Whitney Hess

WHITNEY HESS is a user experience design consultant based in New York City. She helps make products 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.

Though she began her higher education in computer science, Whitney received a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing and a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. For the Master’s capstone project, she was one of five HCI students to develop Roadcasting, a system that allows drivers to create and share their music playlists with other cars on the road. The project has received press from Wired, MIT Tech Review, Slashdot, BoingBoing, and more.

Whitney is a strategic partner with Happy Cog and consults with startups and major corporations, and everyone in between. She writes about technology and customer experience on her blog, Pleasure and Pain.

Photo: Tony Bacigalupo. Used with permission.