Jeffrey Veen

Congratulations to Indi Young on the publication of her new book, "Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior."...

This post was written on  15 Feb 2008 and has 2 comments

The editors of xhtml.com recently invited me to participate in a series they're running titled Fixing the Web. In particular,...

This post was written on   7 Aug 2007 and has 11 comments

At a conference recently, I heard Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits talk about inspiration. He showed a bunch of different techniques...

This post was written on  12 Jul 2007 and has 12 comments

Reading through the comments on my recent post about our redesign of Google Analytics, two things are pretty clear: For...

This post was written on  13 Jun 2007 and has 8 comments

It's a tough call. Which mark more spectacularly fails at combining the thrill and pageantry of athletic competition with...

This post was written on   7 Jun 2007 and has 52 comments

It's been well over a year since Google bought Measure Map and I left Adaptive Path. And wow, have...

This post was written on   8 May 2007 and has 107 comments

Merlin Mann and I worked together at Adaptive Path a bunch of years ago. We had fun. Lots of...

This post was written on  27 Feb 2007 and has 5 comments

Irene Au is the director of user experience at Google -- and my boss. I'll be having a conversation with...

This post was written on   7 Feb 2007 and has 3 comments

Back when I was a consultant, I was fortunate enough to work on number of projects dealing with blogging. Most...

This post was written on  17 Jan 2007 and has 5 comments

I've been on vacation for a few weeks, but I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I got...

This post was written on   9 Jan 2007 and has 7 comments

If you're looking for work as a designer, the old cliche is true: a picture is worth a thousand words....

This post was written on   9 Nov 2006 and has 23 comments

Vitamin Magazine has published a podcast I recorded backstage at the Web Apps Summit just after giving my talk. They've...

This post was written on   8 Nov 2006 and has 2 comments

Congratulations are in order today for two groups of friends: Six Apart opens up Vox and Ev Williams announces Obvious....

This post was written on  26 Oct 2006 and has 2 comments

Brian Oberkirch stopped by a couple days ago and we had a great chat about this whole "Architecture of Participation"...

This post was written on  25 Sep 2006 and has 5 comments

From a job posting on SimplyHired.com: Will serve as a Human Factors Engineer/Graphical User Interface designer for a start-up company....

This post was written on  22 Sep 2006 and has 7 comments

I've been a little embarrassed these passed few days about my complete obsession with the new mapping features in...

This post was written on  31 Aug 2006 and has 8 comments

In a post about the new Google Code Project Hosting, Marshal Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch writes: "So far the whole thing...

This post was written on  31 Jul 2006 and has 9 comments

Yahoo has launched a redesign of their homepage recently, making ambitious use of Ajax-inspired design techniques and technologies. As Dan...

This post was written on  19 Jul 2006 and has 14 comments

The guys over at 37signals invited me to a little "Fireside Chat" with Khoi Vinh, design director over at the...

This post was written on  18 Jul 2006 and has 3 comments

With news of business deals surrounding the Wired brand recently, I went back to have a look at Hotwired only...

This post was written on  12 Jul 2006 and has 12 comments

Steve Mulder was giving a presentation on user behavior at Web Design World in Seattle this morning when he popped...

This post was written on  10 Jul 2006 and has 19 comments

I may not work there day-to-day any longer, but I'm still managing plenty of intellectual collaboration with my friends at...

This post was written on  27 Jun 2006 and has 3 comments

The airline industry is a mess. The established carriers are being cannibalized by discounters exploiting consumer willingness to trade a...

This post was written on  21 Jun 2006 and has 9 comments

There has been a lot made of the value of user generated content (or, as I like to call it,...

This post was written on  19 Jun 2006 and has 4 comments

I couldn't be happier that Jesse James Garrett has won a Wired Rave award for his popularization of Ajax. JJG...

This post was written on   1 Jun 2006 and has 5 comments

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Josh Owens and Chris Sayler of the Web 2.0 Show. We...

This post was written on  27 Apr 2006 and has 5 comments

Back about two years ago, I got the opportunity to work with Blogger on a redesign. Our goal was to...

This post was written on  11 Apr 2006 and has 7 comments

I had a great time moderating a panel at South by Southwest this year. The subject was web applications...

This post was written on   3 Apr 2006 and has 5 comments

Alternate Title: In which Jeff tries to justify the guilt he's feeling over not posting enough I've been going through...

This post was written on  24 Mar 2006 and has 5 comments

It's March, and that means conference season. I've been on the road for a while now, first at Search Engine...

This post was written on  10 Mar 2006 and has 8 comments

Jennifer Niederst Robbins and I worked together quite a bit last year on Measure Map -- she designed all...

This post was written on   7 Mar 2006 and has 4 comments

We've been developing features very iteratively with Measure Map. That is, we'll boil a feature down to it's essence, work...

This post was written on  25 Jan 2006 and has 9 comments

Michael Bierut, writing for the excellent Design Observer, relates his experience browsing through 80 years of the New Yorker on...

