Making Awesome Website Experiences

By Stephen Morrissey

A little bit about me

• I was a communications officer in the US Air Force for 7 years

• I’m a 4th degree black belt

• I lived in Pittsburgh for 7 years, but have always liked the Steelers

What is a website experience?

• Website: “A connected group of pages on the World Wide

Web regarded as a single entity, usually maintained by one

person or organization and devoted to a single topic or

several closely related topics.”

• Experience: “A particular instance of personally encountering

or undergoing something”

What makesa good website good experience?

It is easy (and pleasurable) to accomplish your task

What tasks? Let’s look at some examples…

Planning a vacation

Looking at cute cat pictures

Video game tips

Help with math homework

How do I make a good website experience?

Don’t start building just yet

Interviews

Interviews

• Ask people what they do

• Dig deeper to find out what they really want to do

• Look around their desk / workspace

Audits

Audits

• Look for consistency in text• Electronic mail, Email, E-mail, e-mail, email, mail, etc.

• Re-use patterns• Navigation

• Button placement• OK/Cancel, or Cancel/OK

Experience(mistakes)

Professional Experience

• I’ve been making websites since 1996 (that’s 18 years, or half my life)• Many successes and many failures

• Re-use existing solutions• Checkout experience

How can you make website experiences?

Look for gaps & opportunities

• PayPal• Then: go to bank, withdraw money, give to person

• Now: Send email

• ZipCar• Go to desk, wait in line, reserve by the day, get keys, walk to lot, get car

• Go online, reserve by the hour, get car

Get educated

• Computer programming (build a website)

• Art (pretty website)

• Social Studies (connect to cultures)

• Psychology (understand our brains)

• Business (use the web to make money)

Be awesome

Go make something awesome

• Write your thoughts down

• Read more than you write

• Put words into action and build it

• Demonstrate your passion