Subject to Change--New from O'Reilly

For Immediate Release
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or interview with the
authors, contact:
Sara Peyton (707) 827-7118 or press@oreilly.com

Subject To Change--New from O'Reilly
Adaptive Path on Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain
World

Sebastopol, CA--In a world of instant gratification, 24-hour breaking news
cycles, and an uncertain and constantly changing marketplace, creating
successful new products and services presents new and formidable
challenges. "Subject to Change" (O'Reilly, $29.99), written by four
experts from Adaptive Path, a leading experience strategy and design
company, offers clear guidelines and a breakthrough toolset for designing
and testing new products and services that will succeed in today's fickle,
continuously fluctuating economy.

"Businesses and customers alike are demanding more, so managers and
leaders need approaches that focus on truly differentiated customer
experiences," says Peter Merholz, the president of Adaptive Path, who
collaborated with Brandon Schauer, Todd Wilkens, and David Verba to write
the book. Adaptive Path's clients represent some of the most prominent
brands in the world, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small,
innovative startups, including NPR, Blogger, and Six Apart; the authors
draw on their experience, sharing the global and targeted user experience
and product strategy solutions they developed for their clients.

Throughout their insightful new title, the Adaptive Path authors share
their passion for finding and solving problems in design and product
development. They demonstrate a new way of thinking and working, and show
how their proven methods can transform companies needing to adapt to today
and tomorrow's environment into innovative, agile, and commercially
successful organizations. Indeed, rather than bemoaning change, these
authors urge readers to "embrace the uncertainty around us."

The authors also share their breakthrough approach: designing a prototype
of a new product quickly, paying close attention to how consumers use the
product, and letting users' feedback and experiences re-inform and improve
the design along the way. 

The book covers eight breakthrough insights for companies eager to succeed
in today's unpredictable business environment including:

- Experience as strategy. Details how companies can plan for the
experiences they will offer in order to develop a plan strong enough to
guide decisions on how the experiences are marketed, maintained, and
managed.

- New ways of understanding people. Offers a new model for understanding
customers--the basis of an experience strategy.

- The design competency. Discusses how to design a prototype that can
embody strategy, showcase and entire system, and immediately reveal the
shortfalls in a business plan.

"Expressing our ideas to others invites others to help test them out,"
says Merholz. "We hope that these ideas help others improve the work they
do designing products and services that provide great experiences."

Advance Praise:

"'Subject to Change' presents complex, challenging ideas in simple,
compelling language, with illuminating examples and no shortage of
memorable phrases. At once authoritative and nimble, the book itself is an
example of the kind of experience the authors admire. No matter who you
are, it will change the way you think about design."
--Michael Bierut, partner, Pentagram, author, "79 Short Essays on Design"

"The principles set out in "Subject to Change" are essential for the
design of any product, but especially relevant for the fast-moving world
of web software. It used to be the case that a software product was
designed once, and refreshed every couple of years. Software is no longer
a product. It is a process, a dynamic service that evolves as it responds
to constant interaction with its users. The essence of Web 2.0 design is
to create a dynamic framework that harnesses the collective intelligence
of customers in such a way that the software becomes almost alive. This
terrific book teaches the mindset required for this new kind of design."
-- Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media

"Customers don't care about how innovative you are. They just want to be
happy and satisfied. Learn from Adaptive Path a passion for finding and
solving the problems that will matter to customers no matter what the
future brings."
-- Scott Berkun, Author, "The Myths of Innovation"

About the Authors
Peter Merholz is President and one of the founders of Adaptive Path. For
more than six years, Peter has been instrumental in developing Adaptive
Path's ability to provide world-class consulting, training, and public
events. At Adaptive Path, Peter began with a focus on information
architecture, and over time expanded his knowledge to include product
strategy, user research, and practice development. He's worked with a wide
variety of clients, from large companies such as Intel, Vanguard, and
United Airlines, to smaller, avant-garde firms like SocialText (an
enterprise wiki startup) and Rojo (an RSS feedreader acquired by Six
Apart). Peter's personal blog, http://peterme.com/, and his essays for
Adaptive Path demonstrate his foresight on issues of information
architecture, organizational change, and product strategy. He has the
perhaps dubious distinction of coining of the term "blog" in 1999 when it
was still a nascent genre.

Todd Wilkens is a design researcher for Adaptive Path. Thanks to over a
decade of experience in research and design he holds a passionate belief
that focusing on and truly understanding people allows us to create
products and services that provide compelling experiences and real value.
Todd's work has focused on everything from online communities to digital
video to youth, religion, and culture. He is adept at working with people
from different backgrounds to synthesize product, business, technology,
and user needs into cohesive strategies and designs. He is also
well-versed in social science theory and a wide-ranging toolkit of methods
from ethnography and interviewing to statistical analysis and
eye-tracking. He publishes and speaks regularly on design research and
human-centered design. He also teaches courses and workshops in design
research, interaction design, information architecture, and sociology at
at professional events as well as at several universities and colleges.

Brandon Schauer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. He
speaks on, writes about, and practices design as a means to create value.
He has a decade of experience developing new user experiences on the Web,
desktops, and products. His passion for finding and understanding the
unmet needs of customers has led him to diverse environments, from the
homes of cancer patients to tunnels beneath Walt Disney World. Brandon
holds two master-level degrees from schools with the Illinois Institute of
Technology, a Master of Design from the Institute of Design in Chicago and
an MBA from the Stuart School of Business. Brandon also has a love of
Excel that is unnatural for a designer.

David Verba is Director of Technology for Adaptive Path, a leading user
experience company and CTO of Emmett Labs. His many years of technical
leadership and architecture experience cover a broad range of projects and
strategies. David brings 15 years of development experience with both open
source and more traditional technologies to Adaptive Path. In addition to
the typical mix including Sun, Java, and Oracle he has many years of
involvement with a variety of open source approaches including linux,
perl, apache, mysql, postgres and now ruby and ruby on rails. He launched
the WholePeople.com initiative as part of Whole Foods Inc. He also
provided necessary technical leadership to the Measure Map product
acquired by Google.

For more information about the book, including table of contents, index,
author bios, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516833/

Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain
World Adaptive Path on Design
Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, David Verba
ISBN: 0-596-51683-5, $29.99 US 
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com

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