Last Friday I started a new blog series called “City Trails” to track my daily treks around NYC. The response was good so I’m gonna keep it going. Here’s what I put myself through this week: Monday, May 18 Tuesday, May 19 Wednesday, May 20 Thursday, May 21 Friday, May 22 The maps include distance [Keep Reading…]
City Trails: May 11-15
I’ve been realizing this week that I’m a true road warrior. Most days I find myself in all corners of New York City, from TriBeCa to the Upper West Side to Union Square to the West Village and sometimes to DUMBO. So I’ve decided to start a new blog series called “City Trails” to track [Keep Reading…]
Being a consultant is like being an actor
Last August, I quit my full-time job to become an independent consultant. Best professional decision I’ve ever made. But let me tell you the truth: it isn’t for everyone. Recently I was contemplating how to convey the complexities of consulting to people who are considering a career change (that’s a lot of Cs!). Suddenly it [Keep Reading…]
Twitter as group therapy
I was in a foul mood last night. Independent consulting certainly has its perks (and it’s definitely the best decision I’ve made in my career), but sometimes having no one to pat you on the back, tell you when you screwed up, help you improve your designs, help you get out of a sticky situation, [Keep Reading…]
More great press on the boxee NYC meetup
Earlier this week I told you about the 600+ people that attended the boxee NYC meetup at Webster Hall on Tuesday. We’ve gotten some great press since then, and I wanted to share it. First, you can read boxee’s own recap of the event on their blog and check out TechSpank’s video coverage. Also: Boxee [Keep Reading…]
IA Summit 2009: The Courage to Quit
At the IA Summit in Memphis I had the distinct pleasure of participating in a panel titled, “The Courage to Quit: Starting, Growing & Maintaining Your Own UX Business,” along with Sarah Rice, Chris Fahey and Jenn Anderson. Photo taken by John Yesko The description of the panel: Information Architects have an opportunity to structure [Keep Reading…]
boxee now in public alpha
So you know I’m the UX consultant for boxee, right? Well they’ve been in private, invite-only alpha since June, and already they have 200,000 users. Today at CES they announced a new version available to the public. That means you no longer need an invite to get in. With the new version comes a bunch [Keep Reading…]
Redesigning the boxee experience
It’s been a few weeks in the making, but today boxee announced that they’ve hired me to help redesign their user experience from the ground up. If you haven’t heard of boxee, where have you been hiding? They’ve been in the top 10 trending topics on Twitter for the past month. They’re blowing up the [Keep Reading…]
Happy Cog and Happy Whitney
Shortly after I quit my full-time job in late August to become an independent consultant, the ubiquitous Liz Danzico kindly referred me to Jeffrey Zeldman for a short-term gig with Happy Cog. If you haven’t heard of Happy Cog, they are an internationally-recognized web design consultancy responsible for the design of Ma.gnolia, Advertising Age, Housing [Keep Reading…]
The ups and downs of consulting
In my first week as an independent consultant, I wrote a blog post boasting about my 33+ hours of billable time. Now that two more weeks have passed, I thought it only fair to share some of the obstacles I’ve experienced as well. (But before I do, let me say this: I have awesome clients. [Keep Reading…]