At the end of last year, I contributed to a year-end roundup piece in A List Apart called “What I Learned About the Web in 2011.” I shared the most impactful lesson I had learned from various user research projects last year.

CONTEXT IS KING
The most important thing that 2011 taught me about web design is that physical context of use can no longer be assumed by platform, only intentional context can. For the past couple of years, we have gotten into the habit of presuming that mobile means on-the-go, desktop denotes a desk, and tablet is on the toilet. But increasingly the lines are blurring on where devices are being used and how they’re being used in unison. This year I have learned to see devices as location agnostic and instead associate them with purpose—I want to check (mobile), I want to manage (desktop), I want to immerse (tablet). This shift away from objective context toward subjective context will reshape the way we design experiences across and between devices, to better support user goals and ultimately mimic analog tools woven into our physical spaces.

When I had blogged about my reflections, Jim Nielsen commented that my thoughts had spurred him to create a graphic to represent my idea. I love it so much that I wanted to reblog it here.

Paul Boag also read my thoughts in ALA and wrote about his reaction in a post titled, “Device implies use not context.” In his case he’s using “context” to denote physical context, whereas I differentiated between physical context (location) and intentional context (intention of use). While he likes the notion of tying device to intent, he isn’t entirely sure he agrees with the intentions that I apply to each device.

What do you think of how I’m using device choice as an indication of intention and not location? Do you feel that my division of check/immerse/manage is a fair one?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts as I dig into this concept more deeply.

• What I learned in 2011 and my predictions for 2012
• Apple’s Most Notorious Flops
• Pleasure and Pain has gone mobile
• TweetDeck stream of consciousness
• Why I Don’t Have an iPhone (but might someday)

2012 started off with a bang and my mind has been moving at a million miles a minute ever since. I managed to miss a few important milestones and never got around to taking the time to reflect on the year here. I suppose I decided that dwelling on the past (even if it yielded some benefit) shouldn’t take precedent over working on the future.

But I’m a fan of tying things up with a nice little bow on top…maybe I need it in order to fully move on. So I’ll keep it short.

January 7, 2012 marked my 4th anniversary on Twitter. Joining Twitter completely changed my life and it continues to have a huge impact on my work every day. Whatever you think about the new design or the lack of features on the apps, or whatever silly complaint you might have about it, this asymmetrical chat room we call Twitter is ultimately about one thing and one thing only: people. People connecting with people they would never have had access to, would never have been able to communicate with so fluidly, so frequently, and so intimately if Twitter had never existed. And for that I’m incredibly thankful. [On my 1 year anniversary on Twitter]

January 10, 2012 marked the 4th anniversary of this blog. Pleasure and Pain was born just 3 days later, when I realized that being constrained to 140 characters wouldn’t nearly be enough for me to fully express myself to the world. The blog was unnamed for a while, but the intention has been the same since day one: bringing empathy into design and business, and stopping at nothing to defend the needs of the people who use our products. It has been a wild ride and I can’t wait to see where things go next.

I published with a lot less frequency in 2011, largely due to a significant increase in my speaking engagements and some pretty intensely awesome client projects. But when I did make the time, I found myself writing about things that I was incredibly passionate about. Many of you share those same passions, and the posts started very interesting conversations throughout the community. I’m really proud of that, and encourage all of you to do the same. Write what you know, what you believe, share it far and wide. People will respond, people will connect, and you both will be changed.

Here are my most popular posts (based on comments and views) from 2011:

1. You’re not a user experience designer if…
2. I’m Not Cool
3. Hubs and Connectors: Understanding Networks Through Data Visualization
4. Why I detest the term “Lean UX”
5. Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX
6. The Neighborhood Business Experience
7. Netflix Recommends: Art & Design Documentaries
8. Nationwide Insurance demonstrates user research with NationPam
9. FONC and the Impostor Syndrome
10. Photo of the day: Negative Floors

Thank you for being a part of my experience. Thank you for making it so pleasurable and so unexpected and uplifting and really, truly wild. I’m really looking forward to connecting much more deeply in 2012. Now let’s get to it!

