The work I love is about helping companies who love their customers discover how to be better to them…not convincing them to care. The work I love is about empowering customers to get the service they deserve…not trying to get them to buy into what they don’t really need. The work I love is about [Keep Reading…]
To gather together
I have the distinction of being the longest-running member of Manhattan’s first and foremost coworking center, New Work City. But lately I’ve been staying home on the Upper West Side every day, working at my dining table or on the couch, instead of taking the 20-minute subway ride down to TriBeCa. It’s cold and snowy [Keep Reading…]
New Year’s Resolutions for 2011
New Year’s Resolutions get a bad rap, and many say they’re trite and futile. I couldn’t disagree more. Setting goals, especially challenging ones, is the best way to effectively change behavior. A resolution is a commitment to oneself, and I can’t think of a more honorable and necessary thing for a human to do than [Keep Reading…]
Pleasure and Pain turns 3
Three years ago, I was feeling stagnant and purposeless. I wasn’t happy with the direction of my career and I didn’t know what to do about it. Without a clue what it was, I joined Twitter, and three days later I started this blog. January 10, 2008. This is a tough day for me to [Keep Reading…]
The plain numbers about women in tech – The Startups
I don’t often think of myself as a woman. As I approach public restrooms, I have to remind myself: “Whitney, you are a woman, use the women’s room.” Being a woman doesn’t actively, consciously factor into my every day life, especially not professionally. While my gender must have a partial effect on everything I do [Keep Reading…]
You are in context to another
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to define your audience, how to name them. We all know that if you design for everyone, you end up designing for no one. But demarcating a group of people can be a real struggle, especially since people exhibit different behaviors in different situations — one of [Keep Reading…]
A Plan of Action
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?” — Luke 14:28 It’s not every day I quote the Bible. All the rarer that I quote from the New Testament, given the fact that I’m Jewish. But I happened [Keep Reading…]
Literally Desperate
There’s something I have to metaphorically get off my chest. You literally don’t have a clue what “literally” actually means. Literal is defined as: actual; absolute. Literally is defined as: in the explicit meaning of the word; without embellishment or exaggeration; not as an idiom or metaphor. I’m not the first person to plead this [Keep Reading…]
My 2nd Indie Anniversary
On the afternoon of Friday, August 22, 2008, I “left work” for the last time. It was my last day at my full-time job and I was officially self-employed. The last two years have been a whirlwind, and the benefits and repercussions of that single action have been far more significant than I ever could [Keep Reading…]
If the product doesn’t work, its “user experience” doesn’t matter
I recently edited an article for UX Magazine (When You Startup with UX) in which I interviewed four startups on what User Experience means to them. Of all the things that people said, the quote that stood out to me the most was from Mike Singleton, a developer at Foursquare: “…when you only have three [Keep Reading…]