This post was written on  16 Jan 2006 and has 5 comments

A while back on this blog, I asked for help in designing the most usable way to present links to...

This post was written on  21 Dec 2005 and has 11 comments

I had almost forgotten about the "browser wars" of years past, when publishers aligned themselves with rendering engines, and...

This post was written on  19 Oct 2005 and has 39 comments

All of these things are probably true of the work you do online: Your web site is a tiny piece...

This post was written on  26 Sep 2005 and has 4 comments

Anil Dash makes some excellent observations in his latest post on Web Development Trends for 2006. All of them are...

This post was written on   8 Sep 2005 and has 13 comments

I remember sitting through demos by both Netscape and Microsoft marketing folks, showing us all the wonderful things that would...

This post was written on   1 Sep 2005 and has 9 comments

I wrote The Art and Science of Web Design five years ago. That doesn't seem like all that long...

This post was written on  29 Jun 2005 and has 33 comments

As I've been incorporating more and more Ajax techniques into the interaction design work I do, I've started to realize...

This post was written on  12 Jun 2005 and has 25 comments

I have always been bothered by how difficult it is to subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds. Consider the user experience --...

This post was written on  26 May 2005 and has 63 comments

Not a lot of people understand what blogging is. And I'm not being metaphysical -- I mean that the...

This post was written on  29 Mar 2005 and has 18 comments

One of my colleagues at Adaptive Path often refers to design as being derived from user research. I can certainly...

This post was written on  28 Mar 2005 and has 35 comments

I was recently asked to join a panel that would be judging interactive design created over the last year. The...

This post was written on  23 Mar 2005 and has 69 comments

Earlier today at the IA Summit, Jared Spool discussed the importance of confidence in ecommerce. That is, people are...

This post was written on   5 Mar 2005 and has 5 comments

I mistakenly typed maps.google.com into Safari for what must have been the 50th time and, as of tonight, it worked....

This post was written on  24 Feb 2005 and has 8 comments

If you do design or development work on Web-based applications, some of your basic assumptions are going to have to...

This post was written on  20 Feb 2005 and has 8 comments

Blog tool developers Six Apart launched a new site last night designed by Mule Design. It's a great example of...

This post was written on  15 Feb 2005 and has 5 comments

There has been no shortage of discussion and debate about the merits of user-generated, bottom-up, tag-based metadata. And while it's...

This post was written on  13 Jan 2005 and has 10 comments

While shopping for t-shirts recently (and who isn't these days), I came across the feature above at the beautiful...

This post was written on   9 Jan 2005 and has 5 comments

Recently, a 36-year-old high school teacher from Orange County named George Masters posted a iPod Mini Ad on his web...

This post was written on  14 Dec 2004 and has 11 comments

Take the stairs in a building with a basement, and you'll likely notice a gate in the stairwell when you...

This post was written on   9 Nov 2004 and has 13 comments

There's a great post at HotelChatter about which hotels offer the best Wifi service in the industry. And while I'm...

This post was written on   3 Nov 2004 and has 0 comments

My first electronic publishing project came in the late 1980s. I was working in the video production lab, and was...

This post was written on  21 Oct 2004 and has 3 comments

A couple months ago, Matt Haughey dropped by the Adaptive Path offices and asked us for help with Creative Commons...

This post was written on  21 Oct 2004 and has 14 comments

At the café, we're reading the paper. I see something phenomenal. Me: "Whoa...." Friend: "What?" Me: "Super Stickies!" Friend: "Um,...

This post was written on  20 Oct 2004 and has 6 comments

From an email sent to me by PayPal: <pixel.gif>Amount: <pixel.gif>$27.00 USD <pixel.gif>Subject: <pixel.gif>old 97 tix <pixel.gif>Note: <pixel.gif>Thanks, man. <pixel.gif><pixel.gif> <pixel.gif><pixel.gif>...

This post was written on  17 Oct 2004 and has 1 comments

I want to connect to the Wifi at Logan Airport in Boston. Some proxy jacks my connection when I...

This post was written on  14 Oct 2004 and has 4 comments

The San Francisco Examiner has redesigned its Web site and has done something no other newspaper has been able to...

This post was written on   2 Aug 2004 and has 10 comments

Why do we bother doing what we do? Why spend the time, effort, and money required to build better Web...

This post was written on  26 Jul 2004 and has 2 comments

I recently spent a couple weeks working with the folks over at Technorati on some changes to the user experience...

This post was written on  26 Jul 2004 and has 1 comments

During a recent user research interview, the subject said something that may very well be the most sage advice I've...

This post was written on  15 Jul 2004 and has 6 comments

I've often told people that usability testing should be a culture, not an event. That is, it should happen as...

This post was written on  17 Jun 2004 and has 3 comments

I did a lot of work on integrating advertising into content sites back when I was at HotWired. We were...

