04 May 2007
My First
I'm finally done interviewing for new jobs and signed an offer to start at an exciting new place. It's going to be nice working on a real design team again, at my last couple positions I've been the sole usability resource and that's a bad place to be in. I recently read this post by Mark Hurst and it brought back some memories.
I was actually the UI designer for Evite when that version of the invite launched way back in fall of 2000. It was my first UI-related job title. Yes, its basic structure is six years old save for about 2/3 of the ad units. Of course back then it also seemed like a good idea to employ 70 people to make it happen and that's what led to the company being sold to Ticketmaster and basically put in maintenance mode from a product development perspective.
I'm not ashamed of it, it was a great challenge to try to deliver good design weighed against the need for customization by the user and a need for more advertising and our whole design and PM team worked very hard to make it happen. It just fails to incorporate the last half-decade of good user experience thinking. Sadly we had an entire new structure for creating the invitations based on a lot of customer feedback and user research but we never got to launch it.
Evite was the first place I ever worked that gathered feedback directly from users instead of through surveys, third-party focus groups, overpriced usability consultants and the other traditional market research. We made imagemaps out of screen comps as prototypes. We used to monitor usability tests with a VGA splitter and a Speakerphone so we could watch the users screen actions on a projector in the next room. We tested multiple versions of new screens to portions of our users. We used to invite expert users over and feed them pizza in exchange for the ability to pick their brains. These were the days before "Don't Make Me Think!" and most people still thought you needed an expensive, monolithic testing cycle to get valuable feedback. As unsuccessful as it was as an independent business it was a great place to work and we did some very interesting work. And a lot of the people I worked with there have gone on to do some very interesting things.
I was actually the UI designer for Evite when that version of the invite launched way back in fall of 2000. It was my first UI-related job title. Yes, its basic structure is six years old save for about 2/3 of the ad units. Of course back then it also seemed like a good idea to employ 70 people to make it happen and that's what led to the company being sold to Ticketmaster and basically put in maintenance mode from a product development perspective.
I'm not ashamed of it, it was a great challenge to try to deliver good design weighed against the need for customization by the user and a need for more advertising and our whole design and PM team worked very hard to make it happen. It just fails to incorporate the last half-decade of good user experience thinking. Sadly we had an entire new structure for creating the invitations based on a lot of customer feedback and user research but we never got to launch it.
Evite was the first place I ever worked that gathered feedback directly from users instead of through surveys, third-party focus groups, overpriced usability consultants and the other traditional market research. We made imagemaps out of screen comps as prototypes. We used to monitor usability tests with a VGA splitter and a Speakerphone so we could watch the users screen actions on a projector in the next room. We tested multiple versions of new screens to portions of our users. We used to invite expert users over and feed them pizza in exchange for the ability to pick their brains. These were the days before "Don't Make Me Think!" and most people still thought you needed an expensive, monolithic testing cycle to get valuable feedback. As unsuccessful as it was as an independent business it was a great place to work and we did some very interesting work. And a lot of the people I worked with there have gone on to do some very interesting things.
