It’s quite overdue, but this blog is now optimized to be viewed in a mobile browser. Many thanks to Ben Seven for giving me the kick in the ass I needed to get it done:

Commented on You’re not a user experience designer if… by Ben Seven:

Are you allowed to call yourself a User Experience designer if you don’t care about the user experience of your own blog on handheld devices? I tried reading this article on the bus home having seen it retweeted, and enjoyed the delicious irony of it not being particularly web friendly. Just saying – UX suffers from the same thing my profession does – people calling themselves designers with no real expertise, qualification or questioning from clients – but it’s strange to be concerned about the experience of computer interaction and not catch up with the boom in mobile web browsing on your own platform!

I confess to having a case of “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” I think some of the busiest practitioners have the crappiest websites because we’re so busy fixing other people’s problems. But it’s no excuse. I need to do a major website redesign pronto.

But hey, now you can at least read this on mobile! Please leave a comment if you are right now.

• OpenTable has a brain. Does your product?
• Faceted Filtering…in the Real World
• Pleasure and Pain in Other Languages
• Follow-up to “You’re not a user experience designer if…”
• MFA in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts in NYC

It’s no secret that I’m completely obsessed with Skitch — the handy screenshot, annotation and image sharing tool for Mac — since I tell pretty much anyone who’ll listen. I’ve probably stood over 100 shoulders waiting for folks to download and install it, then watch their eyes open wide when they realize what they now have at their fingertips.

Imagine my delight when my friend Brian Papa said that he saw me on the Skitch homepage! I’m one of their featured testimonials on the homepage and Buzz page.

Whitney Hess
Interaction Designer
whitneyhess.com
“Skitch opens up a small app that shows the screenshot and allows you to manipulate it in a variety of ways: resize, rotate, annotate, etc. It’s ridiculously easy and lightweight, yet incredibly robust (in terms of quality of functionality, not necessarily breadth of functionality — it’s no Photoshop). It might be the most fluid annotation software I’ve ever seen.”

Since I don’t go to their homepage often, I hadn’t seen it myself and have no idea how long it’s been there. But I’m so glad I could be helpful to them in some way, after all the help Skitch has given me over the years.

I first wrote about Skitch in January 2008, and almost 3-1/2 years later it remains my most used app, after my web browser and email client. After 3 years in beta, they finally released Skitch 1.0 in December, offering a ton more features in the desktop app and on the accompanying web app. Once you start using it, it’ll be no surprise to you that two of the cofounders, Cris Pearson and Keith Lang, are interaction designers. More designers should follow in their entrepreneur footsteps.

You can check out my public Skitches at http://skitch.com/whitney. Almost all of the images you see in my blog posts are captured, cropped, resized and hosted by Skitch.

If you use a Mac and you don’t use Skitch, go download it now. Then come back here and thank me :)

• Skitch!
• Skitch beta 8 now available
• Firefox 3 Beta 3 vs. Firefox 2.0
• Mozilla finally releases Firefox 3.0
• The boxee website redesign

On Monday, I had the honor and privilege of presenting a new talk at An Event Apart Boston 2011, titled Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX. This is my third year speaking at AEA and it never gets less exhilarating — and terrifying!

My presentation description:

The visual principles of harmony, unity, contrast, emphasis, variety, balance, proportion, pattern and direction (and others) are widely recognized and practiced, even when they aren’t formally articulated. But creating a good design doesn’t automatically mean creating a good experience.

In order for us to cultivate positive experiences for our users, we need to establish a set of guiding principles for experience design. Guiding principles are the broad philosophy or fundamental beliefs that steer an organization, team or individual’s decision making, irrespective of the project goals, constraints, or resources.

Whitney will share a universally-applicable set of experience design principles that we should all strive to follow, and will explore how you can create and use your own guiding principles to take your site or product to the next level.

Giving a new presentation for the first time is always nerve-wracking, and it’s particularly challenging when you have so much admiration for the conference organizers, fellow speakers and caliber of people in the audience. An Event Apart is a fantastic conference and a very special group of people. I still find it hard to believe I’m a part of it.

Huge thanks goes out to Jeremy Keith and Luke Wroblewski for their fantastic summaries of my talk, as well as to Virginia DeBolt who covered it over at BlogHer.

Last but certainly not least, thank you to the 30+ folks who attended my dry run of the presentation last Wednesday at New Work City, for all of their incredibly valuable feedback on how to make it a better, more impactful talk. And to Scott Reynolds and Adam Connor for their tireless attention to detail.

I got some great feedback on my presentation via Twitter that I’ll capture here for posterity:

I’ll be giving this talk again at several more conferences this year. Check my Speaking Engagements page for the latest.