• Best of the Last Two Years
• Pleasure and Pain turns 3
• Pleasure and Pain turns 2
• Are you new here? My top 10 posts
• Some early posts that deserve more traffic

I’m not much for the “women in tech” stuff — preferring to prove equality rather than beg for it — but sometimes the gender imbalance in this industry is so damaging that it would be unethical for me to not call it out.

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post titled The Plain Numbers About Women in Tech, presenting the raw data to prove that the highest profile startups employ very few women, and moreover that the vast majority of women who do work for startups are in roles that involve selling the product, not making it.

Some people shared in my dismay. Some people offered up the names of startups that have a more gender-balanced staff. Some people simply defended the places they work saying, “We’ve tried!” or “Does it really matter?”

A year has passed, and in a future post I’ll go back through those companies and check to see if their ratios have changed. But there’s something deeper here that I’d like to explore first.

On Twitter the other day, I saw some investor friends congratulate a fellow VC on being promoted at his firm. I clicked through to the firm’s website and navigated over to their team page. I immediately noticed something — all men. So I checked out some other hotshot VC firms off the top of my head — all men, almost all of them. I’d always suspected it I guess, but here they all were staring back at me.

As a user experience strategist, I have spent the entirety of my career devising ways to get companies to better understand the needs of their target audiences. Building a culture of empathy within the business is my most fundamental goal, and the greatest obstacle I face is convincing upper management that their customers are nothing like them, that they have to think outside of themselves in order to succeed.

So here’s my question: if all-male venture capital firms are investing in all-male startups, where is the female influence coming from? Who is guiding these companies on when and how to target women? With women making 85% of purchasing decisions and far surpassing men in their Internet usage, doesn’t it seem wrong that hardly any women are involved in controlling which companies create our future?

I thought it was time to take an empirical look at the gender ratio of some popular venture capital firms by looking at their team pages, as I previously did with the startups. I limited my research to firms that have a focus in early-stage funding, have funded > 5 brand name startups, and have funds worth > $100 million. Again, this is by no means a comprehensive study, but this is what I found.

Take a look for yourself…and let me know what you see.

NOTE: I excluded female staff NOT in investment positions (e.g., accounting, legal, biz dev, operations, admin) from the counts below. Yes, I did this all by hand.

High Profile Early-Stage Venture Capital Firms

Accel Partners

Team Page: http://www.accel.com/people/index.php
Women Investors: 4/40
Fund Size: ~$6 Billion [source]
Portfolio: comScore, 99 Designs, Birchbox, Diapers.com, Etsy, Kayak, Trulia, Groupon, LearnVest
Location: Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; London, UK; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China; Bangalore, India; New Delhi, India

Andreessen Horowitz

Team Page: http://a16z.com
Women Investors: 0/6
Fund Size: $1.5 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, Fab, Facebook, Groupon, Pinterest, Zynga, Skype
Location: Menlo Park, CA

August Capital

Team Page: http://www.augustcap.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/8
Fund Size: ~$1.3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Six Apart, Aardvark, Evite, RelayRides, Blippy, Visio, Livemocha
Location: Menlo Park, CA

Bain Capital Ventures

Team Page: http://www.baincapitalventures.com/your-team/
Women Investors: 1/31
Fund Size: ~$1.5 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Blip.tv, Jott Networks, Lala, Rent The Runway, Color
Location: Boston, MA; New York, NY; Palo Alto, CA

Benchmark Capital

Team Page: http://www.benchmark.com/people/#
Women Investors: 0/9
Fund Size: ~$3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: 1-800-Flowers, eBags, Dropbox, Zipcar, Instagram, Twitter
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Herzliya, Israel

