I’m on the Amtrak down to Washington, D.C. as I write this. Tomorrow (Monday) I start a new project that will likely be the biggest professional challenge I’ve ever faced and will carry profound personal significance as well. Happy Cog East in Philadelphia was recently awarded the website redesign project for the United States Holocaust [Keep Reading…]
My notes from An Event Apart Chicago 2009
Earlier this week, I went into detail about my experience as a speaker at An Event Apart Boston and Chicago 2009. Here are my Twitter notes from last week’s Chicago event. I had amazing time getting to hear design and development tips and inspiration from some of the most prominent speakers in the field. I [Keep Reading…]
Onboarding: A Sidebar in “Designing Social Interfaces”
Last May I was given the great privilege to write a sidebar in Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone‘s fabulous new book, Designing Social Interfaces. The topic I was asked to write about is “onboarding” — designing welcoming experiences for new users by easing them in. You might have seen a couple blog posts that I’ve [Keep Reading…]
Jeff Bezos says: obsess over customers
In the video below, Jeff Bezos, one of the greatest minds in customer experience, tells us “Everything I know” and discusses the acquisition of Zappos. What Jeff Bezos knows: Obsess over customers “When given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers, we always obsess over customers.” Invent “Any time we have a [Keep Reading…]
@whitneyhess on Acela Express
When Jeffrey Zeldman uploads your photo to Flickr, you blog it. @whitneyhess on Acela Express Originally uploaded by Jeffrey Zeldman
IA Summit 2009: A functional family reunion
Families fight. When you share that much time with the same people, and put your faith in them, and share a common history, and become reliant on one another’s successes, it’s very easy to feel disappointed and confused and argumentative when things don’t seem to be going right. But ultimately what allows you to express [Keep Reading…]
I have joined the UXnet board of directors
In mid-December, the venerable Lou Rosenfeld asked me if I would join the UXnet board of directors. Saying no to Lou would have been wildly foolish. After all, he literally wrote the book on information architecture. Initially published in February 1998, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, co-written with Peter Morville, is one of [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…]
I was asked to join the IAI Board of Advisors
You may remember that I ran for the Information Architecture Institute‘s board of directors in September, but wasn’t elected. Though I couldn’t announce it until recently, three weeks ago I was asked by the new Board of Directors — Jorge Arango, Peter Boersma, Christian Crumlish, Andrew Hinton, Livia Labate, Stacy Surla, and Russ Unger — [Keep Reading…]
UX Bookshelf
In the right sidebar of my blog I promote my UX Bookshelf. I use Amazon Associates just to get the smallest kickback (I’ve never actually made any money with this, but I’d like to!). The other day I noticed that they have a new carousel widget (released in April) that allows you to display up [Keep Reading…]
