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 Mary Jean, who's always been the best writer in the family, writes:
Nathaniel Oscar Rosenfeld was born Wednesday, June 18, at the extremely hospitable hour of 2:54 p.m. He was a strapping 8 pounds 6 ounces, and within minutes of emerging had figured out where the snack bar was, so we expect that number to stay impressive. After the world's longest pregnancy (27 years), everything went about perfectly with the labor and birth. That kid was so overripe he fell right off the tree. Iris is crazy about having a little bother brother. When Lou called her after the birth, I could hear her scream with excitement,...
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McCain's web team must have since been shamed into fixing their site's information architecture, because "Golf Gear" is no longer one of its four main tabs. But there's a screen grab over at Talking Points Memo...
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Occasionally I help my clients find consulting firms for information architecture and information management projects. Here's how I help: Establish an overall hiring process Develop RFPs Assemble an initial list of potential vendors Review proposals Develop short list selection criteria Come up with (and ask) questions for the interviews of short list candidates Develop systems for evaluating proposals and presentations Because I'm such a swell guy, I've decided to share a general set of interview questions below. Hopefully some Bloug readers might find these helpful to consider when hiring a vendor. Chime in with others you think should...
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Steve Krug and I are in Chicago this week to teach our day-long workshops (me on Thursday, and Steve on Friday). Roundarch has kindly agreed to sponsor and organize a happy hour in concert with our visit. It takes place Thursday, May 15, from 6:00pm-8:00pm at the Elephant & Castle Pub (185 N. Wabash Avenue). Come by for drinks, complementary pub grub, and socializing. RSVP to rwankovsky [at] roundarch.com; hope to see you there!
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Joshua Kaufman of UXmatters interviewed Liz Danzico and me about Rosenfeld Media, specifically addressing how we determined book features and tested our designs. We describe a bit of the "show and tell" approach we used for identifying features, and a bit about the task analysis we did for the print and digital edition designs. It's a nice short read; Joshua and Pabini Gabriel-Petit, UXmatters' editor-in-chief, did a great job. Speaking of books, I think we'll have sold 1,000 copies of Luke Wroblewski's Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by tomorrow. That's not bad, considering it launched Monday! I wish I could take credit as some sort of guru of book promo,...
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Whew! It'd finally available. Joy. Relief. Here's the info from the Rosenfeld Media site: 
We're excited to announce that Luke Wroblewski's long-awaited book, "Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks," is now available! And with hundreds of sales since our soft launch earlier today, apparently we're not the only ones! When you buy directly from Rosenfeld Media, you'll pay US$36 for the paperback and digital editions, US$19 for digital only. (Compare with US$36 for paperback only at Amazon.) The paperback is 244 pages with high quality paper stock, a sewn binding, and a full color interior. At...
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Just on my way home from an enjoyable visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Tim Offenstein and friends put on a great event. Sick (again; WTF?), exhausted, but happy. And happy to report that I should have a new book to go on sale later this week. But enough of that; here are the slides. Much better with animation, but I had to upload a PDF, as the PPT was too large for SlideShare. Email me if you want the full 59Mb PPT. And thanks to everyone who made suggestions; it was a fun keynote to give (and hopefully to sit through):  |...
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On Wednesday I'll be keynoting the University of Illinois' 9th Annual Webmaster Forum. The theme of the event is redesign, and for me, redesign boils down to two four-letter words. Double trouble. Redesigns are counterproductive; not surprisingly, my talk will be titled "Redesign Must Die". So Judy Matthews' timing couldn't have been better when she pointed me to Tales from Redesignland, a fantastically funny (and apropos) new blog about the travails of those pushing the redesign rock up the academic mountain. Cool. Now I don't need to prep; I can just read Redesignland's cartoons out loud. I hope Tony Dunn manages to hold on to enough shreds of his sanity to...
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Just posted an updated set of the slides for my site search analytics workshop. Feel free to download them from SlideShare. I'll be teaching it once more this spring, in Chicago on May 15; come join us for the day. | View | Upload your own
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Just got back from a few days in the Bay Area. Incredibly packed trip, immensely enjoyable nonetheless. The coolest idea from the visit: Mike Kunavsky told me about ParkScan.org, a "...community-initiated, web-based reporting system that tracks maintenance conditions in San Francisco's parks and playgrounds." More from their site: Community members' observations, once reported via our web-based form, are sent electronically to the appropriate city departments for action. A tracking number is assigned to each report, and the responsible department is notified. Dangerous conditions are acted on immediately, and general maintenance issues are handled in short order. Capital repairs are scheduled as budgets permit. Wow. Underfunded government entity, meet concerned citizens. ...
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The Steve and Lou tour's last spring stop is Chicago, May 15-16, and the early registration deadline is tomorrow. Register by then to receive a $100 discount off each day-long workshop. I'll be teaching my new workshop, Site Search Analytics for a Better User Experience, and Steve Krug's new workshop, Don't Make Me Think: The Discount Usability Testing Workshop, takes place the next day. We'll be joining in a happy hour the evening of May 15, sponsored by Roundarch's Chicago office. Details forthcoming; hope to see you in Chicago next month!
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Anyone who's followed my blog over the past seven (!) years knows that I'm always promoting the IA Summit. It was my baby at its inception, but it's gotten better every year. As a strapping nine year-old, it's clearly enjoyed some great parenting along the way. Many thanks to Richard Dalton, Dick Hill, and the rest of the committee for another outstanding event. But this year something extra special happened. Amid the sessions, networking, socializing and such, I encountered some completely unexpected generosity. Kevin Cheng and I have been discussing his writing a Rosenfeld Media book for some time. His proposal is about done, and I'm dying to publish the...
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The early registration for Steve Krug's and my May 15/16 Chicago workshops (site search analytics, do-it-yourself usability) is this Friday (April 18). Last chance to save $100 per workshop, last stop on our spring road trip; details here. And on Thursday (April 17), I'll participate in Seth Earley's Search Solutions conference call series, making a very short presentation on (you guessed it) site search analytics. No charge to listen in; details here.
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After months of intense negotiation, Louis Rosenfeld LLC's legal department has just completed an agreement with the good folks at An Event Apart to provide you, loyal Bloug readers, with a very nice discount for this year's conferences. These are fabulously-produced events, with excellent speakers (including Rosenfeld Media authors like Luke Wroblewski and even, um, me) in three great locations (Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago). I really enjoyed my experience at An Event Apart, and I hope you will too: AN EVENT APART PRESENTS THE BLOUG DISCOUNT An Event Apart, the design conference "for people who make websites," announces a special discount exclusively for attendees of Louis Rosenfeld's workshops—or anyone smart enough to get on...
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I've always loved Kurt Vonnegut's take on social networks, as presented in Slapstick, published in 1976. I blogged about this five years ago: "...I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick for the umpteenth time recently. The protagonist runs for President with the slogan 'Lonesome no more!'. Upon his election, every American is randomly assigned a brand new government-issue middle name, based on a plant, an animal, and other object, combined with a numeric code. President Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain's plan takes off, and these new 'families' persist after the inevitable collapse of western civilization. As you might guess, I recommend Slapstick: a quick and funny-as-hell read, and a little bit of social...
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