll be able to squeeze in some reading where iPads fear to tread. And Readmill’s position syncing means you can read our books across devices without losing your place.

With all the great features Readmill provides, our printer must be sweating profusely…

Grab the new Readmill for iPhone app and enjoy!

15 Questions with Steve Portigal – Rosenfeld Media

3. Three words that describe your childhood?
Kenobi. Simmons. Cheech.

4. Three things you never leave home without?
Wallet, keys, and an appetite (for destruction, of course).

5. What’s the best designed product you’ve ever used?
Timbits®—Bite-sized morsels of traditional donuts. 

6. What’s the story behind how you got into user research?
I was working at a design agency that was tentatively experimenting with a new service offering—insights that were “left of the idea” (yes, that was actually how they tried to market generative research work). My putative boss literally stopped speaking to me, and wasn’t putting me on projects (the sort of thing that generally requires talking), so the team doing this research work took me in. In the beginning, they had me watch videos and make notes. Then they let me go into the field and hold the video camera. Eventually I got to ask one or two questions, and as time wore on, I began to lead interviews and then plan and manage research. During that time period Don Norman (or was it Don Knotts?) appeared before me in a dream, clad in diaphanous robes. He marked me with the Sigil of Lamneth and bid me sternly to pursue this holiest of professions. That sealed the deal for me.

7. What other profession would you like to try if you could?
I’m fascinated by the television writer’s room. I haven’t come across any depictions of it that make it sound pleasant, but the collaborative creativity is fairly seductive. Otherwise, something about tending to the emotional needs of bugs.

9. What’s the most surprising thing that’s happened to you in the field?
Surprises are mostly internal moments, where I uncover a stub of my own judgment. As an example, I interviewed a man who was the head of an agency that shared his name. He was in his mid-60s with a head of white hair. I was steering the interview towards his past accomplishments, but he was so much more focused on his current goals. I realized I’d created my own narrative for this guy based on his age and that was completely inaccurate. So the surprise wasn’t about the fact that he was engaged and forward-looking. It was about the gap between my unspoken assumptions and the truth that unspooled before me. Honestly, the revealing of and subsequent dismantling of my assumptions is the most pleasurable part of doing fieldwork.

10. What’s the most heartwarming thing that’s happened to you in the field?
I tell this story in detail in my previous book, Interviewing Users. It involves a home interview where the participants were two young men still living at home, who hadn’t told their parents we were showing up for breakfast. But they wouldn’t speak in words and unwilling to talk with us. The parents were unsurprisingly hostile about our presence. Sitting in their kitchen, the mother (who we eventually pivoted to for the interview) told us that few people are welcomed into their house and that food is a carrier of meaning for their family and is not for strangers. We managed to have an incredible interview with her and her husband, after navigating extreme awkwardness and ambiguous permissions. When wrapping up, she told us, “No one comes here and doesn’t get food,” and made us some fried bread, fresh and hot. Given the horrible start, success was likely going to be not failing, at best. But instead, we ended up receiving her kindness and appreciation.

11. Tell us something people don’t know about the making of this book.
“Steve Portigal” is the pseudonym for an anonymous collective of heartists, Burning Man exonerees, and professional home stagers. 

12. Which stories in the book did you personally learn the most from?
Oh, come on. I love all my children equally! The value of any story is most revealed when it’s considered in the aggregate. I learned from the process of analyzing and synthesizing the stories in order to create the book.

13. If someone is feeling burnt out on research, what story would you recommend they read from your book as a pick-me-up?
If you’re really burnt out on research, maybe go read about someone hiking the Pacific Crest Trail? If you aren’t quite at that stage, then maybe Susan Simon Daniels’ story “A Sigh Is Just a Sigh” which is touching as hell, or Jenn Downs’ hilarious (and slightly Bombeckian) “Burns, Bandages, and BBQ.”

14. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger researcher self?
Don’t worry…someday there will be more researchers than you can imagine…and the demand for researchers will be more than that community can provide.

