All quiet?
As part of our “eating one’s own dog food” regimen, we’ve tried to proceed with building a publishing house from scratch at a careful (if occasionally pokey) pace, drawing upon many UX people and practices along the way. Not surprisingly, our announcements blog has been quiet these past few months.
Yet we’re actually quite pleased with the slow-but-steady progress; here’s a sampler of what’s cooking in the Rosenfeld Media kitchen:
- Three books are signed and underway; please visit their respective sites and participate in developing their content. Books no longer have to be an author’s monologue; these book sites are where author-reader dialogues can happen.
- We’re negotiating some exciting new titles with other potential authors. Speaking of which, are you pining to write the next great UX book? Visit our Writing for Us page to learn how to submit a proposal.
- Our print books’ interior research and design are now complete, and user testing will take place this winter. Yes, you read it right: we’ll actually test our books’ design. We’re also hard at work designing how the PDF versions of our books will look and work.
- A new service—something of a vertical mashup of UX people, books, and ideas—is finally nearing completion. If it succeeds, it’ll be a fantastic boon to the UX community. If not… well, it’ll have been a noble effort. Either way, we can’t wait to show it off, and hope you’ll participate.
That’s it for now; as always, we welcome your thoughts, advice, and encouragement.
Indi Young signs to write book on alignment diagrams
Another signing: Indi Young will write a Rosenfeld Media book on alignment diagrams—mental models married to proposed features. Alignment Diagrams: Product design for real-life activities will show how to develop and use alignment diagrams to test design and business assumptions, and help shape a web site or application’s structure and strategy.
A founding partner of Adaptive Path, Indi has impressive experience developing these diagrams for clients from a wide variety of industries. We’re thrilled to have Indi on board, and are greatly looking forward to publishing her book early next year.
Please visit Indi’s “book in progress” site, subscribe to the RSS feed, and spread the word!
The Dirt on Rosenfeld Media: the Boxes & Arrows interview
Liz Danzico interviews Lou Rosenfeld in Boxes & Arrows, a publication that should be familiar to every UX professional. It’s a quick read that explains the motivation behind the company’s founding, and how we hope to be different.
Welcome
I’ve been planning Rosenfeld Media for about five months, and blogged the news of its impending arrival some time ago. But launching the RM site makes everything feel real, permanent, and somehow “official”.
Hello world!
It’s been a pleasure getting to the point, especially working with Bright Creative’s Dave Shea to develop this site. Please kick the tires and let us know what you think. And please feel free to spread the word.
Search analytics “Book in Progress” site now live
We’ve just launched a web site for Lou Rosenfeld and Rich Wiggins’ forthcoming book, Search Analytics for Your Site. You’ll find a draft of the book’s first chapter, a free Perl script that generates a report from search logs, a bibliography, and much more. The site is also a place to ask questions, discuss, and share your experiences using search analytics on your own site.
Please have a look and let us know what you think, and keep up with the site’s news and announcements by add this RSS feed to your aggregator. We plan on adding lots of new content in the coming months.
RM signs Donna Maurer to author book on card sorting
We’re excited to announce that Donna Maurer has agreed to write a book on card sorting for Rosenfeld Media. Our initial batch of books will provide user experience designers with practical help applying design methods, and few are as useful as card sorting. Even better, Donna is one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, so we’re especially glad to have her on board.
Donna’s book, and all RM books, will be developed with your input. Each of our books will have a dedicated site where you and the author can share information on (and questions about) the topic. Our first book site is, naturally, for the card sorting book; please visit the site and subscribe its RSS feed.
Donna has kicked off her exploration with a brief survey; please consider spending a few minutes taking it.
More on what makes for a good design book
Following up on last month’s posting, we’re sharing more of what we’re learning from our conversations on book design with UX professionals:
Reaching beyond the English-speaking market
Since our site launched last month, Rosenfeld Media has been mentioned in a number of non-English web sites. It’s wonderful to make even the tiniest dent around the world; it’s also wonderful to see how Google’s automatic translation service renders these postings.
What makes for a good design book?
We’ve initiated some discussions with local (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) firms that are involved in an aspect of user experience design. We hope to learn a little bit more about what makes for a well-designed design book (see a previous discussion on Bloug for more on this subject).
Based on our limited, unscientific, and purely anecdotal market research, some interesting issues are emerging:
Ironing out some kinks
Bright Creative’s Dave Shea, esteemed designer of this site, follows up on the two issues that a number of you raised with the site’s design:
