User Experience + Publishing

! ! User Experience + !Publishing

Lou Rosenfeld •" Rosenfeld Media •" rosenfeldmedia.com

BookCamp New York •" 12/4/10

UX in one slide

• Problem: Complex problems and services are hard to design

• Solution: Cross-disciplinary design--lots of different brains, methods, perspectives

• User Experience: A growing cross-disciplinary community of designers; the collection of methods they use to solve complex problems

What does UX mean for publishers?

• UX goal: engage users with products and services

• Publishing goal: engage readers with authors

• So how do we better engage with readers? with authors?

How can we engage with customers?

• By being transparent

• By cultivating mutual empathy

• By delighting them

• By being generous with them

• By making engaging content

Transparency through treating customer service as dialogueCustomer service provided by publisher and dedicated staff (first hire)

Reward customers for finding problems

Fix problems even if they’re not our fault

Fix problems fast and for good if they’re our fault

Empathy by showing your workWe researched what worked well--and didn’t--with the books our community used for work. Result: design checklist.

We then tested a LuLu prototype of our first book with readers

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Result: books that work well.

Empathy by allowing customers to help

We created ePub versions for our backlist, and asked customers to evaluate them in return for free books.

5 evaluations of each title x 1 hour per evaluation x 7 titles = 35 hours of incredibly useful help

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Delight bymaking the books beautiful

Delight byoffering major formats (and more)

Five formats•"4 color paperback•"ePUB•"MOBI• PDF for on-screen• PDF for printing

...and no DRM

Delight through instant ebook downloading

Delight bybeing accessible

Death to exhibition halls!

We take our UX Bookmobile to the people

...and we talk with them there

Generosity by giving (the right) content away

All book illos available via Flickr

Generosity by supporting any club or event

We retweet all UX book-related events (our books or not)

...and sponsor just about every UX-related event (comps + discount code)

Generosity by providing a free service to UX book fans

UX Zeitgeist: communal library of UX books, articles, and topics; provides ability to create public lists

bookpage user’s

listpage

Making content engaging

Book-in-progress sites draw in readers, encourage engagement in developing book content

Mixed results...

...but strong SEO benefit

#3

#5

#6

Where we’ve failed

• Velocity: UX practices don’t help our authors write faster

• Middlemen: Amazon destroys our ability to engage with customers

What’s next: Filling gaps in the UX ecosystem

Move from publisher of UX books to purveyor of UX expertise

Introduce new ways to engage customers and experts

• engaging with top UX expertise: our authors, others’ authors, and non-author experts by...

• brokering short consulting engagements

• brokering in-house workshops

Thanks!

Rosenfeld Media"

www.rosenfeldmedia.com

457 Third Street, #4RBrooklyn, NY 11215 USA

info@rosenfeldmedia.com +1.718.568.9756