UXmagazine is an Italian resource for User Experience lovers. It publishes monthly articles concerning a wide range of subject although the topic is always UX.
I believe this project is very interesting and professional, so I asked the editors to have a little chat and share with you this short interview. You’ll find some clever suggestions and thoughts.

DB: when do you had the idea to create UXmagazine and with which purpose?

UXmag: The idea of UXmagazine born in november 2008, aiming to create a channel of communication and insight for whom wants to get to know user experience in a simple way, through articles and a dedicated network.

DB: I know behind UXmagazine there’s Sketchin, a design studio focused on UX. Is this project helping you to grow in a cultural and professional level?

UXmag: right now we’re still in an initial stage where investments are greater then revenues as to human effort, but the magazine is giving us a chance to share ideas and experience with a lot of new people, and is also becoming a place where experts like to gather.

DB: you always feature high quality articles, maybe even more academic than on the easy-going style of blogs. Did you choose to adress an audience of UX professionals or do you think UXmagazine is also a good starting place for newbies?

UXmag: Actually we would love that print editions could be also a starting tool for whos not familiar with this subject.

DB: I noticed you have lots of authors and you’re always open to contributions.Has it been difficult to “recruit” at first or did you get a lot of sponteneous enthusiasm from the community? Do you have any suggestion for whom would like to join now?

UXmag: UXmagazine it’s open to everyone, a bit like basecamp is, because we believe confrontation is at the very basis of new ideas and therefore innovation.That’s why we don’t accept only material from experts, but from anyone who wants to share a specific experience of use, a case study, something useful for the community, as well.

Recruiting authors hasn’t been difficult, many came spontanously, others that we thought could add interesting incentives at the community accepted our invite to join.

DB: I’ve got a feeling that agile design is something you truly believe in and want to promote. Am I right? Any suggestion for us?

UXmag: that’s actually our biggest challenge, we’re including it in all our internal projects and towards our clients.
We promote it because we’re testing its abilities daily and we know it adds a value in the dinamic and creative italian market. Moreover it has the potential to be replicable in many contexts.

DB: you showed interest towards government sites, suggesting even a series of articles on that. Right now, UK’s government issued a guide to use twiter for it’s workers.
Do you think institutions are finally taking seriously their web presence according to their recent interest in a decent esperience for users and a better understanding of communications through social media?

UXmag: there’s the opportunity but it’s not adopted yet in our market other than as a trend.
We think it’s important not only to give the tools to the user but also show which are positive and negative consequences this brings. Institutions need to understand languages and applications for a correct use in singular cases.

DB: in several articles (TagMyLagoon, Progettare Apps per Iphone, Mobile e Interazione Precarie) you spoke about mobile design an the application tht could come in this field. Do you consider “mobile” as the keyword for the future of internet?
How do you see user experience spread from the web to real spaces?

UXmag: yes, we believe the trend is increasingly towards mobile and we think at a future of adaptiv and iperlocal interfaces.
In the medium-long term a good share of the value generation online will go back to locale and not global. An iperlocal web would be a web tailored on the needs of a particular city where people, services, infos would be highly contextualized by place and time, giving the possibility to visualize contingent interfaces and infos with a high informative-level for the user.
Nevertheless the possibility for users to meet.
You can read about this also in Un Web Iper Locale è Possibile and in Strutture e Interface Adattive (slideshare).

DB: UX is often misunderstood as a singular step in the design process while we know it’s more of a flow, a concept to consider and cover in every step of the project.
By your experience, today, how do behave singular professionals involved in a team regarding UX, giving everyone different task and background?
Has the culture of user experience been adopte in Italy?

UXmag: Unfortunately in Italy isn’t much clear that UX is the sum of all the aspects of a service in use by a user. Therefore everyone who’s involved (marketing, design, communication, development) is doing UX and should have some know-how of what he’s doing. That’s absolutely misunderstood in many european markets (and it’s actually what I talked about at EuroIA).

DB: On UXmagazine even if you’re focused on one subject you already covered many topics. There’s something you’re looking forward to write about?