This post was written on   7 Apr 2004 and has 21 comments

Jason Fried of 37signals rants that Web design is heading in the wrong direction. From his perspective, the conversation in...

This post was written on  22 Mar 2004 and has 9 comments

I filled in for Jesse at South by SouthWest this weekend, and took the stage for his "The Frontiers of...

This post was written on  17 Mar 2004 and has 0 comments

These are the speaking notes I used during the Accessibility is for everyone! panel discussion at South by SouthWest earlier...

This post was written on  17 Mar 2004 and has 40 comments

Is the bottle half empty or half full? I snapped this picture in a terrible chain restaurant in the...

This post was written on  27 Jan 2004 and has 6 comments

A quick review of an interaction design basic: affordances. An affordance is a design technique that allows people to intuit...

This post was written on  12 Jan 2004 and has 13 comments

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area on 9 December, come see Adaptive Path's business strategist Scott Hirsch at...

This post was written on  24 Nov 2003 and has 0 comments

It's no secret that those vying for the White House in 2004 have become much more Web savvy. Blogs, online...

This post was written on  14 Nov 2003 and has 1 comments

We've been doing a lot of work lately at Adaptive Path on valuing user experience investment. That is, just what...

This post was written on  14 Nov 2003 and has 0 comments

For some time now, I've had an interest in how Web-based interfaces can best articulate with faceted information. It seems...

This post was written on   5 Nov 2003 and has 4 comments

Years ago at HotWired, I worked with a talented designer named Kevin Lyons. As the design group thinned out through...

This post was written on  14 Oct 2003 and has 2 comments

So many of the arguments I've read about the benefits of xHTML and CSS focus on the technological implecations. Others...

This post was written on  18 Sep 2003 and has 4 comments

Yesterday at the conference table with a new client, we talked about their frustration with a classic problem. "Users...

This post was written on   5 Sep 2003 and has 4 comments

I've updated the design of this site over the weekend, solving a couple of problems that have been bugging...

This post was written on  16 Aug 2003 and has 5 comments

It's no secret that many in the User Experience field perceive Jakob Neilson as a double-edged sword. While Neilson has...

This post was written on  29 Jul 2003 and has 0 comments

Increasingly, it is becoming clear to me that Leslie and I have similar jobs. As she enters her third year...

This post was written on  22 Jul 2003 and has 2 comments

Mike's book is doing well, which is good because there is so much important stuff in it. Have a look...

This post was written on  23 May 2003 and has 0 comments

While pulling money out of a tiny, no-name ATM in my neighborhood last night, I found what may have been...

This post was written on   9 May 2003 and has 0 comments

From a mailing-list conversation on interaction and experience design comes this quote about the role of audience in entertainment. Another...

This post was written on   1 May 2003 and has 0 comments

Repeating background images used to be an immediate sign of design naivete. Right about 1997 there was an epidemic of...

This post was written on   4 Apr 2003 and has 0 comments

There are few truisms in user research and experience design, but there are a few I believe. For example, the...

This post was written on   3 Apr 2003 and has 0 comments

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, "Say, how do I get started in this Web design/user...

This post was written on  24 Feb 2003 and has 0 comments

My earlier post on the densely designed Apple CPU Monitor prompted Gabriel Radic, whom I met last year in London,...

This post was written on  10 Feb 2003 and has 0 comments

"Si los clientes tuvieran siempre la razn, haran ellos el trabajonuevo..." The Macromedia Users Group of Chile posts an interview...

This post was written on  10 Feb 2003 and has 0 comments

In his book, "Envisioning Information," design guru Edward Tufte explains how visual design can skew and manipulate seemingly objective data....

This post was written on   5 Feb 2003 and has 0 comments

I'm afraid I'm not getting my hands dirty that much any more. Back in the good old days, I was...

This post was written on   2 Feb 2003 and has 0 comments

Chocolate manufacturer Hershey's Foods Corp. has a professional foodservice industry portal at DessertExperts.com. There, you can find "Trend Insights," "Sales...

This post was written on  24 Jan 2003 and has 0 comments

Eric and I worked together at Wired Digital for many years. We argued all the time, we shared a brain...

This post was written on  11 Dec 2002 and has 0 comments

I've been putting a lot of thought into how prototyping and the discovery process can intersect. I've had some interesting...

This post was written on  30 Nov 2002 and has 0 comments

Remember when every company had a staff of 50 do develop and maintain their Web sites? Not so today, of...

This post was written on  29 Oct 2002 and has 0 comments

Netscape's Eric Meyer interviews Lycos Network Design Manager Doug Bowman on the how, why, and what's next of designing Wired...

This post was written on  13 Oct 2002 and has 0 comments

My good friend and former coworker Doug Bowman has redesigned Wired News. And not only has he given it a...

This post was written on  11 Oct 2002 and has 0 comments

It seems we're never quite done when it comes to developing definitions for our vocabulary in this industry. I'm getting...

This post was written on  11 Oct 2002 and has 0 comments