Whitney Hess

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Whitney Hess leads an international user experience consultancy called Vicarious Partners and is the author of the popular blog Pleasure and Pain. Her life’s mission is to put humanity back into business.

Whitney joins forces with senior leadership teams to promote empathy throughout their organizations — for their customers and for one another. Known for her candor and pragmatism, Whitney’s techniques focus the product vision, prioritize development efforts, and eliminate turf wars that threaten the quality of work. She has a knack for uncovering the root of the problem.

An expert listener, Whitney has conducted psychographic research studies for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. She led the design of Seamless Food Delivery for iPad, a Top 10 Lifestyle app in the iTunes App Store. Her redesign of the Boxee beta was lauded by the press. Whitney is an advisor to RedMart, a household essentials delivery service in Singapore, and to Red Stamp, a personalized correspondence app.

Whitney graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Master of Human-Computer Interaction and a BA in Professional Writing and HCI. Evangelizing user experience for the last decade has made her a favored mentor to practitioners and entrepreneurs. She has been invited to speak at conferences worldwide.