Register by Friday and get a FREE UserTesting.com study worth US$499

When you register early for our March 5-7 Mountain View workshops (by this Friday, February 10th), our partner UserTesting.com will perform a free mini-usability study of your website.

Mini-usability study details:

• Watch users search Google for what you offer
• Watch users perform common tasks—such as placing an order—on your website
• Watch users naturally search the Internet to research your company’s credibility

What UserTesting.com will provide you:

• They’ll set up and run a 3-user test of your site.
• They’ll give you the complete videos of these three sessions.
• They’ll annotate the videos, make clips of the highlights, and write a summary of the key findings.
• And it’s free

Yep, a US$499 value free simply for registering (please do so by February 10th). After you register, we’ll ask for the URL you want tested. Then UserTesting.com will get to work.

So, an incredible deal just got better—three best-selling UX authors (Krug, Wroblewski, and Rosenfeld), all teaching highly practical workshops geared toward UX practitioners in an intimate setting (capped at 50). Low prices per workshop. And now this great offer from UserTesting.com. What are you waiting for?

Win a Kindle stuffed with 8 Rosenfeld Media books

Yes, we’re not abashed in our love for UX London. In fact, this spring’s lineup includes four of our authors (or soon-to-be authors): Leah Buley, Kevin Cheng, Anders Ramsay, and Luke Wroblewski.

Our love extends to a joint promo—we’re giving away two Kindles pre-loaded with all eight Rosenfeld Media titles. Just tweet whom you’d like to see speak at a future UX London event, or write a book for Rosenfeld Media—be sure to include @UXLondon and @RosenfeldMedia in the tweet. You’ll help the UX London folks and Rosenfeld Media know who we should be keeping an eye on.

Many thanks!

Workshop series to visit NYC, Silicon Valley

Wondering how you’ll ramp up your UX team’s skills? (And spend that training budget?)

Look no further: our spring 2012 workshops are now open for registration. They cover some delicious topics: web form design, prototyping for mobile devices, DIY usability testing, and a very pragmatic take on information architecture. And our instructors ain’t bad either: Steve Krug, Luke Wroblewski, Rachel Hinman, and Lou Rosenfeld. Small full-day classes and lots of hands-on work—what more could you ask for?

We’ll be visiting Mountain View March 5-7, and New York City May 23-25. (Stay tuned; we’re working on adding a third city.) Discounts available for early registration and groups. And we’ll be giving away lots of goodies from such sponsors as TechSmith, UserTesting.com, MailChimp, and Balsamiq.

Please help spread the word, and let us know if we can answer any questions.

Anders Ramsay on avoiding agile-induced dysfunctions

With our partners at UIE, we recently launched the Next Step Series of monthly virtual seminars starring Rosenfeld Media authors. First up is Anders Ramsay, who will present Designing With Agile on January 24 . How agile and design fit together is still up in the air, so we decided to get some input from Anders:

RM: What’s the biggest mistake people make when it comes to designing with Agile?

Anders Ramsay: UX designers’ biggest mistake is to think that methods like Scrum or XP are synonymous with Agile. Those methods were created by and for developers to solve developer problems. They were created with high-quality efficient software delivery in mind, not UX design. This is why many UX designers are stunned—utterly stunned!—to discover that adopting Scrum does not lead to eternal frolicking and bliss. In fact, adopting a method like Scrum or XP will, for a UX practitioner, only replace the waterfall dysfunctions of old with new dysfunctions, like being devoured by the backlog beast or being stuck with half-baked UX that has been deemed “Done.”

But the good news is that we can forge our own methods, intended to solve UX designer problems and challenges and looking at software from the UX perspective, out of the very same lean, light-weight thinking and values from which the Agile movement and brand was forged.

New virtual seminar series!

Big news from Rosenfeld Media headquarters: we’re teaming up with UIE to create a new series of monthly virtual seminars!

The Next Step Series will feature Rosenfeld Media authors covering critical user experience topics thoughtfully and practically—just like they do in their Rosenfeld Media books. All with the great format and top production values you’ve come to expect from UIE: highly participatory, 90-minute live seminars and edited recordings for future use. We’ve already queued up an initial batch of great presenters, including Anders Ramsay, Caroline Jarrett, Rachel Hinman, and Steve Portigal.

This partnership is a true no-brainer. Rosenfeld Media’s goal is to identify and promote fantastic UX expertise—in book form, but also in a growing number of other formats. And no one publishes better virtual seminars than UIE. We’re looking forward to serving the user experience community together.

Please check out our list of upcoming seminars, and stay connected with us to be notified when more are scheduled.

Presentation on the survey process

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I’d finally worked out a survey process: how to do a survey in 6 steps. It’s been evolving in a series of workshops, and the most recent one was at the J.Boye Conference 2011 in Aarhus, Denmark.
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Josh Clark joins our editorial board

We are absolutely thrilled to have mobile design guru and author Josh Clark of Global Moxie join our editorial board. Like our other editorial advisors, Josh will be helping us identify potential authors and topics, and evaluate book proposals. So don’t be surprised if you notice, in a year or two, that we have a raft of great new mobile design books coming out. Welcome aboard, Josh!

Survey book of the month, December 2011

Many of us will be doing a lot of gift-giving this month, so I’ve chosen a book that would be just right for someone who enjoys something thought-provoking and a bit out of the usual:

Through the language glass: why the world looks different in other languages by Guy Deutscher (2010; paperback 2011)

One for fun – or to provoke some thought

My recent picks have been worthwhile, but not the easiest to read. This one is more fun, but it also got me thinking.

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Our holiday deal: 40% off everything!

Put the hum in humbug: take 40% off all of our books and webinars by using discount code HUMBUG when checking out. This crazy deal is good through Friday, December 16. After that, you’re on your own.

Storytelling for UX now available in Japanese

We’re very happy to report that, thanks to the esteemed Japanese publisher Maruzen, Storytelling for User Experience (by Kevin Brooks and Whitney Quesenbery) will soon be available in Japanese! It will go on sale via Amazon Japan on December 14:

This translation wouldn’t be available if it wasn’t for the wonderful efforts of the Japanese user experience community, especially Yoshinori Wakizaka (@wackiesrock). Thank you all!