Thank you so much to the 35 people who showed up for the twelfth week of Whit Hour — my weekly one-hour video chat to answer any and all of your questions about user experience, consulting, and whatever else you throw at me. Tune in every Monday night from 10-11pm Eastern Time at http://www.livestream.com/whithour (new [Keep Reading…]
My Best Advice for Conducting User Interviews
In a previous life, I was a Professional Writing major and part-time journalist. I contributed to my school’s student newspaper, as well as the faculty and staff newspaper, and almost every week for two years, I wrote an arts column for the Pittsburgh City Paper — Western PA’s leading alternative newsweekly [read my old clips]. [Keep Reading…]
Whit Hour – Week 10
Thank you so much to the 35 people who showed up for the tenth week of Whit Hour — my weekly one-hour video chat to answer any and all of your questions about user experience, consulting, and whatever else you throw at me. Tune in every Monday night from 10-11pm Eastern Time at http://www.justin.tv/whitneyhess. Whit [Keep Reading…]
My 20 Guiding Principles for UX Design on Monster.com’s InsideTech
Last month I mentioned that UX Magazine would now be syndicating some of the content from Pleasure and Pain. A couple weeks ago they republished my Guiding Principles for UX Designers post, which then in turn got picked up by Monster.com’s InsideTech, a “meeting place for IT professionals.” The article has more than 2,600 views [Keep Reading…]
See For Yourself on Johnny Holland Magazine
Yesterday the wonderful Johnny Holland Magazine published my essay, See For Yourself: About the Power of Observing. The article, or more accurately, rant, is all about how imperative it is for user experience designers to actively observe the world around us on a regular basis. Re-reading it now, it feels quite different than most of [Keep Reading…]
The UX Design Process for the Boxee Beta
More than a year ago I very proudly announced that Boxee, the much-loved social media center software company, had hired me as the user experience designer for their beta. In the five months that I worked with them, I conducted user interviews and usability testing to identify people’s needs, behaviors and frustrations, and redesigned the [Keep Reading…]
What the customer actually wanted
A few weeks ago Orian sent me a hilarious but sad cartoon on the all-too-familiar process of cumulative error and product dilution during a project life cycle: customer request -> finance -> engineering -> manufacturing -> marketing -> delivery. Not only do we fail to deliver on what was proposed, but what the customer said [Keep Reading…]
Whit Hour – Week 6
Thank you so much to the 41 people who showed up for the sixth week of Whit Hour — my weekly one-hour video chat to answer any and all of your questions about user experience, consulting, and whatever else you throw at me. I really appreciate everyone’s flexibility in moving over to Ustream at the [Keep Reading…]
Whit Hour – Week 4
Thank you so much to the 25 or so folks who showed up for the fourth week of Whit Hour — my weekly one-hour video chat to answer any and all of your questions about user experience, consulting, and whatever else you throw at me. Join me next week on Sunday, August 30, 9-10pm Eastern [Keep Reading…]
Whit Hour – Week 3
Thank you so much to the 20 or so folks who showed up for the third week of Whit Hour — my weekly one-hour video chat to answer any and all of your questions about user experience, consulting, and whatever else you throw at me. Sorry for the last-minute day change. I was stuck in [Keep Reading…]