UXmag: the integration between phisical/digital products and also the integration among digital/phisical architecture.
We’re open to submissions on these topics :)

DB: do you think to switch also to a printed version any time soon?

UXmag: we already two versions, one which is printable on Scribd and one printed on request that you can find on Lulu.

DB: Are you satisfied with how the magazine grew till now? Do you have any surprise for the future?

UXmag: Yes actually, we’re very satisfied because we keep going and we constantly receive suggestions. Right now we’re trying to create something special that embraces both UXmagazine and UXconference.

DB: your last advices for the readers: a couple of books someone who starts to study UX should read? A couple of experts and inspiring people to follow online?

UXmag: as to inspiration we suggest Morville and Pabini, while Designing Web Navigation by James Kalbach, Usabilità dei Siti Web by Michele Visciola, Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen, and Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell are the book I recommend.

Caroline and Micah met at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles where they graduated after working together
on Thegoodsideof.us, their senior thesis and an online community where people can share stories of their good deeds.
Using their creativity to make the world a better place one site at a time is an attitude that they kept and earlier this
year they founded A Good Company, their design studio which brought us The League Of Moveable Type.

DB: Let’s talk about The League of Moveable Type. Please, introduce this project yourself.

Caroline: The League started when we saw this thread on Typophile calling type designers for an open-source font project. We saw the negative reaction that it got from a lot of people, and thought that we ought to do something about it. We thought that it was a great idea, especially with the possibilities of what we can do with @font-face, it seems like too good of an idea to just let die. We also realized that there are a lot of free fonts out there, but more than just giving away free stuff, being designers (and most of our work involve the web) we wanted to raise the standard of typography and design on the web. So we came up with the idea for an open-source type foundry, where we focus on quality not quantity, so we can provide people with hand-picked quality fonts.

Micah: It’s funny, it kind of started as a dare. Everyone was saying “that’ll never work,” and “what a dumb idea,” and the rebel in me was just shouting, “Oh yeah?!” So we came up with this idea, it exploded, and now we’re trying to push even further.

DB: Why you chose to support the distribution of open-source fonts on the web? Is there a phylosophy about the future of the web behind that?

Caroline: Well, you see, we’re communists. No, just kidding.
The reason we support the idea of open-source fonts, is not so much because it’s free, I mean, yes, we like free stuff, as much as the next guy, but we also like the idea of groups of people, from different backgrounds, all over the world, working together, not for monetary incentives, but for the common goal of making something work better than the way it does now. It’s already happening with software, and we want to do the same with typography and design.

Micah: That sounds pretty Communist to me. I love it. That’s what the internet was founded on, and I think that’s the way of the future. People are making money on the internet right now, for sure, but I think it’s just a phase. Eventually it won’t really matter.

DB: was it difficult to launch the site and find other type designers that wanted to join you?

Caroline: in terms of finding people to join us, well, we’ve gotten a ton of support from people who appreciate what we’re trying to do, and that’s been really encouraging for us to work harder on The League, and make it better.

But finding type designers who are willing to give away their typefaces for free, is rather difficult, especially when their livelihood’s dependent on selling typefaces. But we’re also lucky that some designers are actually quite generous with sharing their typefaces, we’re talking about our wonderful contributors, of course.

We’re super grateful that they’re willing to share their work with everyone, and we’re always on the look out for more designers who are willing to share their work or help us expand/finish/improve the fonts we currently have, because I believe that’s the way The League can sustain itself, if people come together and contribute to the open-source movement in some way.

DB: are you making some plans to expand this project in the future?

Micah: I think the biggest issue we want to face with our future plans is how to turn all the people who love typography but don’t consider themselves typographers, into typographers. If everyone who wants to help works together somehow, we can completely flip both the internet’s design community and the professional typography industry on their flippin’ heads.
We’re still very much brainstorming, so we’re trying to collect great ideas from anyone enthusiastic about the topic, and I cannot count the number of hours that Caroline & I have gone back and forth discussing crazy ideas of things we hope to do with this.

DB: how you think Moveable Type could help designers, why they should choose it?

