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Lou Rosenfeld on information architecture and user experience.

Noodling (socially)...December 1 2008

...with creating Rosenfeld Media groups for both Facebook and LinkedIn.

Now don't get me wrong. Apples and oranges. I really love both services. And Christina, who's now at LinkedIn. They'd better be paying her really, really well.

But it's definitely easier to get going virally in Facebook. About 70 fans in about four hours, and a few helpful comments. In fact, the process of figuring out how to get it set up was aided quite a bit by a few of my 200 plus Facebook friends.

In LinkedIn, I have about 500 contacts. But, um, they're not friends. At least they don't feel that way. Sure, it's a business network, but I don't feel like there's anyone I can turn to for help. And it's far, far harder to invite those contacts to join.

Both services have their respective benefits. Sometimes a tighter, more restrictive network has its purposes. And it's far too early to make a judgment here. But I figured out how to get things going pretty quickly with the Facebook group. I'm still grappling with the LinkedIn group.

Some help here?

If you want to kick the tires on either or both, here you go:

Resolution for 2009: UX Book Salon tourNovember 14 2008

Even though the Christmas decorations are just starting to appear here in Brooklyn, it's not too soon to make a New Year's Resolution.

When I started Rosenfeld Media, I set up a few brown bag lunches with groups of designers and researchers from a few local UX firms. I was looking to learn more about what our target audience liked and didn't like about the design of the books they used for their work. I asked them to bring their own books to the discussion. The resulting show and tell discussions were fantastically useful, and had a significant impact on the designs of both our digital and paperback editions. (Notes on these discussions here.)

Just as important, these discussions provided an outlet for some intense, passionate discussions about UX books, their designs, and their topics. UX pros' pent-up feelings clearly needed to be expressed, and it was enlightening for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, once Rosenfeld Media started actually producing books, I got side-tracked by details of promoting, selling, and distributing them. Bad, Lou, bad. A publisher should always be meeting with and talking with his community. And a UX publisher? Only more so, obviously.

So, starting next year, I resolve to organize informal UX Book Salons on

Now publishing... webinars!October 29 2008

For a year or two—even before Rosenfeld Media actually had published a book—I've been wanting to extend our scope to webinars. It seems like such a natural complement to book publishing. Books alone are, well, books. Books and webinars? Now you're talking content ecosystem. Authors who've assembled content for their books have at least one webinar in them. Some topics don't merit book treatment, but definitely make sense as webinars. And when we're not sure, we can test topics (and people) out with the webinar format before committing to a book, which is far more expensive to produce.

This ecosystem discussion is, not surprisingly, very publisher-centric. But what do customers get out of webinars? That's still very much an open question. And personally, I've had mixed reactions to webinars, both as a customer and as a speaker.

But I'm optimistic. Not only is the technology becoming far better and cheaper, but let's face it: travel is becoming prohibitively expensive. Webinars may be the "poor man's conference," but these days there are a lot of poor men (and women) out there who want to improve their design skills.

That's why Rosenfeld Media is collaborating with Victor Lombardi's Smart Experience to produce a new series of UX webinars. The Future Practice series will tackle the cutting edge of mod

Must... kill...August 21 2008

I've long advocated for banning the term "redesign" from design discussions. (Crazy me, but I just think it's a good idea to keep clear of time-boxed projects that are ill-conceived and ultimately a waste of effort and money.) I think terms like "refine" and "tune" do a far better job of describing what we should be doing: instituting ongoing processes that help our sites evolve in response to a multitude of changing variables.

I hate to sound like a fascist, but I think "build community" ought to be the next one we throw on the pyre. Dunno, maybe I've read too many RFPs of late, but what the hell is it supposed to mean? Is it truly achievable? Is it even a good idea? How many organizations really want a community on their hands to repeatedly feed, burp, and diaper? I think what we mean is that we want to "better engage with more people". But until we find a replacement term, can we just bite our tongues instead of using this ridiculous, meaningless phrase?

New RM book signing: Kevin Cheng on comicsJuly 15 2008

I'm quite excited about this one. In the interests of efficiency, I'll just steal the announcement from the Rosenfeld Media site:

Many in the user experience world are become quite familiar with Kevin Cheng's wit and perspective through OK/Cancel, the brilliant comic strip he co-creates with Tom Chi (more about Kevin here.) Now we'll get to delve further into Kevin's creative mind: he's agreed to write See What I Mean: How to Use Comics to Communicate Ideas for Rosenfeld Media. Kevin and I have been bouncing around this book idea for years, and I'm thrilled that we'll have an opportunity to work together.

Many recognize that comics are a powerful design tool, but assume they need to be artists to create comics. Through his workshops Kevin has been disproving that assumption for years, and now his book will do the same for a wider audience. See What I Mean will teach anyone, regardless of drawing ability, how to use comics to communicate design concepts effectively.

Like all Rosenfeld Media books, Kevin's begins with a book-in-progress site where he'll share his ideas as they develop, and where we hope you'll do the same. We invite you to engage in Kevin's writing process; t