5 minutes a day with a UX practitioner

Welcome to 5 minutes a day with a UX practitioner - a tumblog about user experience, startups and everything in between.

My name is Marina Krutchinsky and I am a user interface and experience designer based in New York City.

I belong to the “swiss army knife” category of UI/UX designers who also do development. So don’t be surprised if some posts are more technical than others.

Why Tumblr?

I’ve been designing for the web for more than 15 years. Since before the term user experience was coined or became relevant to the content delivered via web/mobile means. Funny, it doesn’t feel than long ago. Anyhow, while talking to people I couldn’t help noticing that some questions kept coming up over and over again: How do you evaluate UX designers? or What is the UX process like? and many others. Tumblr, with its multitude of community features, felt like a perfect platform for sharing answers to these common questions. As well as discovering new ones.

My Story

I got my masters in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Applied Computer Science (mathematical modeling of mechanical systems) from Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University, one of the oldest and most advanced engineering schools in Russia. Worked as an R&D engineer and product designer at a research institute associated with Russian Academy of Sciences and at a couple of “tech startups” that just appeared in post-Soviet Russia.

In 1995, I accompanied my physicist husband to Canada where he was working on his PhD.  As my visa status forbade me from working, I started looking around for how to apply myself. Luckily there were many available computers on the University campus as well as the connection to the internet. Not Usenet familiar from our days back in Russia, but real internet! My life has changed then and there.

When in 1999 we moved to New York City, I had a portfolio of web sites built for a variety of clients. So I opened a design studio specializing in interface and interaction design for web-based applications, called it Webhues Web Productions and got down to business. Over the following years I worked with WebMD, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, Otis, Carrier, Cornell University, UCSF and many others.

In 2006, after moving to San Francisco, I joined Civic Ventures, a national think tank leveraging online technologies and social media to build the one and only “encore career” network connecting baby boomers advancing social innovation. Initially as their Design Director and later on as Director of Web Services overseeing - hands-on style - all areas of web development and leading the in-house web team.

Last year we came back to New York City and dove into the blooming NYC tech startup scene with a few ideas of our own.

How I Can Help You

If you are facing unique challenges and looking for an experienced UI/UX designer who could help you define and implement next steps in your product development, someone who is strategic as well as tactical, someone who can design and code, someone who is familiar with the majority of popular frameworks and comfortable with iterative design and development, email me at marina@webhues.com to get the conversation started. If you are in NYC, let’s grab coffee and talk.

On the other hand, we can always connect on Twitter or LinkedIn first and start from there.

Look forward to getting to know you, your team and your product better!