Steve Portigal to write book on interviewing users
Interviewing users is fundamental to user experience work but, as Steve Portigal cautions, we tend to take it for granted. Because it’s based on talking and listening, skills we think we have, we often wing it. Sadly, we miss out on many of the wonderful opportunities our interviews should reveal.
So we’re thrilled that Steve, who’s contributed regular columns to interactions and Core77, has signed on to write a new Rosenfeld Media book, The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing, to help UX practitioners really succeed with interviewing. Steve’s book will focus on helping practitioners to better understand users’ perspectives, and to rely upon rapport as the main ingredient in successful user interviews.
Steve’s book is going to be a fantastic contribution to the field, especially with your involvement. Please keep up with (and, when you can, contribute to) Steve’s progress by following his work at the book site (here’s its RSS feed). And of course, we’ll be glad to let you know when the book comes out (and send you a nice discount) if you request to a publication notification.
Axure & Rosenfeld Media UX Giveaway
Axure and Rosenfeld Media have teamed up to give you a chance to win Axure RP licenses, the seven book Rosenfeld Media Library, and Q&A with prototyping experts Fred Beecher and Todd Zaki Warfel.
Entering to win is easy. Before Monday, January 31st at 5PM PST tweet your reply to “My prototyping motto is…” ending with @axurerp @rosenfeldmedia, so we can track it. Enter as many times as you’d like.
Here’s an example: “Don’t forget who the prototype is for! @axurerp @rosenfeldmedia”
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Get $5 to help improve our shopping UX
We’re making a lot of changes to the Rosenfeld Media site (in dribs and drabs; oh, Lord no, not a redesign!). Soon the entire site will sport many of the improvements already in place at UX Zeitgeist. Next on the agenda: fixes to our shopping cart.
Survey book of the month, May 2011
OK, this month it gets serious. My pick is:
Survey Errors and Survey Costs by Robert M. Groves (1989, reprinted 2004).
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Survey that could be better; Radisson
Have you ever had a survey that was sort of OK, but tripped you up with a few questions here and there?
My friend and colleague Gerry Gaffney of Information and Design tweeted about a survey he had a few issues with and it seemed like a good time to start talking about some specific surveys and draw some general lessons from them, particularly as I was able to persuade him to write this guest post. Thanks, Gerry, and here we go.
We’re now fully Kindle-ized
All of our books are now available via Amazon’s Kindle Store. Of course, you can always purchase our books in MOBI format—along with ePub, screen-optimized PDF, printer-optimized PDF, and paperback—directly from us.
Rosenfeld Media at UX Lisbon
UX Lisbon starts tomorrow, and we’re thrilled to be there in force! Not only are is Rosenfeld Media a sponsor, but six of our authors are on the incredible program:
Survey book of the month, April 2011
All of us need to look out at our competitors, right? So I’ve been buying a selection of the various books on surveys that are aimed at the general market. Rather to my surprise, I’m making one of them my book of the month for April. It is:
Online Surveys for Dummies by Vivek Bhaskaran and Jennifer LeClaire (Wiley).
Horton and Quesenbery to tackle Web Accessibility
Accessibility is one of those issues that seems to lurk in the back of many a designer’s mind. Can’t ignore it, especially as it becomes an increasingly frightening Legal Thing. But don’t want to deal with it; after all, it’ll screw up the design, right?
Not right. You can have a design that’s both accessible and enjoyable if you follow universal design principles. That’s what Universal Design for Web Accessibility: Solutions for barrier-free user experiences, the newest Rosenfeld Media book-in-progress, will teach you. Written by Sarah Horton, co-author of the Web Style Guide, and Whitney Quesenbery, co-author of our own Storytelling for User Experience, Universal Design for Web Accessibility will provide you with the practical principles and examples you’ll need to create sites that everyone can use.
We’re thrilled to be working with Sarah and, for a second time, Whitney. And we’re looking forward to their book coming out in 2012, a year which promises a lot of new Rosenfeld Media titles.
SUS Svensk: System Usability Scale in Swedish
Recently, I wrote about SUS: a good enough usability questionnaire, the scale devised by John Brookes.
Bengt Göransson commented that he uses it as part of his ‘tool box’, pointing out that it is important to use it alongside other methods to capture efficiency and effectiveness. He has kindly given me permission to publish his Swedish translations here:
System Usability Scale in Swedish:
SUS-svensk.pdf
Instructions for the user about how to fill in the questionnaire:
SUS-följebrev-svensk.pdf
