A presentation I made for my daughter's career day. I explained what I did to make good website user experiences. Then told them how to make one themselves.

1. Making Awesome Website
Experiences
By Stephen Morrissey

2. 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

3. 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”

4. What makes
a good website
good experience?
It is easy (and pleasurable) to
accomplish your task

5. What tasks? Let’s look at some examples…

6. Planning a vacation

7. Looking at cute cat pictures

8. Video game tips

9. Help with math homework

10. How do I make a good website experience?

11. Don’t start
building just yet

12. Interviews

13. Interviews
• Ask people what they do
• Dig deeper to find out what they really want to do
• Look around their desk / workspace

14. Audits

15. 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

16. Experience
(mistakes)

17. 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

18. How can you make
website experiences?

19. 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

20. 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)

21. Be awesome

22. Go make something awesome
•Write your thoughts down
• Read more than you write
• Put words into action and build it
• Demonstrate your passion