We'd like to thank everyone who came out for our February 18 “Table-4-20” IxDA NYC event. A special thanks to industry leaders Whitney Hess and Karen McGrane who attended as our special guests.
For two hours, the attendees shared casual conversation and New York pizza. The atmosphere was very relaxed, and no one hesitated to switch seats and join conversations at other parts of the table. *The Event Objectives Were:* - To gather professionals of similar interest together for a focused conversation - To give access to leaders in the field for direct questions - To introduce IxD professionals to each other We look forward to having a similar event in the spring! *About our guests:* *WHITNEY HESS* is a user experience design consultant based in New York City. She helps make stuff easy and pleasurable to use. Prior to going independent, Whitney was on the design team at Liquidnet, an international financial software company that runs the leading electronic marketplace for wholesale stock-trading. Previously, she was an interaction designer at two marketing agencies, Digitas and Tribal DDB, where her clients included American Express, The New York Times, Allstate, Claritin, Tropicana, and EarthLink. Most notably, she helped to conceive, design, and test an innovative card search tool for American Express, and is named as a co-inventor on its U.S. patent. Whitney is a strategic partner with Happy Cog and user experience consultant for Boxee, among other startups and major corporations. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing and a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. She writes about improving the human experience on her blog, Pleasure and Pain <http://whitneyhess.com/blog/> and can always be reached viaTwitter @whitneyhess<http://twitter.com/whitneyhess> . *KAREN MCGRANE *If the internet is more awesome than it was in 1995, Karen would like to claim a very tiny piece of the credit. For more than 15 years, Karen has helped create more usable digital products through the power of user experience design and content strategy. Today, as Senior Partner at Bond Art + Science, she works with clients to create personalized portals that dynamically update based on user behavior, develops data visualizations that make complex quantitative information easy to understand, and consults with publishers on ways to make their sites more appealing to readers and successful for advertisers. Prior to starting Bond, Karen helped build the User Experience practice at Razorfish, hired as the very first Information Architect and leaving as the VP and National Lead for UX. Over the decade she spent there, she led projects for dozens of clients, overseeing major redesign initiatives for The New York Times, Condé Nast, Disney, and Citibank. Karen is also on the faculty of the new MFA in Interaction Design program at SVA in New York, where she teaches Interaction Design History, focusing on the key movements and trends that have shaped the field, and Design Management, which aims to give students the skills they need to run successful projects, teams, and businesses. She received an MS in Technical Communication fromRensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction. See you then, IxDA New York Local Leaders http://www.ixda.org http://www.twitter.com/IxDA_NYC ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