Bessemer Venture Partners

Team Page: http://www.bvp.com/Team/
Women Investors: 1/39
Fund Size: ~$2 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Pinterest, Shopify, Knewton, Twilio, Diapers.com, Soap.com, LinkedIn
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Larchmont, NY; Cambridge, MA; Herzliya, Israel; Mumbai, India

Charles River Ventures

Team Page: http://www.crv.com/team
Women Investors: 0/10
Fund Size: ~$2.1 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Yammer, HubSpot, Scribd, Wanderfly, Zendesk, Geni, Twitter
Location: Cambridge, MA; Menlo Park, CA

DFJ Gotham

Team Page: http://dfjgotham.com/team.html
Women Investors: 1/5
Fund Size: ~$6 Billion [source]
Portfolio: ADstruc, Drop.io, Medialets, Mimeo, Solvate, Totsy, Yipit
Location: New York, NY

First Round Capital

Team Page: http://www.firstround.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/6
Fund Size: ~$126 Million [source]
Portfolio: Fab, Get Satisfaction, GroupMe, ModCloth, Path, Taskrabbit
Location: San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA

Foundry Group

Team Page: http://www.foundrygroup.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/4
Fund Size: ~$225 Million [source]
Portfolio: Fitbit, CrowdTap, Makerbot Industries, Gist, Cheezburger, Zynga, Medialets
Location: Boulder, CO

General Catalyst Partners

Team Page: http://www.generalcatalyst.com/team
Women Investors: 1/19 (early-stage)
Fund Size: ~$500 Million [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, GroupMe, Hunch, Kayak, Rue La La, Chloe + Isabel, Upromise
Location: Cambridge, MA; Palo Alto, CA

Google Ventures

Team Page: http://www.googleventures.com/team
Women Investors: 2/13
Fund Size: ~$200 Million (annually) [source]
Portfolio: HomeAway, Nest, Read It Later, 23AndMe, Signpost, ThinkNear, RelayRides
Location: Mountain View, CA; Cambridge, MA; Seattle, WA; New York, NY

Greycroft Partners

Team Page: http://www.greycroftpartners.com/team/
Women Investors: 2/6
Fund Size: ~$200 Million [source]
Portfolio: Buddy Media, Klout, Pulse, Joyent, Crowd Fusion, The Huffington Post, Babble
Location: New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA

Greylock Partners

Team Page: http://greylock.com/teams
Women Investors: 1/16
Fund Size: ~$2 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, Constant Contact, Coupons.com, Facebook, Groupon, Pandora
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Cambridge, MA; London, UK; Beijing, China; Bangalore, India

Highland Capital Partners

Team Page: http://www.hcp.com/highland_team
Women Investors: 2/27
Fund Size: ~$3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: CafeMom, Gemvara, Digg, Pixable, Rent The Runway, Paper.li, Yipit
Location: Cambridge, MA; Menlo Park, CA; Geneva, Switzerland, London, UK; Shanghai, China

Khosla Ventures

Team Page: http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/people.html
Women Investors: 0/8
Fund Size: ~$1.05 Billion [source]
Portfolio: HowAboutWe, RockMelt, Xobni, Square, AppNexus, ZocDoc
Location: Menlo Park, CA

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Team Page: http://kpcb.com/teams
Women Investors: 10/44
Fund Size: ~$900 Million (early-stage) [source]
Portfolio: Blue Nile, Zaarly, Flipboard, Groupon, Klout, Spotify, Path, Square, Nest
Location: Menlo Park, NY; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China

Matrix Partners

Team Page: http://www.matrixpartners.com/site/team_landing/
Women Investors: 0/9
Fund Size: ~$1.25 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Gilt Groupe, HubSpot, Care.com, Airvana, Apple (once upon a time)
Location: Palo Alto, CA; Cambridge, MA; New York, NY; Mumbai, India; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China

Polaris Venture Partners

Team Page: http://www.polarisventures.com/WhoWeAre/OurTeam.asp
Women Investors: 2/18
Fund Size: ~$3.5 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Automattic, Confluence, Formspring, JibJab, Turntable,
Location: Waltham, MA; Cambridge, MA; Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; Dublin, Ireland