15. When you’re 90 and look back on your life, what would you like to be able to say to yourself?
“I still remember eating the last panda. Gosh, that was tasty!”

Steve Portigal is the founder of Portigal Consulting. He’s written two books on user research:  Interviewing Users and Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries. His work has informed the development of music gear, wine packaging, medical information systems, corporate intranets, videoconferencing systems, and iPod accessories. Follow Steve on Twitter or listen to his podcast Dollars to Donuts.

We’re hiring a Marketing Manager

Certainly, this is exciting news for us; maybe for you too?

This is a new position, with flexible hours. We expect it to eventually grow into a full-time gig. And you’d get to help define it as the job—and the company—change.

We don’t post job openings every day, so I’m sure we’ve forgotten to include something. Feel free to post questions below in the comments section. Or… go ahead and apply. We’d love a cover letter and a resume by Friday, January 4. Thanks!

Position Opening: Marketing Manager at Rosenfeld Media

The Job

Rosenfeld Media is the premier provider of books, training, consulting, and other expertise-based services to the growing community of user experience design professionals. We are a small company, but our brand is well-known and respected in the user experience (UX) community, and many of the UX field’s leading lights write our books, consult for our clients, and teach our courses. We seek a strong communicator to help us broaden our visibility and deepen our engagement within that community.

This is a half-time position (20 hours/week) with flexible hours; as our company grows, we expect it to become a full-time position. Because this is a new position, and the company and its market are changing, the person we hire will have a great opportunity to help define the position itself.

The position’s initial responsibilities include:

• Helping develop and execute our regular promotional activities (for example, creating and posting newsletters, blog postings, tweets, and book contests)
• Developing new, engaging ways to promote our people, products, and services
• Working with partners (e.g., sponsors, magazines, and conferences) to develop and carry-out joint promotions

The Approach

We use the term “marketing” loosely. While we value, respect, and—when appropriate—utilize traditional marketing approaches and methods, our brand’s success is built on conversation and curation. Conversation means listening to and engaging with our community, and curation means providing uniquely valuable content to the community. The Marketing Manager will continue to intensify our ongoing efforts to communicate with and curate for our community.

Skills and Experience

The candidate:

• Is a strong communicator who can listen, talk, and write in a compelling way
• Can work independently and remotely, tackling discrete projects while managing ongoing tasks
• Has a flexible schedule
• Generates and tries new ideas, makes and admits mistakes, and learns from them
• Can demonstrate relevant success in past positions

The ideal candidate:

• Is familiar with (or has demonstrated curiosity in) the field of user experience design
• Has experience marketing and promoting expertise-based products and services (e.g., books, training, and/or consulting)
• Has experience with at least some marketing and social media tools (currently, we rely upon MovableType, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Twitter, and Hootsuite)
• Yet knows that tool use is only one of many means to achieving success
• Has a bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, or a related field
• Is located in the New York City metropolitan area

How to Apply

Please submit your resume and a cover letter using our form by January 4, 2013.

2 New Books at 20% off!

12/12/12 is an auspicious day for us, as two new Rosenfeld Media books make their debut. And that they’re so dramatically different speaks to UX’s growing diversity.

Kevin Cheng’s (very) long-awaited See What I Mean shows designers and researchers of any stripe how to communicate using comics—regardless of artistic ability. (Check Brad Colbow’s Amazon review.) And Sara Wachter-Boettcher’s Content Everywhere unravels the complexity around breaking down and restructuring content so it can work in today’s multi-device world. (Check out what Jason Grigsby says about the book.)

Pretty different, eh? But we think you’ll find both books incredibly useful. Please celebrate that diversity by picking up both titles at 20% off—put them both in your shopping cart, and the discount will be applied automatically (good through 12/31/12). Not a bad holiday gift for your UX team, or yourself…

While we’ve got your attention, we wanted to show off a bit. We’ve always been proud of the wonderful covers that The Heads of State creates for us. But our book interiors are catching up. Just check out the first page of Kevin’s book:

…and enjoy one of the many lovely illustrations that Eva-Lotta Lamm created for Content Everywhere:

We hope you enjoy them both!

