Upcoming author talks and a UX London discount
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.
- And for those of you in and near London, two notes of interest:
- 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.
How delicious is RM?
It’s been interesting to monitor how del.icio.us users tag the Rosenfeld Media site. As of this writing, the site’s home page has been tagged by approximately 80 users. The ten most common tags are:
New book signing: “Playful Design” by John Ferrara
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.
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“The single, most powerful communications tool you have”
That’s a quote from Andy Goodman in a talk on storytelling as a way to communicate the value of a non-profit’s work. It’s the story of changing a presentation from facts, figures and tiny print to a story. It’s not that facts and figures aren’t important. Or that you don’t have to have the data to back up your work. It’s that you need to start with something that lets the audience understand the result before you launch into how you got there.
The story he tells is about an organization that changes the lives of young people through their programs. But it could just as easily be about how a new design idea will change the experience.
How often have you heard a presentation that started with something like “if we deploy a new content management system with semantic tagging, we can enable a fully personalized experience”?
There’s a place for discussing the technologies and techniques that make our ideas possible. But, if you are trying to explore a new idea, start with a story about the world it will create. Once the audience is excited about the idea, you can back up and talk about what it will take to make the idea happen.
Goodman’s newsletter, free-range thinking, has a report on a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. It compared the impact of two charitable appeals. One started with facts and figures, the other with the story of one child.
Which one would appeal more to you?
One:
Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than three million children. In Zambia, severe rainfall de?cits have resulted in a 42 percent drop in maize production from 2000. As a result, an estimated three million Zambians face hunger.
Four million Angolans–one third of the population–have been forced to ?ee their homes. More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance.
Two:
Any money that you donate will go to Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa. Rokia is desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support and the support
of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia’s family and other members of the community to help feed her, and provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education.
In the study, the second was more effective. People who saw the Rokia’s story (and a photo) donated almost twice as much money. A story – a recognizable person to donate to – is more compelling than what the authors call “statistical victims.”
This sounds a lot like what makes personas work. Even though a persona is a composite person rather than a single, real, example, the principle is the same: It’s easier to connect to a story than to statistics.
- See the video of Andy Goodman’s speech
- Read Sympathy and Callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victim, by Deborah Small, George Lowenstein, Paul Slovic
Special thanks to Ginny Redish for pointing me to this resource.
Looking ahead to 2010
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?
Hello Europe!
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.
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Upcoming Author Presentations
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.
How to do a survey in six steps
Question: What’s the difference between a questionnaire and a survey?
Answer: A questionnaire is a series of questions and answers on a topic; a survey is the overall process of obtaining useful information using a questionnaire.
Question: OK then, what are the steps in the process?
Answer: Until recently, I was stumped on that one, but after a lot of help from others and some thinking, I have an answer for you…
Mental Models now available in Korean
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!
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).
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