Jaime Levy

Jaime Levy is an American author, lecturer, interface designer, and user experience strategist. She first became known for her new media projects in the 1990s.[1] Her best-known projects include the floppy disk distributed with Billy Idol’s album Cyberpunk, WORD, an online magazine, and an online cartoon series, CyberSlacker.[2][3] She is the author of the business book UX Strategy, which was first published by O’Reilly Media in 2015. It is widely regarded as the definitive work on the practice of user experience strategy and has been translated into nine languages.[4][5]

Jaime Levy
Born (1966-03-08) March 8, 1966
Hollywood, California
NationalityAmerican
Alma materNew York University
San Francisco State University
Known forInformation technology and software design pioneer and consultant.
WebsiteJaimeLevy.com

Background

Levy was born on March 8, 1966, in Hollywood, California, and raised in the San Fernando Valley.[6] In 1988, she graduated with a B.A. from San Francisco State University.[7] In 1990, she earned her Master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she later spent seven years as a part-time professor.[8] She later taught graduate level courses on UX design and strategy for six years at the University of Southern California (USC) in the Viterbi School of Engineering.[9][10]

Career

Levy's career began in 1990 with the creation of the electronic magazines Cyber Rag[11] and Electronic Hollywood.[12] They were programmed in HyperCard and Macromedia Director and distributed on 800k floppy disks.[11][13] She leveraged her publicity from numerous print publications[11][12] and tv[14] to increase the sales of these disks in book stores and mail-order.[15]

In 1993, she worked with EMI Records where she designed, animated, and programmed the first commercially released interactive press kit (IPK) for Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk CD digipack.[16] The project featured sequenced samples, digitized video, hypertext, and interactive animation all integrated together as a seamless experience.[17][18] She followed that up with the animated electronic book, Ambulance,[19] that was written by Monica Moran and included music by Mike Watt from the band Minutemen and art by Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets.

In 1994 while employed by IBM as an interface designer, she began hosting "CyberSlacker" salons for programmers and animators at her East Village, Manhattan loft.[20] By 1995, she took a creative director position at Icon CMT, where she could focus on the creation of the online magazine WORD.[21][22] It received national recognition for its design and cutting-edge non-linear storytelling.[8][23] She was recognized as Newsweek’s top 50 people to watch in cyberspace[24] and on Good Morning America as one of "The Most Powerful Twentysomethings in America."[25][26][27]

At the beginning of the dot-com era, Levy became an independent consultant. In 1996, she designed a graphical multi-user environment called Malice Palace[28] using The Palace software. Set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, users could engage in real-time chat and interact with robots depicted as homeless people.[29] Prints from Malice Palace were exhibited in a 1998 group show titled "Channel 3" at Team Gallery in New York alongside Tracey Emin, Erik Brunetti and Pedro Ortuno.[30]

In 1997, her Silicon Alley-based start-up called Electronic Hollywood received an angel investment.[28] For the next 5-years her company focused on web design, interactive advertising, and original content development. The most prestigious production was the CyberSlacker,[31] Flash cartoon series, which won the Flash Animation Award.[2] She appeared in Doug Block’s 1999 documentary film Home Page and her story was chronicled in the book Gig.[32][33][34]

Following the dot-com bubble burst, she shuttered Electronic Hollywood and returned to Los Angeles. From 2002 to the present she has resurfaced as a university professor, author, and user experience design strategist. In 2010, she founded her second company Jaime Levy Consulting (formerly JLR Interactive).[35] In 2015, her book UX Strategy was published and then the second edition in 2021. The book explores the intersection of business strategy and product/UX design with both a theoretical and practical lens.

Bibliography

Books
  • 2021. UX Strategy (second edition): Product Strategy Techniques for Divising Innovative Digital Products
  • 2015. UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want ISBN 978-1449372866

Levy has also published the following white papers and articles:

  • The Four Tenets of UX Strategy (2015, December). UXMatters [36]
  • Imagining the YouTube Model for Interactive Television. (2007). In Lugmayr, A., & Golebiowski (Eds.) Interactive TV: A Shared Experience TICSP Adjunct Proceedings of EuroITV 2007. (p. 270-274). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Tampere International Center for Signal Processing.[37]
  • Six Weeks at the Smut Factory: Inside an Adult DVD Authorizing House. (2003, October). Medialine Magazine, p. 40-41.[38]
  • The Small World of Games on DVD: Video. (2004, February). Medialine Magazine, p. 34-35.[39]
  • Studio Pro vs. Scenarist: Is DVD Authorizing Destined for the Desktop? (2004, May). Medialine Magazine, p. 34-36.[40]

