Professional

Malware Perception Risk Assessment Checklist: Before Its Time

by Paul Sherman on March 25, 2010 · 6 comments

in Experience Strategy, Organizational, Privacy, Research

Back about two years ago I was working on a product line that took a number of potentially objectionable actions with customers’ systems. I pushed back against the product teams, saying that these actions put our products at risk of being perceived as malware.

They in turn pushed back on me, essentially telling me to prove my allegations.

So I went away for a few days, did some research, and returned with my (fanfare) Malware Perception Risk Assessment Tool. Ta-da!

Uh, sorry, I meant “thud”. It went over like a lead ballon. No takers. So I wrote it up in an article at UXmatters, hoping it’d become adopted. More deafening silence. Dejection.

But here’s the thing: systems are becoming more and more interconnected, and more than ever, applications are utilizing aspects of your personal, semi-public, and public data to derive value (presumably for you as well as themselves). Thus the risk of an application being perceived as malware has only increased.

I strongly believe that our field needs to provide the wider world with a tool that can help assess the risk that a particular product or service might be tagged as malware in the minds of users or the market at large.

So I again submit to the UX, dev, and product management communities the Malware Risk Assessment Checklist.

To measure the probability of people perceiving a product as malware, I created a checklist representing a set of attributes that typically characterize malware. I grouped these attributes into these five categories, each containing two or more representative attributes:

  • personal information gathering and usage
  • modification of data or system configuration
  • stealth and resistance to removal or modification
  • resource utilization
  • transparency and disclosure of third-party relationships

This time, I’m explicitly calling out the fact that the checklist is light on data propagation via social networking applications. And I’m asking for help in rounding out that aspect of the checklist. So help a guy out and suggest some social media items. I am releasing this checklist under a “Creative Commons non-commercial share alike-derivative works permitted” license, so you can remix this, add to it, etc. When I receive some good item suggestions, I’ll re-roll the list and publish again.

Here’s the checklist as it stood in 2008. Peeps, have at it.

Personal Information Gathering and Usage
The product or Web site…
Gathers and transmits users’ personal data or information about users’ behavior to the organization providing the product
____Yes
____No
Gathers and transmits users’ personal data or information about users’ behavior to a third party.
____Yes
____No
Uses personal data and data the product developer obtained from third parties to assemble profiles of users that are more complete and comprehensive than users expect.
____Yes
____No
Exposes more of users’ personal information to their contacts or a community than users expected or wanted.
____Yes
____No
Does any of the above without user notification and consent.
____Yes
____No
Does any of the above and does not allow users to opt out.
____Yes
____No

Modification of Data or System Configuration
The product or Web site…
Overwrites, modifies, or destroys users’ data without their knowledge or consent.
____Yes
____No
Modifies other applications on users’ computers or their operating system settings or computing environment.
____Yes
____No
Fails to restore modifications to other applications, operating system settings, or the computing environment when the user uninstalls the product.
____Yes
____No
Damages or renders inoperative other software or hardware on users’ computing systems.
____Yes
____No

Stealth and Resistance to Removal or Modification
The product or Web site…
Hides or renders its files and resources inaccessible to the user through normal means—that is, using standard file managers and viewers.
____Yes
____No
Resists attempts at removal.
____Yes
____No
Modifies antivirus, antispyware, and other computing hygiene applications or application settings, to make itself appear harmless or less harmful than it actually is.
____Yes
____No

Resource Utilization
The product or Web site…
Overuses computing resources—CPU, GPU, memory, and so on—to a noticeable extent.
____Yes
____No
Utilizes computing resources for purposes not directly related to the tasks users typically perform with the software.
____Yes
____No

Transparency and Disclosure of Third-Party Relationships
The product or Web site…
Installs third-party applications that demonstrate any of the above behaviors.
____Yes
____No
Installs third-party applications without user notification and consent.
____Yes
____No

C’mon people, let’s make this checklist useful, and maybe even a de facto standard.

