It’s an honor to be asked to contribute my thoughts as a leader in user experience or to be featured for my work. Here are some select articles in which I have been mentioned.

If you are interested in interviewing me for a piece, please don’t hesitate to reach out at press@whitneyhess.com. Thank you.

Personal Mentions

.net Magazine
January 30, 2012
Startup slammed for copying 37signals

We spoke to independent management consultant and user experience strategist Whitney Hess. She said that while inspiration helps us generate ideas, consider new approaches, and gain the motivation to do our best, it “quickly becomes imitation once you fully replicate another person’s execution of those ideas”. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, she continued, “no company wants their fans to show their devotion by directly copying the results of its hard work”.
[more]

Core77
January 25, 2012
WebVisions New York: Flexible Systems and Techniques for Better User Experiences

As the field of User Experience (UX) grows many UX designers are still trying to define it. Whitney Hess, an independent UX consultant, guided us through her principles of experience design coupled with current examples to help us visualize each principle in practice.

Webdesigner Depot
December 19, 2011
Web Design Predictions for 2012

The rallying cry of the web community in 2011 has seemed to be “make stuff.” My prediction for 2012 is that we’ll soon realize that that was rather shortsighted, and instead will encourage one another to “make stuff that matters.”
[more]

The Next Web
December 16, 2011
The Future of Web Design

Whitney Hess, an independent user experience designer, consultant and prolific web logger based in New York City recently shared a universally applicable set of experience design principles at the Future of Web Design conference. We were intrigued to ask her what she thinks about the future:

“I hope we come to have a greater understanding of the various target audiences that our products have and that we deliver them content more intelligently. Right now, different content is appropriate on different platforms. But users tell us so much about themselves through their repeated use of our product and we haven’t done enough work to create customized content experiences for them as a result of all of that intel. Instead, we’ve only created custom, functional experiences but not custom, content experiences,” she says.

Observer.com’s BetaBeat
December 6, 2011
Electioneering at New York Tech Meetup

Whitney Hess, a user experience designer and NWC resident, almost ran for a seat last year before she realized she had massively overscheduled herself. She was the last candidate to step up to the mic last night, a prepared speech on her iPad, and proceeded to thoroughly critique the NYTM user experience from entry to afterparty, including the hated “hovering” until tickets become available “like a Justin Bieber concert.”

The Next Web
November 8, 2011
The Principles of Experience Design and 10 sites doing it right

Whitney Hess is the cat’s meow in the web design world. She’s an independent user experience designer, consultant and prolific web logger based in New York City. Today, at the Future of Web Design, Hess took the stage to share a universally applicable set of experience design principles that designers should all strive to follow to take a site or product to the next level.

New York Times
August 27, 2011
Gofer Does Your Bidding, for a Price

“For a nominal fee, I can free up my time and mental space,” said Whitney Hess, a design consultant in Manhattan. “I don’t have to think about it or make the time to do it.”

Ms. Hess said that in the last few weeks she outsourced tasks like finding reliable a car service to take her to the airport, transcribing interviews, having a necklace repaired, transferring compact discs onto a hard drive and selecting a bathroom scale.

BlogHer
May 3, 2011
Women in Tech: Whitney Hess, UX Designer

Whitney’s a terrific conference speaker, and recently spoke at An Event Apart in Boston, a web-centric event about design, code, and content. The day she spoke at An Event Apart, Jeremy Keith recorded some of what she said in a live blog post for his blog, Adactio. What Whitney said was so valuable, I thought it was time take a closer look at Whitney Hess.

New York Times’ “You’re the Boss” Blog
January 24, 2011
This Week in Small Business: Hu, Health Care and Why We’re (Still) Not Hiring

Whitney Hess, a user-experience designer, explains what marketers can learn from Nationwide Insurance’s TV campaign.

Fortune / CNNMoney.com
October 14, 2010
Rated ugly: Will TV Everywhere free us from bad cable box menus?

“The experience of on-demand is atrocious,” says user experience consultant Whitney Hess, a long-time Time Warner Cable subscriber….Hess, who served as a consultant for the home theater software Boxee’s redesigned interface earlier this year, points to Time Warner Cable’s lack of comprehensive home screen as one example of the poor design.

Fortune / CNNMoney.com
May 20, 2010
Hey Facebook! Here’s your privacy redesign

We asked several leading user experience designers how they’d overhaul the social network’s obtuse privacy settings interface if given the chance. Here, in their own words, are their innovative solutions.

