Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

Web Design Superheroes Revisited, Part 1

February 25, 2010

On Tues­day, I had the priv­i­lege of eat­ing lunch with one of my Web design super­heroes, Jared Spool. I have a lot of respect for Jared and his com­pany, UIE. UIE empow­ers design­ers and other Web pro­fes­sion­als to cre­ate bet­ter Web expe­ri­ences. They dis­till the lat­est research and thoughts into prac­ti­cal advice that can be applied at the street level. They do this through vir­tual sem­i­nars, pod­casts, email tips, and con­fer­ences. I have ben­e­fited through all these dif­fer­ent venues.

I saw that Jared was going to be in town speak­ing at a con­fer­ence so I invited him to join me for lunch. I really enjoyed our time together as we talked about:

• the Red Sox and baseball
• what Jared looks for in a con­fer­ence speaker
• ethics in UX design
• my expe­ri­ences at past UI conferences
• career and resume advice

Jared is just as per­son­able in per­son as when he speaks to a larger gath­er­ing of peo­ple. One of the things that I really like about the Web indus­try is that speak­ers, writ­ers and lead­ers of our indus­try are so acces­si­ble and approach­able. I really appre­ci­ated that Jared took time out of his busy con­fer­ence sched­ule to meet with me.

It was a real treat. I enjoyed engag­ing Jared in var­i­ous top­ics and appre­ci­ated sev­eral nuggets of advice that he gave me. He took a gen­uine inter­est in me and offered help as he could.

Related posts:

• Read about my expe­ri­ences at UI12 con­fer­ence in 2007
• My orig­i­nal post on my Web design superheroes
• I hope to write a post on UIE’s pod­cast soon

∼ Comment on this article ∼