“Getting Started in UX”: forthcoming Rosenfeld Media book by Boon Sheridan

New book just signed! Getting Started in UX by Boon Sheridan

Whether I’m trying to distract myself with drink at a UX happy hour or malingering near the UX Bookmobile, people love to come up to me and tell me what books Rosenfeld Media should publish. A bona fide “intro to user experience” book is by far the most common suggestion of them all.

My normal reaction is to shake my head. “UX is huge. Who the hell would want to read a 600 page book? And who the hell would want to write it?”

Well, we found the right chump to take it on: Boon Sheridan, who’s just begun work on the tentatively titled Getting Started in UX. If you know Boon, you know these three things about him:

1. He’s enjoyed a fantastically well-rounded career in UX
2. Oh my, the guy can write
3. Not an insignificant supply of attitude
4. THE BEARD

OK, that’s four things.

The first three make him the ideal guide for someone UX-newish or even UX-curious. The kind of person who just shelled out good money for, say, a General Assembly course. Boon’s book aims to fill in the gaps about how UX really works for those folks, taking them on a waggish tour that starts small (pixels) and stops at progressively broader and more complex systems along the way. The table of contents is subject to change, naturally:

• Chapter 1 Pixels: Communication and Visual Design
• Chapter 2 Words: Content Strategy
• Chapter 3 Screens: Interaction Design
• Chapter 4 Devices: Human Factors and Usability
• Chapter 5 Products: Product Management
• Chapter 6 Systems: Information Architecture
• Chapter 7 Services: Service Design
• Chapter 8 Metrics: Analytics
• Chapter 9 People: Research and Ethnography

More good news for you and, especially, for Boon: it won’t require 600 pages. When you sweat the design the structure of a book up front, well before the writing begins, it’s much clearer what to leave out and what to leave in. That gets you much closer to that magical 200 page range. (It also helps to have an information architect-turned-publisher harry you about this endlessly. Right, Boon?)

Boon is looking forward to you harrying him as well. Please do?—?the more “encouragement” our authors get, the better. If we nag him properly, Boon’s book should come out in late 2019.