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Guidelines For Design Guidelines

by Paul Sherman on January 8, 2010 · 1 comment

in Everything Else

This post grew out of my response to a question on the IxDA discussion board. Russ Wilson, fellow Austinite, UX VP at a large software co., and all-around good guy, posed this question:

I’d like to get people’s opinions on the value of “company-wide” design guidelines (for software applications/websites)?In theory, design guidelines could help to remove design bottlenecks by empowering others to create and apply the guidelines… but in reality they can also be hard to implement, confusing,restrictive, etc.

My response was:

…I can share some lessons I’ve learned while building guidelines and leading teams that produced and consumed guidelines.

1. Treat design guidelines as a design problem in and of itself. Make the guidelines findable, learnable, usable (and memorable) for the intended consumers. This means you need to understand your users’ needs. Some questions to ask yourself and your team are:

* Do they need to know the why behind the guidelines, or do they just need to know how to be compliant?

* Consider whether they (and therefore you) are constrained by the UI toolkit and available controls. That is, do they need implementation-specific guidelines? This is more typical for platform-specific software and certain web-delivered apps. Or do you have degrees of freedom more typical of web-based apps?

2. Make sure people can quickly and easily access the digital assets they’ll need to successfully implement the guidelines. Provide links to the assets (i.e., images, controls, CSS, code snippets, etc.) that will help designers and devs to implement the guidelines. Put the relevant links as close as possible to the guideline. Basically, put on your Tufte hat. (What can I say, I’m almost done with “Beautiful Evidence” so I’m looking at everything through Tuftian lenses right now.)

3. Make it so people can discuss and annotate the guidelines. Also, it’s constructive when the community can submit examples of how they’ve implemented or adapted guidelines. At some point you may find it useful to convert a community submission into a full guideline.

4. Examples examples examples. (And more examples.) It’s often helpful to mock up one of your organization’s existing applications to illustrate one or more guidelines. If nothing else, the team can then practice “cargo cult design” and just emulate your example.

5. Socialize the guidelines…but also socialize a release plan for future guideline changes. Design and dev teams absolutely hate to find out that they’ve complied with R1.0 of the guidelines, but you’ve rev’ed them to R1.1 or 2.0. If you’re making changes to the guidelines, make sure people know when the changes will be rolled out. And of course provide as many sneak peaks as you can.

6. Make sure that you coordinate with the folks who own the visual aspects of your organization’s brand. A little synergy here goes a long way. And they’re usually a great source of brand digital assets.

I thought this was blog-worthy, so I decided to post it. I’d love to hear about others’ experiences in this area of design and user experience management.

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UXmatters Article: Testing Your Own Designs Redux

by Andreas Bossard on January 4, 2010 · 2 comments

in Design

This is just a quick pointer to my latest UXmatters column, which is a follow-on to my article from September about the perils and pitfalls of testing your own designs.

In this follow-on, I revisited some of my more bombastic points about testing one’s own designs. Thanks to some excellent comments by several colleagues (and colleague-slash-wife), I modified and built upon my original recommendations and provide some modified guidelines. Here’s the summary guidelines. To understand the reasoning behind them, go read the whole article.

Guideline 1—When testing your own designs, don’t think of it as a test to pass or fail, think of it as part of your design process.

Guideline 1a—Test early, test as often as possible, and test lo-fi prototypes rather than making usability testing a make-or-break event in your design lifecycle.

Guideline 2—When testing your own designs, you should seek disconfirming evidence, but be alert for joys and delighters, too.

Guideline 3—When you’re trying to solve a design problem, usability testing serves design. It’s a tool. Use it to improve your design, not to justify your actions.

Comments about these guidelines? Email me via UsabilityBlog, or comment at UXmatters.

Testing Your Own Designs Redux ::? Paul Sherman via UXmatters

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My Usability Marathon Preso

by Paul Sherman on October 14, 2009 · 0 comments

in Experience Strategy

I just posted my Usability Marathon presentation to Slideshare. (I love Slideshare btw…no surprise; Rashmi Sinha started out as a UX person.)

I’m getting good feedback and nice retweets on Twitter; which is a good sign.

