Justin Maxwell

Director of User Experience, Smule

Holistic User Experience
75 minutes, 34.7mb, recorded 2011-02-08

Every user experience embodies its creators' experience. All of its creators, not just the single person with the title "user experience designer." Justin Maxwell has come to believe that conflict in an organization will be apparent in its products. A team that gets along and has fun will create fun products. Justin gives a clear definition of user experience and concludes, "User experience is multi-dimensional, is evolving, and cannot be designed."

To create a world-class user experience requires coordination and shared priorities among marketing, customer service, business development, engineering, and of course, interface design. One person, tasked with user experience design in isolation, is destined for failure in an organization that believes a single bucket in the brigade will keep users happy and engaged.

Justin presents user experience design strategies and approaches at Apple, then at a start-up company, then at Mint.com, and, now, at Smule.


Justin Maxwell is director of User Experience and Game Design at Smule. He was Mint.com's User Experience and Design guru 2008-10. Prior to joining Mint, Justin brought rapid prototyping to Apple's Pro App Design team and led interactive design projects to pave the way for Apple's visually- and interactively-rich site design, including:

  • The first AJAX libraries.
  • The first use of AJAX on Apple.com.
  • The first use of custom QuickTime transport in JavaScript (for the debut of Aperture).

Justin holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Pomona College.

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