The book contract is signed, sealed, delivered!

Well, it is official…after years of refining an idea that I’ve had in my head and in my heart, and after months of investigating the publishing landscape, I finally have a signed book contract with Rockport Publishers! I am now officially a co-author of a book on user-centered design research methods, along with CMU School of Design professor Bruce Hanington.

In case you aren’t already familiar with Rockport Publishers (they are the publishers behind Will Lidwell’s Universal Principles of Design…one of my favorites), they publish incredibly beautiful design, art, and architecture books. It is my and Bruce’s hope that our book will provide a thorough and highly-visualized presentation of 100 essential research methods and practices for user-centered design, delivered in a concise and accessible format perfect for both novices and experts alike. We believe our book will help designers communicate the power and promise of user-centered research methods to non-designers, and along the way, help everyone learn a few more methods and best practices about how to better structure dialogue and create meaningful conversations with users and stakeholders.

As I mentioned, this project has been incubating in my head and in my heart for a long time. Eight years, to be exact. I spent my Thesis year at CMU researching and reshaping ideas (with Bruce as my Thesis Advisor) and delivered my thesis Visualizing Research Methods. After I graduated, I became a wife and a mom, and went back to work full-time. I nonetheless continued to spend hours making prototypes and sketching visualizations, refining concepts and page spreads, drafting potential book proposals and redrafting them, throwing them out and starting over. Truth be told, for a long time I didn’t know if the solution would end up being an interactive solution, a print piece, a song, poem, or a message in a bottle.

Then, out of the blue, in May of 2009 Bruce called me to ask how he could help me kickstart the project and get it off the ground. Turns out he was still thinking about it too! Soon thereafter, I left a job as a Design Manager to fully commit myself to this idea. It was scary at times, there were many starts and false starts, but the fire in my belly (not to mention Bruce’s vote of confidence) kept me going. I knew I was getting closer to the final form, but it took me chipping away quietly for a long time to get there. Talk about a labor of love…

When the idea finally hit me, I was actually reading Will Lidwell’s Universal Principles of Design, a book Bruce told me about because he teaches it in one of his undergraduate design studios. Within a few seconds of the “aha” moment, I thought of Bruce, and sent him an email to see if he would be interested in approaching Rockport and teaming up on the book. From there things moved very quickly, but in retrospect, I know for a fact that Bruce and I hit the ground running because we had already been mulling over the work for a few years. We both immediately knew that Rockport’s highly visual format was the right one to hold up under our ideas and research.

Bruce and I make a good team: I am a practitioner, he is an academic; his expertise is in Industrial Design and Human Factors, my background is in Interaction and Information Design. We have enough in common to speak the same language, but a wide enough range of experiences between us to see the challenges design students and practitioners are up against. We both love to write, research, and we are both committed to giving users a voice in the design process. I am really excited to be working with him again.

I imagine I will be writing about the process of writing and publishing, and writing about the research I will get to do on research methods here on uxgroundswell.com. Rest-assured I am thrilled to be embarking on this process, and although this is just the beginning, it feels really good to know that if you fight and take risks to give your creativity, experiences, and insight a voice, amazing things can happen and the risks do pay off.

Our book will be part of Rockport's Essentials series. Here are three other titles currently in print, each highly recommended!