Normally, I’d pull some choice quotes to whet your appetite. But I’ve got a pile of storyboarding and wireframing to do this week, so it’s back to the UX grind (but what a satisfying fun grind!).

Enjoy.

Usability…Or Strategic User Experience? ::? Usability Marathon 2

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Teaser 2: UPA 2009 UX Industry Salary Survey

by Paul Sherman on August 18, 2009 · 0 comments

I know, I said I’d release the UPA 2009 UX Industry Salary Survey last Friday. Unfortunately, paying work and family time prevented me from finishing the report.

But I’m telling you now that I’ve submitted the “members only” full report and the public report to the UPA office, and they should have it posted within 24-36 hours from now, Tue 18 August.

Oh, and here’s another teaser:

  • The average salary in the UX field for men and women combined is $85,283. For women, the average salary is $84,892. Men’s average salary: $85,947. This is the closest that men’s and women’s salaries have ever been since we started surveying the field in 2000. The gender gap appears to be gone, folks.

You can see the details, including salary by job description and other analyses, when UPA posts the public version of the report. UPA members will be able to get the full report, which includes some really in-depth statistical analyses, behind the member login.

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It’s About The Unknown Problems…What Do You Do About Them?

by Paul Sherman on August 4, 2009 · 6 comments

When performing user/design research, us UX researchers go into the field with ideas about the problems you’ve been asked to solve. But it’s nearly always the case that we come out of research sessions having identified a whole host of new and unexpected problems. This is so common, I’ve even added a section to my standard report template to account for the unexpected problems (and possible solutions).

I argue that it’s how you handle the “unexpected” problems that differentiates the good from the great UX researcher.

Discuss…

How do other practitioners handle the “unexpected” class of problems? How do you account for serendipity in your deliverables, communication with clients, etc?

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Teaser 1: UPA 2009 UX Industry Salary Survey

by Paul Sherman on August 3, 2009 · 2 comments

in Everything Else

Normally I suck at promotion. Particularly self-promotion, which is obviously a problem for my user experience consultancy. But since this is the last year I will be leading the Usability Professionals’ Association salary survey project (I go off the board after this year), I thought I’d go out with a bit of a pop. I cranked away over the weekend to complete the final draft of the the UPA’s 2009 UX industry salary survey. It’ll be available on Friday. There are some *really* interesting results…but before I drop teaser #1, let me give props where they’re due:

  • Ken Becker did a fantastic job on data cleansing, normalizing and initial analysis.
  • Karl Steiner also did great work producing the data tables and charts and helping me on subsequent analyses.
  • Jeff Sauro did some major statistical heavy lifting and contributed a comprehensive report addendum looking at the relationships between multiple variables.

OK, I lied…just a little more background before the teaser:

  • This is the fourth UX industry salary survey by the UPA. After a sputtering start in 2001, the UPA has conducted biennial (I got that right, right? Biennial = every two years?) surveys in 2005, 2007, and this year.
  • I took on the project as part of my board of director duties in 2005, and have evolved the format to where it is today. I am also the report writer and main point of contact for the project until the end of this year.

I know, I know…you’re thinking “enough with the hat tips and background, just gimme some data already!” Frankly, I’m enjoying this more than I should, but alright, here ya go:

  • The over-time rate of increase in average salary has slowed in 2009, a fact that should surprise absolutely no one. The media is full of stories about companies cutting workers’ salaries by 10%, mandating unpaid vacation, etc. The fact that there was any increase at all in UX salaries was surprising to me.
  • When we started looking at the data in detail, the main source of the increase was *quite* interesting… let’s just say that the “gender gap”; i.e., the difference in men’s and women’s salaries for comparable work, appears to be not long for this world. At least in the user experience industry.

Sorry, that’s all you get for now. More later this week! (And the report will be available on Friday.)

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New UXMatters Article: 8 Things You Should Be Doing In Your UX Practice, But Probably Aren’t

by Paul Sherman on July 20, 2009 · 1 comment

in Experience Strategy

So I’m seeing a nice little Twitter spike about my latest UXmatters article “8 Things You Should Be Doing In Your UX Practice, But Probably Aren’t.”

