Pleasure and Pain

Improving the human experience one day at a time

Pleasure and Pain: photos by Whitney G. Hess

Entries Tagged as 'User Experience'

I am a stencil

March 6th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Pleasure, User Experience

This happened five months ago, and I was so stunned by the honor that I think I pushed it somewhere deep into my subconscious until now. In Search Patterns: Design for Discovery by Peter Morville and Jeffrey Callender, there are these cute people icons that accompany various illustrations throughout the book. There was so much [...]

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The Work I Love

March 5th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Consulting, Pleasure, User Experience

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 [...]

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Why I detest the term “Lean UX”

February 27th, 2011 · 17 Comments · Design, Startups, User Experience

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 [...]

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Designing for Startups in Smashing Magazine

February 26th, 2011 · No Comments · Articles, Design, User Experience

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 [...]

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Interaction-design.org’s Encyclopedia is live!

February 1st, 2011 · 3 Comments · Education, Pleasure, User Experience

Interaction-design.org is a Denmark-based foundation that explores research on all human-centered aspects of technology. In an effort to create world-class educational materials for free, they have just launched an open-access, peer-reviewed encyclopedia. The first seven chapters were released today, with many more to be published in the coming months. I was invited by editor-in-chief Mads [...]

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