I am incredibly honored to have won an award at last night’s User Experience Awards at the Parsons School of Design. I was awarded one of four Silver prizes for my work on the Boxee beta application, and was given the distinction of Best User Centered Design Process. Wow! Thank you so much to the jurors for your selection.

While I was unfortunately unable to attend the event in person, it was such a treat to see the tweets when the award was announced.

The first-annual User Experience Awards was coordinated by NYC-CHI, New York City’s largest and oldest user experience and usability organization, as part of NYC’s Internet Week 2011 in partnership with the NYC chapter of the Usability Professionals Association (NYC UPA), the NYC chapter of the Interaction Design Association (NYC IxDA), and the NYC Information Architecture Meetup.

The jurors for the awards:

• Chloe Gottlieb
• Bryan Hamilton
• Peter March
• Gloria Petron
• Whitney Quesenbery
• Nicole Rubin
• Kip Voytek
• Beverly May (Moderator)

My submission details:

Submission: The UX Design Process for the Boxee Beta http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2010/01/27/the-ux-design-process-for-the-boxee-beta/

Service: http://www.boxee.tv/make

Submission Description:
Boxee hired me as their user experience designer to help make the beta version of its media center application more mainstream-friendly. I reconceived its navigation, introduced search across content sources, and integrated social features in a less intrusive way.

Submission background and context:
In the five months that I worked with Boxee, I conducted user interviews and usability tests with several existing and prospective users, developed personas and scenarios based on my findings, created a prioritized feature set and long-term product roadmap, and drew flow diagrams and detailed wireframes of the new experience. The full process and outcomes can be found here: http://whitneyhess.com/blog/2010/01/27/the-ux-design-process-for-the-boxee-beta/

About the applicant:
Whitney Hess is an Independent UX Design Consultant in New York City. For more information: http://whitneyhess.com/blog/

About the applicant’s client: Boxee, http://boxee.tv

Project Industry: Publishing/Media

The UX team on this project: Whitney Hess

Completion date for the UX portion of the project: 10/10/2009

[Read about all of the 2011 winners]

Thank you again!

• boxee now in public alpha
• ReadWriteWeb on my Boxee beta UX process, and other thoughts
• More great press on the boxee NYC meetup
• More than 600 people attend boxee NYC meetup
• The boxee website redesign

The winners of Mashable’s 2008 Open Web Awards were announced today. Congratulations to everyone!

Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks

Winner: Netlog
Runner-up: Platinum Lounge

Embeddable Widgets

Winner: Qoof
Runner-up: Sprout

Blog Plugins

Winner: ShareThis
Runner-up: AddThis

Social News

Winner: Help a Reporter Out
Runner-up: Hubdub

Social Networking Applications

Winner: Artition
Runner-up: Digsby

Social Bookmarking

Winner: Diigo
Runner-up: ShareThis

Search & Social Search

Winner: Scour
Runner-up: Artiklz

Sports & Fitness

Winner: Gyminee
Runner-up: FitFiend

Photo Sharing

Winner: ipernity
Runner-up: TinyPic

Video Sharing

Winner: ffwd
Runner-up: YouTube

Start Pages

Winner: Google
Runner-up: iGoogle

Places & Events

Winner: Doodle
Runner-up: Muchmor

Travel

Winner: SpottedByLocals
Runner-up: GeckoGo

Music

Winner: Noisetrade
Runner-up: Last.fm

Social Shopping

Winner: Pikaba
Runner-up: A Full Cup

Fashion

Winner: Coolspotters
Runner-up: Polyvore

Celebrity & Gossip

Winner: Oh No They Didn’t
Runner-up: BollyScoops

Mobile Applications

Winner: Evernote
Runner-up: MocoSpace

Dating & Romance

Winner: Zoosk

Runner-up: DateHookup

Wiki

Winner: Encyclopedia Dramatica
Runner-up: WikiHow

Politics

Winner: Politics4All
Runner-up: CreateDebate

How-to

Winner: A Full Cup
Runner-up: College Cram

Environmental

Winner: Ecomii
Runner-up: Gazelle

Non-Profit Causes

Winner: Stop Political Calls
Runner-up: SocialVibe

Online Games

Winner: Playfish
Runner-up: Power Pets

Niche Social Networks

Winner: The Star Tracker
Runner-up: Wadja

• Final Round of Mashable’s Open Web Awards
• Bloglines vs. Google Reader: A Usability Evaluation
• Twitter tweaks the homepage, again
• Firefox 3 Beta 3 vs. Firefox 2.0
• More than 600 people attend boxee NYC meetup

As I’ve mentioned before, Pleasure and Pain is a blog partner for Mashable’s Open Web Awards. The final voting round started yesterday at noon ET. You can vote anytime until 11:59pm ET on Sunday, December 14.

VOTE NOW!

• Congrats to the winners of Mashable’s 2008 Open Web Awards
• Mashable’s 2nd Annual Open Web Awards: NOMINATIONS OPEN!
• Mashable’s Open Web Awards – Voting Round 1
• Silver Winner of the Inaugural User Experience Awards
• Ten Best Things and Five Worst Things About the BlackBerry

As I announced on Nov 5, nominations for Mashable’s 2nd Annual Open Web Awards were open until last Sunday. On Wednesday, the first round of voting began (sorry for the delay in posting this).

Vote for your favorite site using the widget below until November 30th at 11:59pm Pacific Time.

Some ground rules:

• One vote per category per e-mail address per day (validated through PollDaddy)
• Vote in up to 26 Categories for every 24 hours (reset at midnight PST)

The final round of voting begins on Wednesday, December 3, with winners announced on Tuesday, December 16.

So get to it already!

• Mashable’s 2nd Annual Open Web Awards: NOMINATIONS OPEN!
• Final Round of Mashable’s Open Web Awards
• Congrats to the winners of Mashable’s 2008 Open Web Awards
• Silver Winner of the Inaugural User Experience Awards
• I’m here at SXSW and I want to meet you!

Pleasure and Pain is proud to be a blog partner of Mashable‘s 2nd Annual Open Web Awards. This is a unique opportunity for the world’s best websites and services to be recognized for their accomplishments through an open voting system appearing on blogs all across the web.

Nominations are now open!

The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards is now accepting nominations in 26 categories via the widget below. You may nominate a site/company in as many categories as you see fit. However, there is only one nomination per category per e-mail address, so choose wisely.

Nominations close Sunday, November 16th at 11:59 pm PST. Nominate now and start campaigning! And feel free to embed this widget on your own blog or website by clicking the “Grab This” button!

After you nominate your favorite site, tell us about it in the comments and encourage other readers to do the same. This is meant to be a fun and collaborative event, so get involved, get your friends and colleagues involved, and go go go!

I look forward to hearing about your submissions. I certainly have a few of my own…

[Read the Mashable post]

• Mashable’s Open Web Awards – Voting Round 1
• Widgets on Pleasure and Pain
• Final Round of Mashable’s Open Web Awards
• WordPress 2.8 is released
• Congrats to the winners of Mashable’s 2008 Open Web Awards