It was a column borne of equal parts desperation and writers’ block. Then I remembered how much mileage Cracked.com gets out of the “X Things” format, and decided to try a UX-specific version. You take your inspiration where you can get it, right? Honest truth, I had low expectations for myself.

The funny thing was when I finished it, I realized that the article didn’t actively suck. In fact it was kinda decent. Of course, it helped that I had some good advice and suggestions from Susan Hura, John Rhodes, and Dan Szuc. But no one said I couldn’t turn to friends/colleagues/wife for a little inspiration.

So here’s a little taste of the article; for more go to the site and check it out yourself. Quoting me:

…here are 8 things you should be doing to improve and grow in your professional practice, but that you’re probably not doing—or not doing enough:

  • Communicate simply
  • Read, read, read
  • Pick a new UX tool and experiment with it
  • Hold a UX stand-down and operational review
  • Stretch yourself outside of user experience
  • Think about your UX career path
  • Repurpose your UX assets
  • Depart from script on user research visits

I hope you enjoy the article, and feel free to comment either here or at UXmatters if you have more things to suggest.

8 Things You Should Be Doing In Your Personal UX Practice… :: ? Paul Sherman

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My UPA09 “UX Kit” Presentation & Bonus Audience Comments

by Paul Sherman on June 15, 2009 · 9 comments

in Design, Experience Strategy

Today I’m posting the presentation and source document from my UPA2009 presentation “A Kit For Building User Experience Teams in R&D Organizations.” The talk went very well; nearly everyone in the (somewhat small but whatever) audience spoke up and contributed.

Happily, when I posted links to this content on Twitter I got about a half-dozen retweets, which for a second-stringer like me is not too shabby. So I think you’ll like this preso and the kit doc, which I’ve released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. BTW you can learn more about this license and what it means at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/. Basically, it means you are welcome to make use of the content as long as you attribute it to me and you share any derivative works under the same license. Which I think is more than fair, and leads to boatloads of good UX karma besides.

And here’s a little bonus: I asked my friend and session chair Lyle Kantrovich (@lkantrov for the Twitterati in the crowd) to take notes on the audience comments and contributions; which he peevishly (kidding! I meant happily) did. I’ve posted his notes below.

Before I link you out to the content you might be interested in the “story behind the story” of this presentation. About 7 or 8 months ago I decided to submit to UPA2009, and scoured my hard drive for something appropriate. I realized that I had created a comprehensive resource while at Sage that detailed how to staff, budget and run a user experience team at a medium-to-large software organization. I figured that this was as good a submission as any. Plus, it really fit my whole “get the organizational structure and processes right” theme. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time you know I have a passion for this area of our field, having trained in social/organizational psychology and built several teams over the past 12 years.

So I submitted a proposal, which went something like this:

This submission provides an overview of a “User Experience Kit” that one user-centered design team developed as an implementation guide for other product teams within their global organization. This kit was first released in mid-2007 within the organization, and has been used in the organization to guide the creation of four additional teams since then. The primary audience for this presentation is people who are able to drive change in their organizations and have the authority to support those changes with allocation of resources.

And it got accepted. Yay.

Of course I put off writing the presentation for months, but not for the usual reason (i.e., pure procrastination). As the day of the talk drew nearer, it became clear to me that the kit itself was a really boring story. And I don’t do boring. I HATE boring. I have high standards for presenting, I do it well, and I was stressing out about how boring this talk was shaping up to be.

That is, until I realized that the more interesting story was *why* I had to create a UX implementation guide/kit, what it said about my then-organization (and other organizations), and what we as a field should be doing about it.

And then everything was alright, I wrote some entertaining slides (keep on the lookout for “Captain Obvious”) and I gave a kick-@ss talk.

So, without further ado, here’s what I covered in my talk:

  • The sad truth about the need for a “UX kit”
  • A bit about the kit itself
  • An extended discussion about launching UX teams and spreading UX in medium to large orgs

As I mentioned above, Lyle was kind enough to capture discussion notes, which I’m including immediately below. However, I recommend looking at the preso first (either in .pdf format or on SlideShare) and getting the kit source doc before reading the discussion notes.