Rho Ventures

Team Page: http://kpcb.com/teams
Women Investors: 10/44
Fund Size: ~$510 Million [source]
Portfolio: Bluefly, GetGlue, OMGPOP, iVillage, Tapjoy, TACODA, Everyday Health
Location: New York, NY; Palo Alta, CA; Montreal, Cananda

RRE Ventures

Team Page: http://www.rre.com/#team
Women Investors: 0/8
Fund Size: ~$137 Million [source]
Portfolio: Betaworks, Bit.ly, HowAboutWe, Yipit, Xobni, Kik, GetGlue, Solvate
Location: New York, NY

Sequoia Capital

Team Page: http://www.sequoiacap.com/us/early ”
Women Investors: 10*/62 (early-stage) *all women are in the India and China locations
Fund Size: ~$1.3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, Funny or Die, Kayak, LinkedIn, Square, Eventbrite, Dropbox
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Herzliya, Israel; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China; Hong Kong, China; Bangalore, India; Mumbai, India; New Delhi, India

Spark Capital

Team Page: http://www.sparkcapital.com/team
Women Investors: 0/7
Fund Size: ~$720 Million [source]
Startups Funded: Twitter, Tumblr, Svpply, Runkeeper, Foursquare, Boxee
Location: Boston, MA

True Ventures

Team Page: http://www.trueventures.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/5
Fund Size: ~$378 Million [source]
Portfolio: 20×200, Automattic, Fitbit, Assistly, GoodReads, Plancast, About.me, Typekit
Location: Palo Alto, CA; San Francisco, CA; Falls, VA

Union Square Ventures

Team Page: http://www.usv.com/team/
Women Investors: 1/6
Fund Size: ~$450 Million [source]
Portfolio: Etsy, Boxee, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Meetup, Zynga
Location: New York, NY

Targeted to Women

A few female-led venture firms have cropped up with the mission to finance female-led startups, but they’re all managing funds well under $100 Million and are generally recognized as angel investors:

Golden Seeds

Team Page: http://www.goldenseeds.com/Funds/our_team
Women Investors: 8/10
Fund Size: ~$26.5 Million [source]
Portfolio: Lark, Little Passports, Sweet Riot, Tikatok, DRY Soda, Dancing Deer Baking Company
Location: New York, NY; Boston, MA; Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA

Women’s Venture Capital Fund

Team Page: http://www.womensvcfund.com/about/team/
Women Investors: 3/3
Fund Size: Unknown
Portfolio: Ivy Corp
Location: Palo Alto, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR

BELLE Capital

Team Page: http://www.bellevc.com/belle-angel-investor-team.html
Women Investors: 10/11
Fund Size: Unknown
Portfolio: Current Motor Company, Michelle’s Miracle
Location: Detroit, MI

JumpThru

Team Page: http://jumpthru.net/team/
Women Investors: 1/1
Fund Size: N/A
Portfolio: N/A
Location: New York, NY

Joanne Wilson

More info: O’Reilly Radar, The Next Web
Fund Size: N/A
Portfolio: Curbed (Eater/Racked), Food52, Red Stamp, Rick’s Picks, Hot Bread Kitchen, Gotham Gym, The Moon Group, Catchafire, Loverly, Daily Worth and MOUSE
Location: New York, NY

Bucking the trend

VC firms that aren’t specifically targeting female-run startups, but who have a predominance of female investors:

StarVest Partners

Team Page: http://www.starvestpartners.com/team/investment-team/
Women Investors: 5/6
Fund Size: ~$400 Million [source]
Portfolio: iCrossing, Insurance.com, ideeli, Bluestreak, Host Analytics
Location: New York, NY

DBL Investors

Team Page: http://www.dblinvestors.com/team.php
Women Investors: 5/8
Fund Size: ~$140 Million [source]
Portfolio: Tesla Motors, Pandora, Livescribe, Ecologic
Location: San Francisco, CA

Am I missing something?