• “Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX” featured on Core77
• I’ll be speaking at An Event Apart 2009
• My DIY UX talk is featured in InformationWeek
• See you at An Event Apart Chicago
• 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design — the presentation

I have the distinct pleasure of speaking at the first ever Interlink Conference in Vancouver, Canada on June 2-4, along with a stellar lineup of people I can’t even believe I’m included with: Samantha Warren, Steve Fisher, Gavin Elliott, Jonathan Snook, Brian Hoff, Ethan Dunham, Frank Chimero, Patrick Lauke, Meagan Fisher, Simon Collison, Sarah Parmenter, Dan Rubin and Elliot Jay Stocks.

Interlink is organized by Shawn Johnston, a talented web designer based on Vancouver who wanted to shine a light on the community in Canada. This smaller, boutique-like conference will feature two days of workshops flanking a single-track day of sessions. Evening events include a dodgeball tournament, movie night, Canadian brew pub, and a 3-hour interactive discussion on The Web Font Revolution.

I’ve been incredibly impressed with Shawn’s passion and attention to detail, especially considering this is his first event. It already feels different than a lot of the other conferences I attend, and I’m eager to see what happens.

Register for Interlink and use the promo code “SPEAKER” in order to get $100 off your ticket. I hope to see you there!

• Where is Whitney in 2011?
• Photo of the day: Warning: Movie longer than flight
• My Interaction 09 recap on Boxes and Arrows
• Get a 15% discount to DelveUI in NYC
• Hanging out at IxDA’s Interaction09

I’ve been watching a lot of Instant Netflix lately, ever since I canceled my cable and bought a Roku (another more in-depth post on that experience at some point).

Netflix never ceases to amaze me. They’ve been learning my tastes from the films I watch, rate, and add to queue. At this point I think they know me better than I know myself.

A few weeks ago, a category called Art & Design Documentaries appeared as a row od suggested films on my Netflix home screen. Some of these I’ve seen before and I LOVE, but others I had been meaning to see, and some others I had never even heard of!

A few people asked me to share what titles were being recommended to me, so here you go…

Exit Through the Gift Shop
Banksy, 2010
Amateur filmmaker Thierry Guetta’s project to chronicle the underground world of street art takes a fascinating twist when he meets Banksy, an elusive British stencil artist.

Between the Folds
Vanessa Gould, 2008
A provocative odyssey into the mesmerizing world of modern origami, where artists and scientists use the ancient art form to craft works of delicate beauty and to model cutting-edge mathematical theories.

The September Issue
R.J. Cutler, 2008
A rare look inside Vogue as the fashion magazine’s influential editor, Anna Wintour, and creative director, Grace Coddington, produce the highly anticipated September issue.

Bomb It
Jon Reiss, 2007
Graffiti isn’t simple vandalism; it’s an artistic expression employed around the world. Filmmaker Jon Reiss travels five continents to reveal graffiti’s history, cultural impact and social relevance.

The Art of the Steal
Don Argott, 2009
A gripping tale of intrigue and mystery in the art world, this film traces the history of the Barnes collection of Post-Impressionist paintings, which was worth billions and became the subject of a power struggle after the 1951 death of the owner.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
Tamra Davis, 2009
Controversial, charismatic artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is the subject of this insightful documentary, including a never-before-seen interview with the artist conducted before his untimely death at the age of 27.

Beautiful Losers
Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard, 2008
A group of underground artists who began influencing areas from fashion and film to music and pop culture in the early 1990s. With outsider art elements such as graffiti, skateboarding, street music, these mavericks redefined creativity.

Helvetica
Gary Hustwit, 2007
We use it every day on our computers, we see it on street signs — and we take it for granted. Now, Gary Hustwit’s unique documentary introduces us to Helvetica, a font whose readability has made it the most popular in the world.

Objectified
Gary Hustwit, 2009
Discover how manufactured objects that surround us such as cars, phones and chairs influence our daily lives, featuring top industrial designers discussing their creative processes and professional objectives.

Herb & Dorothy
Megumi Sasaki, 2008
Chronicling the story of unlikely art collectors Herb Vogel and Dorothy Vogel, filmmaker Megumi Sasaki demonstrates that it’s not necessary to be wealthy in order to build a significant collection.

Rivers and Tides
Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2003
This astonishing documentary from Thomas Riedelsheimer shadows renowned sculptor Andy Goldsworthy as he creates works of art with ice, driftwood, leaves, stone, dirt and snow in open fields, beaches, rivers, creeks and forests.

The Modernism of Julius Shulman
Eric Bricker, 2008
Filmmaker Eric Bricker directs this fascinating documentary about the life and times of architectural photographer Julius Shulman, whose work is known for helping to launch the careers of giants like Rudolf Schindler & Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Universe of Keith Haring
Christina Clausen, 2008
Clausen chronicles Haring’s life from his early years through the 1980s as he rocketed to fame with solo exhibitions, collaborations and public works, leaving behind a prolific legacy.