Thanks again Lyle for capturing the audience comments. Here they are:

  • Come back with data to show the value of what happened during UX processes.
  • Be more of a teacher – share UX? techniques (aka “UX freeze-tag”).
  • Be flexible.
  • Triage projects early on – to discuss how UX can help.
  • Focus on convincing people who can be convinced.
  • Have an open-door policy on usability lab.
  • Create an internal blog with test highlight clips.
  • Conduct a quarterly UI workshop.
  • Stay relevant – you know if you’re relevant by # of people coming to you.
  • Focus on money/budget & key influencers in the organization.
  • UX has to manage a lot of different things at the same time.
  • “Customer Experience Bar Raiser Review Board”? – executives that help set UX direction.
  • Selfishly share the glory – co-present success stories with clients/partners.
  • Find a mentor/peer outside your organization to learn from, commiserate with and share with.
  • Find an aspirational (design/product) example – something that reflects what you’d like the UX to look like.

A Kit For Building UX Teams [preso pdf]? [kit doc]? ::? Paul Sherman

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Interviewed By Useful Usability

by Paul Sherman on April 28, 2009 · 1 comment

in Everything Else

Craig Tomlin of Useful Usability interviewed me and has posted the interview. Read on for his questions and my answers.

Interview With User Experience Expert Paul J. Sherman :: Useful Usability

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Take The UPA’s 2009 UX Salary Survey

by Paul Sherman on April 13, 2009 · 8 comments

in Everything Else

Long-time readers may recall that I’m the project manager for the Usability Professionals’ Association User Experience Salary Survey. This will be the third time I’ve run the survey since 2005.

It’s the preeminent salary survey in our field. Many hiring managers depend on it and a number of industry analysts report on it.

I’m encouraging my readers to take the survey. There’s a lot in it for you. For one, non-members of UPA can download an all-comers version of the survey, and it’s still got loads of useful data. UPA members get a more extensive version of the survey, with lots more detailed analyses.

I just checked the survey site and we’re up to 1,350 responses, which means we’ll almost definitely exceed the response from 2007. Join the crowd, help out your field – and your career – and take the survey now.

Of course it’s going to take me and the volunteer crew a few weeks to crunch the data write the report, but it should be available by early June. Check back here or at the UPA site in a month to get your copy.

If you want to look at the previous survey, follow this link to download it from the UPA site.

The UPA 2009 UX Salary Survey ::? Usability Professionals’ Association

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Linkedin User Trap

by Andreas Bossard on March 30, 2009 · 7 comments

in Web

Here’s another guest post from Andreas Bossard, who you may remember did a well-received post last year on the Sony Ericsson PC Suite. Thanks for contributing again Andreas! -Paul

- – - -

How fast things change. I wanted to write about a workflow in LinkedIn, which had annoyed me for months, but they have fixed it in the meantime, before I could publish the article. :) So anyhow, here is the article. -Andreas

One of the most used functions in Linkedin is to add a new user to your own network. If you don’t know the e-mail address of the person or other personal information you can choose “I don’t know xy”.

linkedin_invitation
Then the user can enter a personal message and click the “Send Invitation” button. Which opens the following message:

linkedin_popup

The only way to proceed is to click “Go back to xy’s profile”. The personal message is lost! You stepped into the Linkedin user trap.

Of course, according to the Linkedin policy you’re supposed to add only contacts you personally know, but since you can bypass this rule anyhow by selecting “Friend”, it’s illusory to educate the user by punishing him to re-enter a personal message.

There are two solutions to avoid this unpleasant interaction:
- A “Close”-Button instead of a “Go back to xy’s profile”-button
- Pop up the message immediately, when the user selects “I don’t know xy”, instead of giving him the feeling, that he now can enter a personal message for that person.

As we can see, they solved it with a “Cancel” link.

linkedind_popup_new

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Online Marketers: UX Professionals’ Natural Allies

by Paul Sherman on March 16, 2009 · 0 comments

in Web

I just published part 1 of article at the Online Marketing Connect blog about how UX professionals and online marketers are natural allies.