So what do these numbers tell you? Have I forgotten about a VC firm with predominantly female investors? Am I unaware of some firms for-women-by-women?

Please set the record straight! Or share your thoughts on why we’re seeing this unsettling trend, and what we can do to make it right.

Further Reading

• CNN: Where the Powerful Women Aren’t
• Forbes: How Women are Getting Left Out of the Venture Capital Game
• Boston Business Journal: Is Boston Not an Ideal Place for Female VCs?
• Techcrunch: Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VCs Have a Gender Problem
• Techcrunch: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups
• Inc: Can’t Get Funding? It’s Not Because You’re a Woman
• Where Are The Ladies
• Women’s Entrepreneur Festival

• The plain numbers about women in tech – The Startups
• Whit Hour – Week 16
• When You Startup With UX
• NY Tech Meetup: The European Edition
• List of Firsts: Saturday, April 19, 2008

Last Thursday I gave my talk Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX, at WebVisions at the Hudson Hotel in NYC. Christina Beard, a graphic designer and writer for Core77, was in the audience and wrote about my presentation in an article published yesterday.

Christina later asked me if I believed my principles would change as technologies change and users adapt. I told her:

I feel confident that my principles for designing experiences will stand the test of time because they are technology agnostic. People deserve to be treated with humanity and empathy regardless of the communication medium. As the web evolves, as technology becomes even more pervasive and robust, we have both an increasing opportunity and responsibility to treat each other with compassion. I hope that my principles can continue to guide our behavior as technologists and ultimately change the way we do business at the most fundamental level.

Core77 is possibly the oldest-ever online magazine, started by two Pratt Students (my dad’s alma mater) for industrial designers, and has expanded to all facets of design over the years. It’s a very highly respected publication and I am honored to have my name in it.

I hope this helps designers of all stripes to think about the philosophy behind their work and approach their designs with principle and purpose.

[Read the full article]

Can you tell just how sick I was from the photo? Eesh!

• Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX
• Pleasure and Pain now on UX Magazine
• My 20 Guiding Principles for UX Design on Monster.com’s InsideTech
• Whit Hour – Week 10
• See For Yourself on Johnny Holland Magazine

It’s a funny thing — the more you share your opinions openly, the more people ask you for them. As the year is coming to a close, if you’re thinking about starting a blog next year or writing more frequently on the one you already have, don’t just make an empty resolution. STICK TO IT. I’ve been writing here for almost four years, and I am evidence of the fact that amazing things happen when you’re devoted to putting yourself out there.

Recently I was asked to contribute my thoughts to a few year-end articles, and have been quoted alongside many web practitioners who inspire me every day. You can read my excerpts here, but I encourage you to go to the full articles for a lot more wisdom:

A List Apart: What I Learned About the Web in 2011

CONTEXT IS KING
The most important thing that 2011 taught me about web design is that physical context of use can no longer be assumed by platform, only intentional context can. For the past couple of years, we have gotten into the habit of presuming that mobile means on-the-go, desktop denotes a desk, and tablet is on the toilet. But increasingly the lines are blurring on where devices are being used and how they’re being used in unison. This year I have learned to see devices as location agnostic and instead associate them with purpose—I want to check (mobile), I want to manage (desktop), I want to immerse (tablet). This shift away from objective context toward subjective context will reshape the way we design experiences across and between devices, to better support user goals and ultimately mimic analog tools woven into our physical spaces.

Webdesigner Depot: 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.”

I have seen so much incredible talent squandered on designing products that only meet the needs of a small, homogenous, insular group of friends. While this can be fun and challenging for a side project, it is a fleeting satisfaction.

In 2012, mastery of the tools and a cool idea will no longer be enough to get attention. I predict that there will be a widespread movement to uncover and understand deep-seeded, life-damaging problems for sizable communities across the globe, and our efforts instead will be put towards improving their lives and work in ways that empower humanity. Productivity and entertainment tools have their place, but I suspect that we won’t continue to pat each other on the back so vigorously for continuing to crowd the market.