Caroline: I think The League is useful not just for designers but for everyone on the web community. As a part of this open-source movement, designers, typographers, programmers, we can work together to improve typography on the web and elsewhere.

One of the things that I feel strongly about The League is that we want to offer more than just a site for free fonts. Yes, the typefaces are there for the taking, but free fonts is a finite resource, what we need is co-investments, we need people to also give something back and take away something other than free fonts, something like knowledge or collaboration between peers to make something awesome.

DB: what do you think about the .openfont idea by Tal Leming & Erik van Blokland? And about Typekit renting licences?

Caroline: I’ve been following the webfont discussion, and my personal take on it is this: type foundries, type designers, and entrepreneurs can use whichever solution they find most suitable for them, as long as it doesn’t mean getting rid of @font-face and forcing everyone to comply to one standard of webfont.

People should have choices. Leaving the playing field open will allow people like us (the type users) to come up with our own solutions. Companies and type foundries will continue to come up with different ways to deliver fonts on the web, from Typekit, to .webfont, to Fontdeck, as Johno of ILT says,

we’re all “just hacking away to find a solution that satisfies our demands until a workable standard… is eventually approved and we can all hold hands and sing songs.”

That’s fine with me, and there’s no reason why the open-source type movement should not jump at this chance and be just as active as those guys in finding a solution. I see this as a chance for the open-source community to work together and carve it’s own niche in the world of web typography. There are tons of excellent type foundries out there with high quality typefaces, there’s no reason why the same can’t be true for open-source type, I believe that one day “free” fonts (free in terms of freedom, not just price) will be as legit as typefaces released by a type foundry, it’s just a matter of time, and we’re just trying to do our part in it.

Micah: I have to say, Caroline’s much more open minded about it than I am. It didn’t occur to me until a week or two into the debates that it’d be okay as long as there was choice. It really seems to me that the big type foundries want to follow Microsoft or Columbia Records’ footsteps. They seem intent on DRM, which, in my opinion, hurts the users. I was in quite a tizzy about it all, truthfully. But I guess I’ll put aside my steam as long as The League is still able to do its thing. Cuz we’re gonna knock their socks off.

DB: is there a CSS3 property you are looking forward to be fully adopted? apart from @font-face

Micah: It’s just getting there, but I can’t wait till we use columns all the time. My personal blog uses columns, and frankly, it’s awesome.

DB: do you have any upcoming project you want us to know about?

Micah: Why, yes, in fact, we do! We’re playing around with this sweet new idea. Lettercase, we’re calling it, and it’s a social font manager. It’s in the earliest stages a project can possibly be in, but we think it could be intensely powerful, and while most of the details are still hush-hush, you should keep an eye on http://www.lettercaseapp.com

DB: last question, more of my interest then the audience: what music do you listen to while designing?

Caroline: I listen to all kinds of random stuff, you can see some of them here: http://blip.fm/chadilaksono

Micah: Dogs whining, to the rhythm of Bach’s Concerto in D Minor. Or Noah and the Whale, depending on my mood.

Sox, Director of User Experience at vimeo has kindly accepted to answer a few questions to better understand his work.
He tells us how to plan a new project, how to have a good start in this business, and what happens behind the curtains at Vimeo. Plus, he has some good advice about wireframes that you can’t miss if you read Wireframes and Concept.

DB: First of all, welcome Sox and thanks for your time. Let’s get straight to the questions.
what’s your background? are you self-thought or did you attend specific studies?

Sox: I am completely self-taught. I did not study related fields in school. I bought few books but everything i’ve learned came from simply watching and doing. I am big fan of reverse-engineering. Seek out what it is you want to do, understand how it’s done, now try doing it yourself. there will always be people who are better than you at what you want to do. watch and learn from them.

DB: when did you start working?

Sox: I’ve started fairly early. In 1995 i got my first job out of school as a web designer for a small garage interactive agency in connecticut. Over the years i’ve worked at streaming Media Corporation, Priceline, Fotolog, and Vimeo. I have also worked as a consultant at few different places in between.