I was able to attend the Online Marketing Summit last month and was pleasantly surprised to learn how much online marketers and UX folks have in common. Like I claim in the article, I think that there is significant overlap in the two groups’ goals. Online marketers are striving to create good, positive online experiences, as are we. Our methods and techniques differ, but our willingness to experiment and iterate is quite similar.

User Experience and Online Marketing Practitioners As Change Agents (Part 1) :: Paul Sherman

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What Should UPA Do? Be?

by Paul Sherman on March 4, 2009 · 7 comments

A tweet from @whitneyhess about UPA’s value proposition (“I’m sorry, but I’m not renewing my UPA membership. It’s $100 a year, and I don’t get anything for it”) made me acutely aware (again) of this underlying problem with professional associations, and UPA in particular: just what do people want from UPA? What do they want the association to do for them?

And more to the point: what should the UPA *be*? Since I joined in 2000, I have always seen it as an organization that supported people who created user experiences; i.e., not solely the organization for people who *do* usability testing. Do others share this perception?

And since I became a board member in 2004, the question took on more urgency. Unfortunately, I’ve never really heard any definitive answers to these fundamental questions.

So Whitney’s tweet – and it’s not the first one like that I’ve seen (@matto said the same thing a few weeks back) – makes me want to just put the questions out there.

So, UsabilityBlog readers and hopefully visitors via Twitter – what should the Usability Professionals’ Association do for its constituents? For the UX community as a whole? And what should the UPA *be*?

Thanks @whitneyhess and @matto for bringing these questions up.

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UPA Accessibility Evaluation Certificate at Access U

by Paul Sherman on February 23, 2009 · 2 comments

I’m pleased to post about a little project that I have been helping with. The Usability Professionals’ Association is partnering with Knowbility, a non-profit US-based group that advocates for accessible technologies, to offer a “certificate” in web accessibility evaluation for user experience professionals.

Knowbility offers twice-per-year training in designing, building and evaluating web sites for accessibility. This year, Knowbility and UPA arrived at an agreement to essentially co-brand part of the training. UPA members (and non-members, for that matter) have the option to attend Knowbility’s Access U (at very reasonable prices) and request a UPA accessibility evaluation certificate for only an extra 150.00 USD. The course content for the accessibility evaluation certificate is unique to the certificate track, so it’s more than just “pay 150 for a piece of paper.”

Whitney Quesenbery (former UPA President) and Sharron Rush of Knowbility have been instrumental in getting this partnership off the ground and ensuring that the certificate traininig is extremely high quality. The advisory board is a “who’s who” of accessibility experts (I’ll post a link to the advisory board a bit later, just can’t find it now).

As a UPA board member – and current Director of Training – I’m very hopeful that this partnership will offer UPA members (and user experience practitioners as a whole) with high quality, low cost training opportunities.

I’ll be there this year taking the courses.

Here’s a blockquote blurb from Knowbility:

John Slatin Access U – May 11-13 2009
Join Knowbility at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas
Monday May 11th and Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
(with post-conference sessions on May 13th)

General Conference Registration is open. Class registration will open soon.

If you believe that the web should empower ALL people, if you need information about how to meet state and federal accessibility mandates, if you are a commercial web developer who wants to understand emerging best business practices of accessibility for the web, John Slatin Access U is the place to be in May.

What’s new at John Slatin Access U in 2009?
In addition to two-days of the best hands-on accessibility classes, you will hear keynote presentations, attend a captioned and audio described movie, participate in communities of practice sessions where you can share experiences, and meet hundreds of others who share your passion for accessible IT. From absolute beginners to advanced practitioners you can customize your learning to meet your specific needs. Some new options in 2009 include:

  • Usability Track with Certificate

Created for usability professionals who know how to test for usability and want to learn to test for accessibility. We are pleased to offer a set of classes to build the skills and knowledge you need to help your clients meet mandates and to help you conduct usability tests that include people with disabilities. Specific Courses with several electives are delivered within the two day basic conference period and an additional certificate fee applies.