Design is the problem. The social, economic and political environments we will find ourselves in in 2012 will push us towards asking questions before devising solutions, equip us with a longer-term vision, and ultimately deepen our greater purpose.

The Next Web: The Future of Web Design

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.

What did you learn about the web in 2011 and what do you predict we’ll see next year (or are just wishing will happen)? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

• Location Agnostic, Context Specific
• TweetDeck stream of consciousness
• Why I detest the term “Lean UX”
• boxee now in public alpha
• Onboarding: A Sidebar in “Designing Social Interfaces”

Stuff is cheap, in the long run. At the end of our days, we’re not likely to remember the things we acquired as much as the moments we experienced.

This holiday season, reconsider the packaged goods you’re intending to buy for the people you love. Instead, design an experience for them they’ll never forget.

Here’s my take on a holiday gift guide for that special someone on your list:

1. Push the couches together and make a love nest that you both climb into. Put food on a tray between you, find a romantic movie on Netflix, and fall asleep in each other’s arms.
2. Cook a meal together using only ingredients you bought that day from the farmers’ market. Make something you’ve never made before. Do the work together, then enjoy the fruits of your labor together. Leave the dishes for tomorrow.
3. Take a drive in the rain. Bring sandwiches. Park in an empty parking lot and turn off the windshield wipers. Turn the radio off and then your cell phones. Share your lunch and your secrets.
4. Build furniture. Lay out the materials, gather the appropriate tools, and take turns reading the instructions. Divide and conquer. Question each other’s accuracy. Laugh when you get it wrong. Enjoy starting over because it means you’ll have more time working on something together.
5. Play startup entrepreneur and design an app together. Bring paper, pencils and sticky notes. Start with a problem you both always face, then sketch your way out of it. Encourage each other’s crazy ideas and explore new territory. Bonus points if you build a prototype. Figure out a business model and mock-pitch it to your friends.
6. Be their career coach for the day. Act professionally, greeting each other with a handshake. Find out what they really want to be doing and what they feel is missing. Listen closely. Ask the tough questions and offer thoughtful solutions. Brainstorm new directions and ways to get there. Write down next steps. Plan to meet again.
7. Go to a dimly lit local jazz club with people you’ve never heard of playing soothing melodies. Wear blazers. Drink whiskey. Put on your introspective faces and sway with the music. Snap your fingers at the end of each song. Make fun of the people sitting next to you who are clearly on an uncomfortable date in the quietest voice you can muster. Buy the musicians a drink when their set ends.
8. Find an underground supper club. Be the last to arrive so everyone is already mingling. Make conversation with the host. Sit across from strangers. Talk about things you’d never talk about with people you know. Pay attention to the description of each dish and savor every bite, trying to taste each ingredient. Compliment the chef. Ask a ton of questions. Stick around until they kick you out.
9. Go someplace you can really see the stars. Stare up at the sky together and marvel at all its wonder. Guess the constellations. Make up names for ones you don’t know. Talk about life on other planets. Wander through the galaxy in your minds and promise to experience space travel in your lifetime.
10. Get up from the dinner table and dance in the living room. Pause the passing of time and hold each other close. Half listen to the lyrics and half feel the music and wholly move in unison. Smile wide. Imagine what the other is thinking. Don’t talk. Lean back and let the other hold you up. Pretend the song will never end.

Eliminate the baggage and make your future. Save your money and save each other. From me to you, happy holidays.

• Darlin’ Do Not Fear
• I Scare Myself
• An Event Apart Minneapolis 2010
• I’ll be speaking at IA Summit 2009 in Memphis
• Nationwide Insurance demonstrates user research with NationPam

The NY Tech Meetup, founded by Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman and co-founded by Dawn Barber, has more than 19,000 members and draws 800 attendees every month. Last year, NYTM became a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization incorporated in New York State and as a result now has a Board of Directors that steers the priorities of the organization. There is currently one open board seat and I am campaigning to be elected.

