Jul 14, 2010: Globalizing a small publishing house's site

I've blogged recently about helping my clients address how to globalize their information architectures. You may know how much I like to eat my own dog food, so I've been wondering how Rosenfeld Media, as tiny as it is, could do a better job of engaging with UX practitioners globally. (I should note that we're already trying very hard; about 25% of our sales are outside the US, and last year we added a British fulfillment center to better serve the European market.)

My current thinking came to me in a two minute stretch while showering yesterday, so take it for what it's worth. (Man, it was a nice shower though!) But the following concept seems pretty low-cost and, potentially, useful in both symbolic and concrete ways. I'd love your feedback on it:

How it'd work

• A "friend of Rosenfeld Media" who's a native speaker of a non-English language would volunteer to do the following:
  • Translate our tweets and post them to a language-specific RM account (e.g., "@RM_espanol").
  • Translate a page on the RM site (e.g., http://rosenfeldmedia.com/espanol/") that includes our mission, a list of our products, and links to those products on the RM site and, if available, from publishers who've translated our books (currently many of our titles have our are being translated into Chinese and Korean). Even better, translate each product's brief description.
  • Facilitate communications between RM and non-English speakers by serving as a go-between/translator.
• The generous friend would in turn receive:
  • Copies of all of our books and webinars.
  • Prominent mention on the page for that language.
  • Our undying gratitude.
  • The good feeling of helping connect their fellow language-speakers with more good UX content.

Why to do it

• It's a low-cost and potentially high-impact way to connect and engage with UX practitioners with whom we have minimal contact with right now. We're a small company, but we do genuinely care about non-English speakers; this might be a nice way to show it.
• It has SEO benefits--more non-English speakers will find our products.
• It's nice for the publishers we currently partner with on translations, and may be a nice incentive for other publishers who are considering working with us to translate our titles in other languages.
• We'll learn more about new markets through both direct engagement and analytics, and might learn that there are certain markets that we should be more involved in.

Why not to do it

• Our books are written in English; will providing information about our books in other languages actually increase our sales? (BTW, we don't really make any money on the sales of our translated titles.)
• A volunteer could be a poor translator or act maliciously in a language that we don't know; we would be pretty vulnerable.

What do you think?

Jun 24, 2010: Go work for PayPal

I've been consulting for the past year for PayPal. So now you know that I'm a paid shill when I encourage you (or good people that you know) to apply for their open information architect position.

That said, despite some initial skepticism I am very impressed by the company. Although I'm not familiar with the salary and benefits package they're offering, I'm sure it's reasonably good, as they've managed to attract some really smart and highly motivated people.

And PayPal is beginning to tackle some really meaty IA challenges that include:

• Centering their design efforts on a comprehensive user mental model (hooray for mental models!)
• Figuring out and operationalizing the measurement of their site's findability and comprehension
• Grappling with developing an information architecture for a truly global audience
• Moving to a new content management platform (that alone should keep an army of information architects busy)

There's lots more going on there; I can imagine no shortage of interesting IA work in PayPal's future.

So why was I skeptical early on? Well, my initial experiences taking payments via PayPal (for IAI membership dues, many years ago) were not so good. The UX has gotten much better, but there is still obviously much room for improvement (I'm not sure who that wouldn't be true of). But my latest round of first-hand experience makes me hopeful; since setting it set up on Rosenfeld Media's site, about 25% of our customers immediately started paying via PayPal.

Surprisingly, PayPal has made this progress despite its culture of data-driven decision-making. PayPal's senior leadership comes from the worlds of banking and financial services, and as you might guess, these aren't the kinds of people who are typically comfortable with investing in areas—like UX—with a hazy return on investment. Yet they've done just that; in fact, I've never worked with a company that had staffed so many smart people to tackle user research, web analytics, and market research. It's really an impressive group.

They're also not a risk-averse company. X.com is PayPal's effort to operate as a platform for developers. When millions of people are using your services to move their money, it's, umm, unsettling to imagine opening things up a bit to perfect strangers. Yet PayPal is doing just that, and the impact could be revolutionary (imagine coding in ways to accept payments within that next game UI you design).

In short, I like the people, I like the work they're tackling, and I like the company's overall approach. So I hope you'll consider applying for the job, or encouraging others to do so.

Jun 15, 2010: Site Search Analytics virtual seminar (June 23)

The fine folks at UIE have invited me to present one of their virtual seminars on June 23 at 1:30-3pm ET (GMT-5). The topic is (surprise!) site search analytics, and working with Jared Spool and Adam Churchill (and having a deadline) has whipped me into shape to pull together content not only for the seminar, but for our erstwhile book on the same topic.

You can learn about the workshop by reading the UIE's description and by watching the three minute preview (via SlideShare):

The regular price is $129, but use code LOU to take $40 and get lifetime access to the recording. Of course, the price includes the live version, when you can to get all your pals into a room to listen, watch, ask questions, and generally harass me during the discussion section.

Jun 11, 2010: What would you like me to teach?

Ever since I left the Nielsen Norman Group "world tour" in 2002, I've been tag teaming day-long workshops with Steve Krug. For most of that time, I taught Enterprise Information Architecture, which is essentially about designing and operationalizing an information architecture within large, disparate, highly-political organizations. During the past two years, I've also taught Site Search Analytics, showing how studying what your users search for on your site can directly improve its design and performance.

I'll keep teaching those workshops, but something's telling me that it'd be a good idea to create a workshop simply on Information Architecture. Not necessarily for the enterprise, and not just about search. Just IA.

I've got a bunch of ideas on what I might cover, but before getting into them in detail, I'd really appreciate your suggestions on what you think I should teach. Here are the ground rules:

• Format: Like my other workshops, it'll run a day long, with lots of discussion and hands-on exercises.
• Audience: I'll target beginning and intermediate information architects.
• Caveats: I'm not going to teach wireframing and sitemapping. There are a zillion better places to get these kinds of commodity skills. Besides, I'll likely include a copy of the polar bear book in the price of admission.

So: what are the critical information architecture concepts or skills that you (or your staff) need? Please comment here; I'll randomly select one of the commenters and send him or her a signed copy of PB3 (to be eligible, please make an actual suggestion). Thanks!