DB: could you explain to us what your job is and what it consist of?

Sox: I am the director of user experience at Vimeo. My daily responsibilities consist of overseeing and engineering the overall presentation and experience at vimeo.com. I perform product development ideation, user experience and design auditing as well as some design and coding work as needed. The main objective of my position is to keep vimeo as simple to understand as possible, as easy to use as possible, and as fun to experience as possible.

DB: How do you usually start a project? And do you have a method you usually follow throughout?

Sox: it all depends on the nature of the project. If it’s an enhancement task then the work starts from gathering as much user feedback as possible and making the necessary improvements that align with our overall objectives. For a brand new project, the entire cycle from ideation to delivery requires much more time and effort. Typically it starts from identifying an area of our service where we could add as much value as possible to our offerings without compromising our overall objectives (simple, easy and fun). We bring in all the stakeholders to discuss the project and come to a decision whether to move forward or not. Once the project gets a green light, then the hard work begins. Our working process at vimeo isn’t all that different from other product development cycles. We prototype, design, develop and then wash it through several iterations until it’s ready for polish and testing before it rolls out to the users. Perhaps the real unique part of vimeo process is just how agile and iterative the product development cycle can be.

DB: For someone who is just starting what are the most important advice you would give him?

Sox: learn by doing. Question why before how. Find your own reasons.

DB: What can you tell us about wireframes? do you use’em a lot? can you share some advice or technique with us?

Sox: I sketch a lot. For me it’s helpful because i cannot not think visually. They also help me examine the requirements and identify the limitations of work that needs to be peformed. Always keep the margins free. If you are not bumping against questions that need answers or problems that need solutions during the prototyping phase then you’re either extremely lucky or you’re not doing it right. Keep those questions and answers in the margins as you work. They’re far more important than anything you’ve already drawn.

DB: What does inspires you in your work? and there’s someone on the online world who had a big influence on you?

Sox: solving problems is immediately gratifying and addictive. I see most web sites as a sculpture. You have a vision of what it should ultimately look like. everyday you are adding or taking away a little bit of clay, shaping it a step closer to the ideal image you have in your mind. Then one day you look at your sculpture from a different angle and realize new questions, new problems and new possibilities.

There are many people whose work had inspired me over the years. Off the top of my head i would mention Jesse Garrett, Dan Cederholm, Douglas Bowman, Jeffrey Zeldman, and the folks over at Stamen Design.

DB: What is it like to work at Vimeo, what’s happening behind the courtains?

Sox: it’s fast paced and fluid. We have a very flat structure to our organization and everyone is working on their daily tasks or thinking about what they will be working on next. No one gets micromanaged and we trust and depend on each other to get stuff done. Everyone is tapped into an internal IRC system where we keep an eye on the health of various sub systems of our site and exchange ideas.

DB:There’s a difference in your job between working on a small site and a big one?

Sox: i’ve been on the both sides of the fence and i must admit i much prefer working in a small to medium sized group. In a larger organization, i’ve typically experienced more hierarchy and more stakeholders with varying or conflicting interests that stymied good projects from moving forward with energy, focus and speed they deserve.

DB: What you feel was the most challenging thing about Vimeo from your point of view?

Sox: in the beginning it was all about correctly assessing the vibes of the service and its community. I need to understand it and feel it resonate in my bones before i can start contributing. Taking this first step the right way is always important to me and it requires time. More recently, i’ve been spending more time focusing on the scalability of my ideas and how it would impact the general performance of the site (the most important part of any user experience work).

DB: What are the tools you couldn’t live without?

Sox: honestly I don’t think it matters all that much. I would probably say a good pen and some blank papers. The applications i use heavily on daily basis are Textmate and Firebug. We also rely on several internal admin tools to check, monitor and debug our work.

Your 5 favorite sites online?

Sox: you mean other than cycling related sites? Let’s see… google, gmail, google reader, tumblr and flickr.

If you want to take a look at some of Sox’s design and wireframes he has a stunning portfolio on Flickr. It’s also a good chance to check how Vimeo was created.