My mission as a member of the NYTM Board of Directors will be to relentlessly advocate for the needs and desires of our membership, and to ensure that their priorities mirror the priorities of the organization.

Voting is now open for all members of NYTM who have RSVPed to at least one event, and continues through December 20. If you qualify to vote, I hope you’ll consider me to be your candidate.

At a Meet the Candidates event at New Work City tonight, each candidate was given two minutes to share their platform. I have shared the full-text of my speech below.

If you have any questions or comments about my platform, please don’t hesitate to ask here in the comments or via email at whitney@whitneyhess.com.

Thank you for your support.

I’m a user experience designer. That means I help organizations create easy and pleasurable experiences for their customers. And as a 4-year member of the NYTM, I can tell you that the experience of being an attendee has significant room for improvement. From the ticketing process, to entering the venue, to event format, Q&A, exiting and after party. We’ve become a really big crowd and as we’ve scaled, we have lost a tremendous amount of the camaraderie that existed in earlier years without equally increasing the value that the event itself provides.

I’m a native New Yorker, run a UX consultancy here and have worked with dozens of Startups who have had the heart to set up shop in NY. Whether in their infancy or adolescence, 5 users or 500,000, I have taught them how to understand and empathize with their customers, deepen engagement and create long-lasting fans. I show companies how to make people’s lives better.

When people pay $10 to attend a meetup, and have to hover over their browsers waiting for tickets to become available like it’s a Justin Bieber concert, we need to make them feel like it was the best $10 they’ll ever spend. Tickets need to be easier to procure, both for first-timers and for members who have supported the meetup for years. There needs to be total visibility into the demo selection process, with some degree of input from the NYTM membership. The demos — and the moderation — should be professional and rehearsed, with no duds; we should be training presenters on how to communicate their vision and wow the audience. And for a tech meetup, there absolutely needs to be reliable and powerful wifi, no excuses.

That’s what I want to do for the NYTM and that’s what I hope you’ll help me do by electing me to the Board of Directors.

Thank you.

• NY Tech Meetup — March 2011
• I was asked to join the IAI Board of Advisors
• Congrats to the new IAI board members
• NY Tech Meetup — February 2009
• I’m running for the 2008 Information Architecture Institute board of directors

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 was 7:19pm. There I was, standing outside of Tarzian Hardware, its gate down and locked, the lights turned off. The store hours sign read Monday – Friday 8:30am – 7pm. I knocked on the window. I rattled the gate. I called the store from my cell phone with 8% battery remaining and could hear the ringing inside. No answer. I planned to leave a message in desperation in the hopes that someone would check voicemail overnight, but the mailbox was full. I was screwed.

The only copy of my apartment keys were inside.

I had brought them in an hour earlier to get dupes made, then left to run other errands. In my attempt to be efficient, I had made a fatal mistake: I never checked to see when the store closed. I’m accustomed to stores being open 24/7, certainly not closing at 7pm. Toto, we’re not in Manahttan anymore.

As I stood there hopeless, planning to ride the subway 45 minutes to stay overnight in my parents’ empty apartment (yeah, I had those keys!), I gave it one last ditch effort by Googling the store owner’s name in an attempt to find a home phone number. The store had only been closed for 20 minutes; the closing manager couldn’t be too far away, right?

Google turned up dry. I was out of options.

Just when I turned around to leave, I saw a man with a dog approaching the apartment building above the store. I had a game-time decision to make, and I went for it: “Excuse me,” I asked to his back as he put his keys in the front door.

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if you know the owners of this store.”

“I do.” Wow, Park Slopers are tight, I thought.

“Well do you happen to have their phone number? I didn’t know what time they closed and the only copy of my house keys are inside.” I was embarrassed to say it out loud.

