For the first Zapponian Spotlight of 2012, we’re getting to know a little bit about Donny G., a senior User Experience Designer from Zappos Development, Inc.

Donny considers Alaska his home state and moved around the country as a “military brat”.  The self-proclaimed “geek at heart” is also a talented athlete. Donny was an All-American basketball player in college and spent some time playing a little pro ball as well.

Read on to learn more about Donny:

Pick 3 words to describe your personal style

D: Passionate, Determined, Hippie

Who is your favorite musician or band?

D: Dave Matthews Band

Name 3 things you never leave home without?

D: Open mind, kind heart, and my cell phone

If you could have dinner with one famous person, who would it be?

D: Would have been Steve Jobs but now I would say Warren Buffett

What’s the weirdest thing to ever happen to you?

D:  Growing up, for about 3 years straight every holiday (albeit Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving) I ended up in the hospital from things like trying to jump over a car with my bike, playing hockey in the street, tackle football (no pads) with football buddies, etc.

What’s your favorite part about working at Zappos?

The awesome people I get the pleasure of working with!!!

With all the shoes, clothes and accessories on our site it's fun to look at lots of product and add things to your cart quickly and easily. With the perpetual cart, we're hoping to make that even more smooth by allowing you to quickly view what's in your cart from any page on the site without having to leave that page. Additionally, we're testing perpetual cart's functionality that allows you to stay on the product page when adding an item to the cart.

This feature also leverages our public API, which allows 3rd party developers to write applications that interface with the Zappos site.

Stacey Eddy, Sr User Experience Architect, and Brandon Murry, Front-End Developer, who both worked on this project give their thumbs up on the perpetual cart.

Give us your feedback!

Do you ever wonder what customers visiting Zappos.com think of the site and how they use it? Thankfully, we have a User Experience Research Team dedicated to answering those exact questions and more!

This team analyzes the site and its users from two different but complementary perspectives: Quantitatively and Qualitatively. The quantitative perspective tends to be data driven. They ask these types of questions: where do the website visitors come from; how many people visit the site; what do the customers do on the site; which pages are the most popular; and how many people leave the site without buying anything? Meanwhile, the qualitative perspective observes the quality of a customer’s experience by asking these questions: how are the buttons and links perceived and is it easy to use?

The team uses web analytics software, site A/B tests, surveys and user observation to obtain this information. We, then, use this information to help us decide what updates and improvements we need to make to the site.

For example, data told us that viewing larger and additional images was the most popular activity on the product page. On this version of the Product Detail Page, the customer would have to click on the product to access the multiview in a different window. However, the update embedded the multiview on the page to make viewing easier and more accessible.

To make sure customers like this update, we are currently doing a site test. Some customers get the original pop-out multiview, and other customers get the updated, embedded version of the multiview. If we find that customers viewing the new version of this page buy more products than those customers viewing the current page, then we know the new page is a success! And we’ll make the new Product Detail Page a standard feature for everyone.

Beside site tests, the Research Team also reviews 500 surveys every month. These surveys are where customers share their opinion on what works well on the site and what is confusing. The team also observes customers using the site to understand how they use the site and asks them questions regarding their experience.  The motto of the Research Team is “we are not the customers”, in other words, they don’t assume, they ask.

Have you ever been hanging out around the house and accidentally bump your head, arm or wrist? I most certainly have, and it usually happens when you have a busy week ahead of you. It was the week before christmas of 2007, and I was walking from my bathroom to my room in the dark, and hit my nose on a closet door that was left open. I immediately ran to the freezer and found a bag of hashbrowns to keep the swelling down. I was mad at myself for hitting my nose, especially since I knew I would be taking christmas pictures with my family later that week. I later noticed that it actually straightened my nose out, but took a while for the red mark to dissolve away.

Brian K. from the UX (User Experience) team had the same such luck after bumping his arm while doing some landscaping work over the weekend. I must say I was impressed by the use of popsicles to not only keep down the swelling, but also form a splint over the forearm. Well Played Bk, well played.

So as a loyal soldier of the UX team I can stand behind the claim that Development lost the battle held this morning. While I am a firm believer that a war consists of more than one battle, the first battle does set the tone for the rest of the war. In the pic below you will see clearly the white flag being waved by those across the battle lines on the development side. All should bask in the glory of the victorious UX, PM, HR and Finance allied powers.

Fore score and several weeks ago our Dev team raised up a great army unlike Zappos has ever seen in order to claim the 2300 building for their own. Today it was PM, UX, HR and Finance teams that decided to join troops and to fight this great army of nerf gun nerds. Though their courage is something that all of Zappos should honor, their army was no match for the smoke machine and customized nerf weapons.

Today we all take our hats off and bow down to the new kings of the hill – Development.

Maybe once the Finance and Human Resources army gains it’s strength back, they will strike back

Lynn, our User Experience Queen here at Zappos, is a thrill seeker by nature. She has more energy than our entire blog team put together, I also wanted to point out.

So, Lynn, in her infinite madness, has decided that, for her upcoming vacation, she would kick back, relax, and swim with sharks in the waters near Guadalupe Island. It’s one of the worlds capitials for Great White Shark populations…..you know….the kind of shark that Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and the scary boat captain dude were trying to catch. Ahhh….the calm soothing grooves of possible death.

And, since, today is her last day before heading off to ‘relax’, our design and UX teams decided to comfort her nerves with a homemade shark cage (made with great care by John F. and Sara M.).

Just about everyone in two buildings were in on this, and Lynn seemed to be completely surprised.

Have fun, Lynn. Da-Da.

So, there is this lady, let just call her Lynn shall we? Anyhoo, this lady, Lynn if you will, sits at this desk and claims to do something or other for this web site Zappos.com . Something about UX or something? Who knows. Anyhoo (part two), while UX’ing apparently she takes some personal web browsing breaks. How do I know this information? Just look at the photo below and you decide whether I need to talk to her about her productivity. Sheesh!