  • Molly Holzschlag Track – HTML/CSS/Accessible Design Intensive

Spend three days with Molly Holzschlag learning HTML/XHTML and CSS for accessibility, SEO, and superior web site performance. If you have solid experience in CSS and need only the more advanced techniques, sign on for Day 3 as a post-conference only.

  • Post Conferences:

Derek Featherstone: Breaking New Ground: Designing for Accessibility in Emerging Technologies

Molly Holzschlag: Advanced CSS techniques

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Design and Process Links Galore

by Paul Sherman on February 12, 2009 · 0 comments

in Design

Hat tip to Ghost in the Pixel’s Uday Gajender for putting together this well organized resource page. Nicely done.

And Whitney Quesenbery of WQUsability tweeted this UX toolkit-slash-process map, which I’m dutifully blogging here. Credit where it’s due: the page indicates that the toolkit was created by Bas Leurs, Peter Conradie, Joel Laumans, and Rosalieke Verboom of Rotterdam University.

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I Got Paid

by Paul Sherman on January 4, 2009 · 0 comments

in Everything Else

I feel like Steve Martin in “The Jerk“, when he gets his first royalty check. (Only mine is really more like 250, not 250K…) I just received the first royalty payment on Usability Success Stories, the book I put out in early 2007. Total: $437 USD.

I’m actually not disappointed. Quite frankly I’m surprised the book earns anything. Hey, it’s the first one. And if it did suddenly start selling like hotcakes (do those actually sell well?), I’d want some formal mechanism to share with the chapter contributors, as it was an edited volume (with three of the chapters by me).

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Software & Services Discounts For UPA Members

by Paul Sherman on December 30, 2008 · 0 comments

Since I’m still UPA President till tomorrow (and will be on the board till the end of next year), I think it’s fitting and appropriate that I mention UPA’s software and services discounts for current members.

Trent Mankelow, UPA’s Director of Member Services, did a great job negotiating a bundle of discounts on products and services that user experience professionals typically use. And there’s more coming. Here’s what’s available today:

  • $89 US discount on Axure RP Pro 5 for creating wireframes, prototypes and specifications for applications and web sites
  • 10% discount on a variety of eye tracking services and analysis software from Mangold International
  • 25% discount on Optimal Sort for online card sorting tool
  • 20% discount on the TechSmith Morae software bundle for conducting usability testing
  • 25% discount on any level of WebSort.net subscription for web-based card sorting

These discounts are available to all current UPA members. To get them, go to this page.

Props again to Trent for getting this program set up.

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US News Calls “Usability Experience Specialist” (?) A Best Career

by Paul Sherman on December 21, 2008 · 1 comment

in Everything Else

A little behind the curve, that’s me. John Rhodes of Webword and IMSimple sent along this link to a USN&WR article calling (sic) “Usability Experience Specialist” a best career for 2009.

So for those of you who – like me – got RIF‘ed this holiday season, this might bring you a bit of holiday cheer during this bleak Christmahanukkwanzaa.

(Incidentally, being RIF’ed was not unexpected on my part, and believe me I’m not feeling sorry for myself…I am starting my own practice.)

Best Careers 2009: Usability Experience Specialist :: US News and World Report

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: , , , , ,

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Mr. Sherman Goes To Washington

by Paul Sherman on November 13, 2008 · 1 comment

in Design

This week I went to Washington DC to attend the U.S. National Design Policy Summit, a gathering of academics, government employees and representatives of professional associations who were focused on raising the profile of design in the United States. The gathering was organized by Dr. Elizabeth Tunstall of the University of Illinois – Chicago, a design anthropologist who wants to “create an actionable agenda of U.S. design policy for economic competitiveness and democratic governance among professional design associations, design educational bodies, and the design-related Federal government agencies.”

I’m still processing and internalizing my reactions to the meeting and what it all meant. I’m glad I went though. I met interesting people and learned about the trials, travails and tribulations of other professional associations like the DMI, AIGA, and the IDSA.

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