Why we’ve been so quiet

Normally, we here at Rosenfeld Media work really hard to engage with the user experience community. If you follow our Twitter account, you know that’s where we curate useful tweets from over 60 Rosenfeld Media authors and experts (and yes, we advertise our own books, workshops, and expertise there too). We usually post announcements here on our site from time to time, and put out a newsletter every month or two.

But for the past weeks, we’ve been mostly silent. Like a lot of New York City-based companies, Hurricane Sandy has been very hard on us. Us, by the way, is two people—you might be surprised to learn that Rosenfeld Media has only two full-time employees. One of us lives in Brooklyn’s devastated Red Hook neighborhood, which still has no power. (The other was fortunate to be away during the hurricane.) Needless to say, we’re operating at the bare minimum, making sure that the essentials get done: book order fulfillment, new book production, and taking care of workshop logistics.

So you won’t hear much from us for a few more days at least, but we’re still here. We will move forward with the two remaining stops in our fall UX workshop series (Minnneapolis November 12-14, and Toronto November 28-30). We do have two excellent books at the printer right now—Kevin Cheng’s See What I Mean and Sara Wachter-Boettcher’s Content Everywhere (you can get them and our next two books at a very nice discount). And lots of other good things are cooking that we’re looking forward to sharing with you once things get back to normal—or normal-er, at least.

In the meantime, please consider helping or contributing to any or all of these great causes—they’re making a big difference for those affected by Sandy, and you can too:

• Brooklyn Recovery Fund
• Hands Across the Boroughs
• Occupy Sandy Recover
• Power Rockaways Resilience
• Red Hook Initiative
• Red Hook NYC Recovers

Thank you!

Expert Interview: Lisa Welchman

Lisa is one of the planet’s go-to people for web governance, so we’re quite relieved that we snagged her to write our forthcoming book on the very same topic. She’s also available through our experts program for both consulting and teaching a course on web governance; check out her profile and let us know if you’d like us to connect you with Lisa.

RM: Why is website development such a common source of conflict within organizations?

LW: Because usually no one has outlined roles and responsibilities, or emplaced authority and budget, for website development. So managing the enterprise web is a battle of power and budget. Since no one knows who is “supposed” to make decisions about the web, organizations find that they can’t get the simplest of things done online because everyone’s arguing about font colors, technologies, information architecture, you name it.

After a certain amount of time working without an operational blueprint, an enterprise reaches a sort of critical mass of confusion. Managing the enterprise web without a plan or governance is like getting a couple of hundred people together on a sports field and saying, “Let’s play a game.” “What game?” “Just a game. OK. Go!” You’ll have chaos for a while, but eventually there have to be rules or else it’s senseless and non-productive (and maybe not fun). That might be OK if you’re making art or doing an experiment (like the early days of web development), but organizational web sites aren’t art. They are craft. And for most businesses, web sites are no longer an experiment. They serve a business purpose. Web site development has to be supported by an operational model that supports that purpose.

So much of business has shifted towards digital, yet the enterprise (people and processes, budgeting) is still engineered for 1990. By now, most organizations have had a website for fifteen or twenty years. That’s fifteen or twenty years of just making stuff up as you go along—playing a game with no rules. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but not by much. There have been efforts made to gain control through adding a headcount here or there to the “web team” (usually an understaffed, underfunded team with no real authority). But the management response to the web has been largely inadequate.

There are billion dollar, publicly traded, “brand name” businesses that don’t know how many websites or social media accounts they have, or who is managing them. They don’t know how much they spend on the web. Or they can’t do something simple like change the copyright date on all their websites, or find and change the name of the CEO. That’s crazy, and an exposure for the business and the brand. Senior management and executives need to understand that websites aren’t all design and technology “stuff”. They are business tools and they need to be taken seriously.

RM: So what’s the one thing you wish everyone knew about web governance?

LW: That, properly formed, web governance is an enabler, not straitjacket.

RM: Thanks Lisa!