Milton Glaser: Inform & Delight
Wendy Keys, 2009
His name might not be very familiar, but the works of graphic artist Milton Glaser — whose prolific output includes the “I Love NY” ad campaign, as well as album covers for Townes Van Zandt and Nina Simone — are recognizable to many.

The Cool School
Morgan Neville, 2007
In the late 1950s, when Pollock and de Kooning were being hailed as revolutionary artists in New York, Los Angeles was still dealing with a blacklist that gutted creativity in all media. This is the story of the two men who changed all that.

My Architect: A Son’s Journey
Nathaniel Kahn, 2003
Documentarian Nathaniel Kahn examines the life and career of his father, architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), whose work included the Salk Institute and the Parliament and Capitol Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Black White + Gray
James Crump, 2007
During the heady years of the 1970s and ’80s, the New York City art scene was abuzz with a new spirit, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and curator-collector Sam Wagstaff were at the center of it.

National Geographic: The Photographers
National Geographic, 1998
Often letting the works speak for themselves, this compelling documentary looks into the lives of veteran National Geographic photographers and the grueling work that goes into their award-winning images.

I’ll post more as Netflix serves them up.

• Helvetica & Lessons for Experience Designers
• Steal inspiration from everywhere
• New to New York?
• Photo of the day: Follow this line
• Awesome Email of the Day: Evangelizing Myself

Sure, the web has made communication more brief, more casual, and a lot more impersonal. But people haven’t ceased to have feelings, so etiquette shouldn’t fly out the window.

My friends at RedStamp, a modern stationery company based in Minneapolis, recently released an iPhone app that makes it a cinch to brighten someone’s day and add that personal touch to your correspondence. I’ve been using it every day since I downloaded it — sending thank yous, best wishes and condolences to friends and colleagues. Each note is customized and unique, setting itself apart from trite Facebook wall posts and inbox clutter.

Every card I’ve sent has gotten an emphatic response because it was unexpected and brightened someone’s day. In fact, because the app is so fun to use, I find myself sending these kinds of messages far more often than I used to. I’m reminded now just how important etiqeutte and common kindness are to the health of our relationships and community.

You can send via email, post to Facebook or Twitter, or even — get this — send it as a postcard via mail with the exact same design. The SVG image technology that RedStamp uses allows the cards to look great both digitally an in print.

This is only V1 of the app, and new features and bug fixes are being released every week. It’s such a powerful little app, I can’t stop myself from thinking of a whole slew of ideas to share with the RedStamp team. They’re a small, nimble and highly engaged company, so if you see anywhere they can improve, don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and I’ll be sure to pass them along.

Thank the people who’ve helped you today, or even those who’ve just tried. Congratulate someone on their win, or console someone on their loss. Go out of your way to show that you care, without much effort at all. Kindness travels far, so do it in style.

Start

For

Because

Add a Photo

View Cards

Swipe

Choose

Edit Text

Send

My Mailbox

[Read Gotham Gal Joanne Wilson's wonderful blog post on RedStamp's co-founder and CEO Erin Newkirk.]

• Proud to announce that I’m now a UX advisor for RedStamp
• The most accurate portrayal of User Experience Designers ever created
• Facebook Privacy Settings Redesign on Fortune.com
• Awesome Email of the Day: How Little You Really Know
• Hanging out at IxDA’s Interaction09

Any user experience designer worth their salt takes the needs of the company they’re serving into account and adapts their approach accordingly — identifying the appropriate process, methods and tools to get the job done. This has been the case for as long as information architecture and interaction design have been in practice. Rigid methodology — doing the same exact thing every time despite the context — is, and has always been, bad practice.

Now that Eric Ries’s lean startup and Steve Blank’s customer development methodologies have gained significant traction within the startup and wider business communities, the value that user experience design practices can bring to an organization is finally being recognized.

While the techniques are being called different things (and aren’t they always?), VCs and founders are at long last starting to focus on the user as a means to make the best design decisions for their product and the best strategy decisions for their business. They aren’t spending weeks or months on in-depth, formal research because their prospective customers are easily accessible to them, and they aren’t wasting their time with heavily documented deliverables because their development team sits right next to them. But nevertheless they are still doing UX: spending focused time whiteboarding flows and key screens; prototyping solutions and testing them with users; and best of all, listening to their customers.

There’s nothing lean about it. The dictionary definition of “offering little reward, substance, or nourishment; meager” simply doesn’t hold. What they are doing — which ultimately comes down to design thinking — has tremendous reward and endless impact on the relevance of their products, the success of their companies, and the health of their egos.

“Lean UX” implies that less UX is being done. That couldn’t be further from the truth, nor is it something we should encourage. And anyway, UX shouldn’t be measured in time spent conducting activities or producing activities; it should be measured in its depth of integration in a company’s philosophy and culture.