“I have the keys to the store,” he said, and blood started coursing through my veins again.

“I can’t believe you have the keys to the store,” I exclaimed. “What luck!” He tied up his dog to a hydrant and got down on the ground to unlock the gate and the door.

As he undid the last lock, he looked up at me. “I’m the owner.”

Dumbfounded. Seriously?! THIS is Brooklyn.

Once inside, he found the copies of my keys under the counter along with the several screwdrivers I had put aside earlier to buy when I came back. When he was ringing me up and the cost was rising, he generously asked, “Did you mean to buy this brand? These are professional grade tools.” I thanked him for his honesty and told him that I was replacing some of my old and broken stuff, and a salesperson had helped me find these. “And these are the ones he told you to get?” He almost seemed upset that the guy had upsold me.

“I’m fine with these. I’ll never have to replace them again,” I said, grateful that he had been there to save me and eager not to shortchange him now.

As he finished up, I asked him his name (John) and his story (family business since 1921 that he now runs). I told him my name, said I was new to the neighborhood, and assured him that he’d be seeing a lot of me.

As we walked out and he closed up, I was struck by something: in 29 years, I’ve never introduced myself to a shop owner before. I’ve never cared to. I have greatly treasured my anonymity in the big city and have rarely engaged in small talk anywhere I’ve shopped. I’ve valued getting in and out quickly, silently, and mechanically. I truly don’t know why.

But I chose to move, chose to leave my native Manhattan with its deadly consumerist march and its Disneyfication and its hordes of tourists and multiplying big box chains. I wanted to live in a cozy neighborhood, to support its small businesses, to know its history and to become a part of it.

I’ve always wanted to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. Where customer service is a moral obligation, not a business tactic.

I am home.

• Apple Customer Support Fiasco
• Photo of the day: LLUP to open
• Photo of the day: Whirlpool dishwasher utensil tray
• My high school computer science homework
• Photo of the day: Do Not Disturb

All men carry pens, right? But putting a pen in your pants pocket can be a bit of a pain — it rolls around with your keys, sticks out to one side, the cap tears at the pocket lining.

Sitting next to my friend Nik Agharkar at a dinner party, I noticed him reach inside his suit jacket to grab a pen when the bill came. And that’s when I saw it: the pen pocket.

Forgive me if this is incredibly common and I’m just late to the game. I’m not a man, I don’t own men’s suits, and I don’t have a tendency to look inside many men’s suit jackets. Or perhaps I just don’t know many men who wear bespoke suits. Nik’s suit by Custom Men has this ingenius feature and I just had to snap a pic.

I poked around and found other examples of this:

Peyman Umay:

“Pen pocket is a simple and practical addition to your suit. This is a must have customization option for business men. Pulling a high class pen from a pen pocket to sign an important deal is a great way to display a personalized lining color and to subtly insinuate that you own a bespoke suit.”

A Suit that Fits:

“No more fumbling around in your pocket trying to get a grasp of your Mont Blank (or 4 bic); our fantastic New Product Development whizz, Mighel Critten, has launched a REALLY cool attribute that’ll be put into all our suits for this moment onwards! On the inside of the jacket, next to the pocket, is a small slot specifically designed to hold a pen. This extra feature will now come with every suit purchased from ASuitThatFits.com.”

But of course, this feature is conditional for two user groups: right-handed or left?

Wistful Writer:

“I was thoroughly satisfied, save for the fact that they failed to ask me if I was left-handed: the pen pocket on the inside of the jacket was on the wrong side. … If I were a more patient man who cared immensely about the placement of the pen pocket, I would’ve held the Michael Andrews Bespoke to their satisfaction guarantee. However, the truth is that it’s not all that important to me, and I already felt that seven weeks was long enough to wait.”

• Photo of the day: Do Not Disturb
• Photo of the day: You Can’t Un-Shit a First Impression
• Photo of the day: Cigarette vending machine
• Photo of the day: LLUP to open
• Photo of the day: Bags on Board