Expert Interview: Susan Weinschenk

You probably already know Susan—”the brain lady”—from her wonderful books, including 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, and Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? We’re fortunate to have Susan teaching one of our UX workshops—in Minneapolis on November 13—and that she’s available for consulting and teaching via our UX experts program.

RM: What’s one thing that’s surprising about how people do, or don’t, pay attention?

SW: It’s possible to look right at something but not “see” it. Eye tracking is really popular these days, but you have to be very careful how you interpret eye tracking studies. Just because someone looked at something on the screen doesn’t mean they paid attention to it! Vision and attention are not the same thing.

RM: When people are choosing from a list of products or services on a web site, does the order of the items matter?

SW: Yes, order is important. If people are unsure what to do, they tend to pick the first item on the list. But you can change this tendency in various ways. If you have three choices that are similar but priced differently—for example, a silver, gold, and platinum level—people will tend to choose the option that is in the middle of the price range.

RM: Thanks Susan; we’re looking forward to seeing you in Minneapolis next month!

Expert Interview: Caroline Jarrett

We’re thrilled to have Caroline, author of Forms that Work and our forthcoming book Surveys that Work participate in our network of UX experts. Like what she has to say below? Then consider having her work with your organization; check her profile page for information on her consulting and and full-day courses.

RM: What’s a common misconception people have about the design of forms?

CJ: That it’s all about visual design, things like where to put the labels compared to the boxes. Whereas the questions are far more important. It’s amazing how users can survive really terrible visual designs of forms—including horrible mistakes like putting the labels inside the boxes—provided they can understand the questions, find the answers easily, and consider that the questions are appropriate in the context of their goals.

In Luke Wroblewski’s book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, I contributed a piece, “People before pixels,” that dives into this in greater detail—and there’s even more in our book Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms For Usability.

RM: What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about survey design?

CJ: You’ve got to test—and preferably, test and test again. The professional survey methodologists are obsessed with testing; they test the topics of the survey on stakeholders, subject matter experts, and data users, as well as on respondents. They test the questions with everybody, and extensively with respondents. They test the heck out of the questionnaire itself (“the instrument”) in usability tests and pilot tests. And they iterate: make changes, test again. And again.

I realise I’m not going to persuade everyone to do that much testing for most surveys, but I’d dearly love to persuade everyone to do a bit of testing. “Write, send, and hope” is a recipe for poor quality data at best, and alienating your users at worst.

RM: Thanks Caroline!

Expert Interview: Aarron Walter

We’re excited to have Aarron, noted author and leader of MailChimp’s UX design team, on board as one of our UX experts. We love his writing, and we’re a more-than-happy MailChimp customer. Below Aarron discusses some of the challenges to managing a UX team, and interaction design in general.

RM: What’s a common misconception people have when it comes to building and managing a user experience team?

AW: The most successful companies and products have a very integrated UX team behind them. As companies grow they splinter into silos of expertise. Developers split into server-side specialties, front-end, mobile, system administration, and various technology specialties within each group. Design splits into specializing on specific areas of a product, marketing, mobile, etc. With each splintering of teams, communication breaks down and the continuity of the user experience can suffer. User experience is, by definition, dedicated to understanding and improving the continuity of a product, which requires peering into each silo, speaking the language of each team, and building bridges to connect them.

A good UX team combines expertise in design research, interaction design, business strategy, visual design, and development. It can be challenging to pull together such breadth and depth of skill, but when you combine that diversity of perspectives you end up fostering respect between the disciplines, which will make designing amazing products much easier.

RM: Speaking of IxD: what’s one thing you wish everyone knew about interaction design?

AW: Many interaction designers feel compelled to create new, novel interaction patterns. But with every new pattern you introduce, you place a burden on users to learn a new way to get something done. Great interaction design uses existing design patterns already familiar to users, and innovates only when necessary. Though it’s a little depressing to interaction designers, our ideas go unnoticed when we are doing our best work. If we remove all stumbling blocks in workflows and anticipate a user’s needs, the things we design become effortless to use.

RM: Thanks Aarron!