References
  1. Evans, Claire (March 19, 2020). "Multimedia Artist Jaime Levy Was at the Forefront of Web Design Before Websites Even Existed". AIGA Eye on Design.
  2. Can You Be a Millionaire?. (2000, December). Dateline NBC [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: NBC Universal Television.
  3. Evans, Claire. (2019, July). Picking up the Cyber Slack. Eye on Design. pp. 127-139
  4. May, Tom (2017-09-04). "How Jaime Levy became a UX strategy guru". Creative Bloq. Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  5. "UX Strategy: Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Digital Solutions". UX Strategy. Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  6. Evans, Claire. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. Portfolio/Penguin, New York. 2018. p. 181
  7. Evans, Claire. (2019, July). Picking up the Cyber Slack. Eye on Design. p. 130
  8. Huntington, A. (1995, September). These Women Do Not Fear The 21st Century. Harper’s Bazaar.
  9. https://viterbi.usc.edu/directory/faculty/Levy/Jaime USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Retrieved September 24, 2019.
  10. Evans, Claire. (2018, April). The Untold Story of Jaime Levy, Punk-Rock Cyber-Publishing Pioneer: How a punk kid from L.A. created the coolest publications of the 1990s. Book excerpt. New York Magazine. Retrieved on September 24, 2019 from: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/claire-evanss-broad-band-excerpt.html
  11. Froman, L. (1992, October). Jaime Levy’s Pioneering Electronic Magazines. Mondo 2000, p. 112.
  12. Ehrman, M. (1993, March). Behind The Zines. Los Angeles Times, p. E1, E6.
  13. Evans, Claire. "Picking Up the Cyber Slack". Eye on Design. AIGA. p. 128
  14. Feature on Electronic Magazine Publisher, Jaime Levy. (1993, January). KCET: Life and Times. [Television broadcast]. LA, CA: PBS Los Angeles.
  15. Evans, Claire. (2018, April). The Untold Story of Jaime Levy, Punk Rock Publishing Pioneer. New York Magazine.
  16. MTV News: Billy Idol Cyberpunk Disk. (1993, May). MTV News [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: MTV.
  17. Appelo, T. A Star Is Virtually Reborn. (1993, July). Entertainment Weekly, p. 24.
  18. Saunders, M. (1993, May). Billy Idol Turns Cyberpunk on New CD. Boston Globe, p. 31, 34.
  19. Coover, R. (1993, August 29). And Now, Boot Up the Reviews. New York Times Book Review, 7, p. 8.
  20. Mead, Rebecca. (1994, June 13). IBM’s CyberSlacker. New York Magazine, p. 49.
  21. Silberman, S. (1998, March 11). Word Down: The End of an Era. Wired.
  22. Cavanaugh, K. (1995, June 15). Post Focus on a Revolution: The Techies. New York Post.
  23. Goodfellow, K. So What’s A Web Browser, Anyway? (1995, August 14). The New York Times.
  24. 50 for the Future. (1995, February 27). Newsweek, p. 42, 44.
  25. Charles Grodin Interviews Jaime Levy, David Lauren “Slackers”. (1996, January). ABC: Good Morning America. [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: ABC.
  26. The Most Powerful Twentysomethings in America. (1996, January). Swing.
  27. Powerful Twentysomethings. (1996, April). NBC: Inside Edition. [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: NBC Universal Television.
  28. Bunn, A. (1997, November 11) . Upstart Start Ups. Village Voice, p. 1.
  29. Soledad O’Brien Interviews Jaime Levy About “Malice Palace”. (1996, September). MSNBC: The Site. [Television broadcast]. New York, NY: MSNBC Network.
  30. Team Gallery, NY: Exhibitions: http://teamgal.com/exhibitions (retrieved September 24, 2019)
  31. Dannacher, Lee. (1999, August). The Big Apple’s Silicon Alley. Animation World Magazine, 4.5.
  32. Bowe, J., Bowe, M., & Streeter, S. (Eds.). (2000). Web Content Producer. In Gig. (p. 297-301). New York: Crown Publishers.
  33. Grigoriadis, V. (2000, April). Cover Story: Generation 1.0 – Oldest Living Silicon Alley Veterans Tell All. New York Magazine, p. 28-35.
  34. Bowe, J. (2000, May). Day Job: Web Content Producer. The New Yorker, p. 160.
  35. Stern, C. (2012, September 10) . Jaime Levy Discusses UX at USC Archived 2017-01-24 at the Wayback Machine. TheDishDaily
  36. The Four Tenets of UX Strategy' (2015, December). UXMatters"
  37. Imagining the YouTube Model for Interactive Television. (2007). In Lugmayr, A., & Golebiowski (Eds.) Interactive TV: A Shared Experience TICSP Adjunct Proceedings of EuroITV 2007. (p. 270-274). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Tampere International Center for Signal Processing.
  38. Six Weeks at the Smut Factory: Inside an Adult DVD Authorizing House. (2003, October). Medialine Magazine, p. 40-41.
  39. The Small World of Games on DVD: Video. (2004, February). Medialine Magazine, p. 34-35.
  40. Studio Pro vs. Scenarist: Is DVD Authorizing Destined for the Desktop? (2004, May). Medialine Magazine, p. 34-36.
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