Exit [UX] Strategy.

May 15, 2013

stop

I’ve noticed a trend recently where companies appear to be hiding or omitting paths for users to cancel their accounts and I cannot even begin to tell you how angry this makes me. I’ve started doing some cleanup of my online life and I’ve done a lot of account closings over the past few weeks; the experience I just had with efax takes the cake. I had completely forgot I even had an account with them [shows you how much I used it] until I saw the $169 charge come through on my credit card.

I don’t get it, why are companies trying to hide the exit?  There’s a reason that your customers are leaving you, why make their last experience with you extra shitty? I had to send them an email to cancel my account. They responded by providing me with a phone number to call or a link to chat live with a representative. This is 2013, I barely talk to my mother on the phone these days, so I immediately clicked through to the live chat. Here’s what happened: Continue Reading…

In UX , ,
permalink

Thank you, Lean UX NYC!

April 18, 2013

LeanUXNYC thank you

First and foremost, thanks to Will and Grace who put on an incredible conference and thank you to all of the wonderful sponsors who participated. Y’all created a truly amazing experience for all those who attended and all of us who were invited to speak and give workshops. I am really looking forward to next year and I hope to be back as both a speaker and a workshopper [ahem].

Thank you.

For those of you who learned to prototype like a boss, thank you. This was my first time conducting a workshop and *hopefully* it won’t be my last. Y’all were a fantastic group and I am beyond honored to have met each of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. By the way, my slides [with notes] can be found here and on SlideShare.

There were a few of you who wanted to continue the conversation and I’d love to do just that. Please find me on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever. Some of you also requested to meet up next time I’m in town; the answer to that is, and always will be, a big fat [whiskey-soaked] YES. I look forward to seeing you again!

Remember, y’all: sketch before you etch.

In Career, Prototyping ,
permalink

Everyday Heroes.

January 26, 2013

heroes

This has undoubtedly been a trying week for me; for those of you who follow me on twitter, you know I’ve been battling an unusually terrible case of tonsillitis. When I say unusually terrible, I mean it—my tonsils were swollen so large that they essentially caused a tear in my eardrum, which, in turn, caused a particularly interesting case of vertigo—this is the kind of sickness that forced me to visit the hospital twice and the ENT in a three-day period. While I was doing everything within my power to get better and still carry on with my life as best I could, there were two things I realized and I will never forget. Continue Reading…

In Personal , ,
permalink

LeanUX NYC: Come find me.

January 14, 2013

Check it out here: http://leanuxnyc.co/nyc/

In Career, Prototyping
permalink

Creative Block.

October 31, 2012

creativeblock

It’s an interesting thing, creative block, isn’t it? As I sit here staring at the blinking cursor, I find myself struggling about what it is I’m actually trying to say, imagine that! I’ve done a lot of research on inspiration ruts, creative block, mental block, writers block, whatever you prefer to call it and I’ve found strategies on strategies on strategies to remove it.

In doing this research, I learned that certain mental barriers to completing a task exist [if you’d like to learn more about them and how to remove them, check out this article by Mark McGuiness on 99u]. This is just one person’s take on a much larger issue, but this article gives some really well thought out solutions. Continue Reading…

In Creativity ,
permalink

The Benefits of Prototyping.

October 12, 2012

prototype

One of the most important aspects of my job as an IXD is prototyping designs, interactions and new features. I’m lucky enough to work with some of the smartest, talented and forward thinking individuals, who design, build and test features from a user’s perspective and are huge supporters of prototyping. Each piece of my team is involved in just about every step of the design and development process [even our business analyst!] and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The best part of this team is the way we work together to develop new ideas; how people from different backgrounds with different skills and personalities magically come together to make something truly incredible. When we formed this team in January of this year, we were tasked with building our department’s first HTML5 application [pretty insane considering we have traditionally been a .net shop for years and the only developers with experience in web apps are the ones who dabble in it because of side projects]. We were given a little under two months to discover and settle on which frameworks we wanted to use to overhaul one of our most beloved and oldest software applications. It was one of the most intense experiences of my career and our team gelled together immediately with a startup-like attitude. Together, we designed and built a small piece of the application and flew up to New York City together to present it to the users. This particular prototype was an excellent example of what this team would be capable of, it proved that a web app could do the same thing as a .net app, but most of all it showed the rest of our department how important it is to prototype ideas and set a new working pattern in motion.  Continue Reading…

In Prototyping , ,
permalink

Don’t Do What You Love?

October 7, 2012 — 1 Comment

hotlanta

I’m a huge advocate for following your passion and doing what you love. And [bonus] I’m one of the people who is lucky enough to be doing just that.

Earlier this week I read an article on Fast Company essentially saying that Steve Jobs didn’t follow his own advice to ‘do what you love’ and instead stumbled into his success with Apple because of other small details that helped him along the personal computing path. I feel that the article is overly pessimistic and states at the bottom of the article that advising people to follow their passion isn’t always useful career advice. Here’s my main issue: people are taking this whole doing what you love thing literally. Continue Reading…

In Career , ,
permalink

Inaugural Post.

October 7, 2012

1

I was co-working with my friend Laura a few months ago talking to her about my future, my goals and what I want to be when I grow up when it hit me; I’m not actually making much progress towards those goals today. It took me a few days to really understand why I wasn’t progressing like I wanted to and it took me even longer to articulate it to someone else. The fact is, I’m comfortable.

Comfort zones aren’t always bad, but when your life goals involve making a giant impact on the world, being comfortable won’t get you too far. I was telling a close friend about this epiphany when decided I needed to take action, work on myself and grab the bull by the horns [yep, I just said that]. This website is my first step. Continue Reading…

In Personal , , ,
permalink