Mashable
April 20, 2009
Social Media Hub: New York

Whitney Hess [@whitneyhess] is an independent user experience design consultant working with Happy Cog, boxee and other companies putting people first. She’s an active member of the NYC social media scene.

CNET
March 27, 2009
Facebook, Google, and the data design disaster

“It makes you feel like there’s a lot more to digest, and it’s all happening right now,” said Whitney Hess, a New York-based user experience consultant. “It’s a bit of an information overload because it takes up almost all of the real estate of the entire home page.”

New York Observer
April 2, 2009
Can Social Media for Social Change Reinvent Charity Work? Maybe!

But for their part, city tech folks are not just attending the April 3 evening, but also donating their time and services for a silent auction. For example, Lisa Lacy, a Huffington Post food blogger, is donating a one-on-one cooking lesson; Whitney Hess, a user experience designer, is offering her services; and Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures, will host a “private power lunch.” “That’s probably the highest, most valuable donation they can give—their time,” Mr. Knell said.

New York Observer
January 12, 2009
It’s Geek to You, but Not to Them: Meet the Early Adopters

“Because there are so many more online communities and social networking programs and everything, it’s probably a lot easier for a typical, mainstream, everyday technology user to know someone who is an early adopter,” said Whitney Hess, a user experience designer who helps companies make their product more friendly for the mainstream. “They’re hearing about the evolution of early products much more than they used to. Everyone wants to know about the latest and greatest.”

New York Observer
December 16, 2008
A 25-Year-Old Boy Wonder Wants to Make This a Tech Town

This week, Mr. Westheimer is consulting with Mr. Heiferman and Dawn Barber, the NYTM’s co-organizer, to map out a strategy and build an advisory board before the next Meetup, on Jan. 6. He’s also trying to woo folks onto his Organizer Board. He’s already called on Charlie O’Donnell—the CEO of Path101, a Web site that helps people find their best career moves through social networking—to lead the tech education sector, and Whitney Hess—a user experience designer and social networking expert—to be an ambassador for designers.

New York Observer
December 2, 2008
Superstar Avatars

“In the age of spamming, the profile picture gives you credibility,” said Whitney Hess, a user-experience designer who often blogs about social media’s impact on the human experience on her blog, Pleasure and Pain, in a phone interview with The Observer last week. “It shows people that you’re real.”

Mentions with Boxee

ReadWriteWeb
March 25, 2009
An Inside Look Into Boxee’s Systematic UX Overhaul Process

One product with one of the hottest new interfaces available is the new Boxee Beta software which allows for streamlined local and Web media viewing. Whitney Hess is the user experience (UX) designer behind the framework of the Boxee interface, and recently on her blog Pleasure and Pain she described the systematic process she went through to design it.

New York Times
March 25, 2009
There’s Something About Boxee

Whitney Hess, a consultant for Boxee, who has been surveying testers of the service, revealed some of the changes the company would be making in its next version. High on the list were tighter controls over notifications and filters for sexually explicit content.

Contentinople
March 25, 2009
Boxee Adds Pandora, Announces New Hulu Workaround

In addition to giving an update on Boxee’s most recent additions to its platform — which is currently still in alpha testing — Ronen and Boxee user experience designer Whitney Hess provided a preview of what users can expect during the application’s beta release.

Technologizer
March 26, 2009
Boxee Gears Up For Beta Debut

8. A better user interface. I am of the opinion that the user interface of Boxee is a little clunky. The company has brought on board an user interface manager, Whitney Hess, which is in charge of giving the application a facelift. Unfortunately, they did not have the beta finished enough before the NYC meetup, so we didn’t get to see any mockups.

New York Observer
March 26, 2009
Boxee Brings Back Hulu; Plans on Being Released on a Device by 2010

Mr. Ronen and Whitney Hess, Boxee’s user experience designer, also presented a preview of what Boxee’s beta version will look like, including a more customizable home screen, a global search for shows instead of sifting through content providers’ channels (right now you can only find 30 Rock if you go to NBC’s page, for example) and improved social networking capabilities.

The Plan8 Podcast
April 21, 2009
Boxee Interview

The Plan8 Podcast’s host Patrick Roanhouse got to inverview Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, Boxee Head UI Designer Whitney Hess, and Boxee Communications & PR officer Andrew Kippen