About

Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Jiri Jerabek, I live in London and I’m Associate User Experience consultant at Fortune Cookie, studying MSc Human-Compute Interaction with Ergonomics at UCL.

My journey into User Experience Design and HCI

I have pretty broad background – in past 7 years, I worked as user interface and web designer, front-end developer and graphic designer. I have first degree in graphic design and with an interest in visual communication, branding and advertising, I always was rather an all-rounder.

As designer in web design agency, I used to think of UI design mainly as of a combination of visual communication and eye-candy, although I was influenced by Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think and Nielsen’s Alertbox early in my career, so I always tried to keep an eye on users’ actions, motivations and universal usability principles. But soon, I started realising that the design is not just about creatively communicating a marketing message. I realised that design is a powerful tool to fulfil business goals, as well as target market’s needs. That good design can make lives easier, more bearable and simply better.

Finally in Autumn 2009 I started reading Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things – and from that moment I knew that my view of design and the direction of my career has changed forever. It was a matter of a heart, the last bit of my design puzzle.

Purpose of this blog

Through this blog I would like to share my journey into the Interaction Design and HCI. Its a place for notes, ideas and opinions and – hopefully – a discussion. Please read through, share your thoughts and get in touch!