Caring about your customers and working to make their lives better is the most honorable thing a company can do. Let’s teach these companies more and better UX methods, give them ways to adapt the methods to however they work best, and encourage them to keep the needs, attitudes, and motivations of their customers at the core of everything they do.

Some Lean UX links worth reading:

• LUXr: What is Lean UX?
• UX Booth’s Lean Startups and User Experience Design
• Cooper Design’s Lean UX, Product Stewardship, and Integrated Teams
• Jeff Gothelf’s Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business
• Josh Seiden’s Agile UX? Lean UX? Customer Development? A multiple discovery moment

• The Work I Love
• Ultra Light User Experience
• The User Experience Relationship
• Whit Hour – Week 18
• Your target market cannot be everyone

A big thanks goes out to Andrew Maier whose article “Designing for Startups: How to Deliver the Message Across” in Smashing Magazine included some thoughts from a blog post I wrote a few months ago titled “A Plan of Action.”

In it he features my three approaches to design: Reactive, Preactive, and Proactive — the latter of which I recommend as the best way for startups to design, test, and iterate.

“I believe that most UX designers would agree — dare I say, empathize — with Whitney’s prescribed preactive approach. Beginning with thinking — with research — is in a user-centered designer’s blood; it helps them understand their audience and voice their messages appropriately. Further still, “preactivity” appears to be the only real way for designers to gain empathy. But most start-up environments run counter to this approach. Acting and then thinking usually leaves little room for the voice of research.”

It’s a really great article for anyone who’s currently trying to figure out how to adapt their typical design and UX process to a company — startup or otherwise — that needs a more fluid, lightweight, fast-paced approach.

[Read the full article]

• “Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX” featured on Core77
• A Plan of Action
• “Using Mental Models for Tactics and Strategy” webinar with Indi Young
• When You Startup With UX
• Whit Hour – Week 19

I’m a Tweetie fanatic — even if they haven’t updated Tweetie for Mac in ages and probably never will again — so I don’t use the #newtwitter web app very much at all.

The other day I just happened to look at the footer and notice a link labeled Shortcuts. It opens the following layer:

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that so much thought had gone into optimizing for keyboard use. According to Lifehacker, they’re a lot like the keyboard shortcuts for Gmail, which I suppose if I were a Gmail user (as most Twitter users are) is something I would appreciate.

I’ve written about inconsistencies in keyboard shortcuts before, and yes I’m a stickler for details. I’m disappointed to find that only four of the shortcuts are the same between Tweetie for Mac (now owned by Twitter) and the Twitter web app — F for favorite, R for reply, N for new, and spacebar to scroll.

Tweetie for Mac’s keyboard shortcuts are:

What are the limitations we face in creating a unified set of keyboard shortcuts across multiple platforms? What are the constraints for website versus desktop? And how can these shortcuts translate to gestural interfaces like the iPhone and iPad? How do they improve or impair accessibility?

I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments.

• (In)Consistency in keyboard shortcuts
• Text message your order to Amazon
• Twitter buys Summize
• links for 2008-02-24
• Why iHate This iPhone

Time has always bothered me; I don’t really believe in it. It’s a human invention, a representation of reality. Now the passage of time, that’s something I can believe in. You can feel it. You can measure it. But it’s always, ALWAYS, relative to something else. Like when you’re in the train station waiting for the train to leave and you don’t know if your train has started moving or if the train next to you is moving — you don’t always have a constant to base it on.

I was at Philly’s 30th Street Station recently, and I was hungry, but I only had 5 minutes before I had to get on the train. I saw the sign for Ben & Jerry’s — perfect, quick.

As I approached the counter, I saw this sign:

Be Back in
30 minutes.
Just milking
the cows and
churning the
butter!!!
:)

While I am a big fan of their ice cream, and their determination to stay on brand, this sign was completely useless.

When did the sign go up? Would the cashier be back in a few seconds, or in the full 30 minutes? Should I stand there patiently, or walk away to find other food?

Ben & Jerry’s signage might be cute, but it certainly isn’t informative.

Social activity streams use a combination of relative time (30 minutes ago) and absolute time (12:20pm). Relative time can be very useful, particularly with short intervals, because it helps us to understand the recency of an event without having to do the mental calculation. But it only works when the system is able to continuously update the indicator with the passage of time.

Unfortunately, a piece of paper taped to a sign does not have this capability.

The jars of toppings on the back counter taunted me, and I stood for a minute or two furiously looking around for someone in a smock and visor. Then my train number was called over the loud speaker, and I sulked onto the train, ever hungrier for a delicious scoop.

• Photo of the day: You must be in one of the first five cars
• Photo of the day: Departures and Arrivals
• Photo of the day: Penn Station, Charging Station
• Photo of the day: A Restroom on a Mission
• The Flawed Dining Experience at Hill Country