I’m just beginning this new blog. I’ve been an Internet Strategy Consultant now for the last two and a half years, and am now doing the work of redefining — or rather, clarifying — my career goals. I expect in that way I am not unlike many other recently laid off professionals.
What am I all about? I love the web. I love websites that do a fantastic job of helping the user find what they are looking for, making them feel smart, making the experience easy and pleasant. I am passionate about this. I have worked on it in the planning phases of website projects and have come around on the other side of a project to catch problems in a quality assurance role.
I am a user experience professional. That means, in many ways, while my career has given me many titles and hats to wear, from art director and designer to account manager to web strategist, it’s always been about making something usable, functional, attractive, simple, and reliable.
In addition I care about optimization. The business side of the website. Does the website bring the visitors the site owner wants? Do the visitors follow the links they should? Are they pursuing the goals the site owner wants them to? Filling out a form, placing an order, registering for a service, contacting the business?
This is what I think about, what I care about in my work. I care about what businesses and organizations want from their websites and what the website’s visitors are looking for from them. The expectations of the visitors and the assumptions of the site owners. I want to be able to help these two objectives to meet in the middle, and for the goals of both to be met. I once heard a quote from a designer that went something like this: “OK, yes it’s nice if it looks good. But if it looks good but it has no purpose or you don’t know how to use it, what good is it?” This is where design has brought me, to exploring the purpose, and clearing a pathway to that goal.
I hope to write about what I have learned and can share on these subjects, and hopefully provide something of interest to you.
