Bilyan "Billy" Belchev is a user experience designer at Webitects. In plain English, that means figuring out what features will contribute to websites' business goals while serving the needs of the visitors. These features have to be presented in an understandable and easy-to-use way. Billy helps with that too.

Since the beginning of the millennium (which would only be eight years), Billy believes that the most efficient way to design a successful site is to consult directly with the people who will be using it. This approach has a fancy name–user research. Billy focuses on lightweight (Agile) methods to user research that can be applied to projects with tight deadlines and budgets (in other words, all projects).

He likes sharing his opinion with clients on how to avoid producing Carelman teapots (shown in photo), but only if he has enough evidence that it might help. When clients are not around to listen, Billy lectures graduate students in the Usability & Research course at Illinois Institute of Technology, or various conference attendees.

In his spare time, Billy works on forming new opinions (to be shared in the future) on how to solve complex information problems (like faceted search), how to conduct usability testing more efficiently, or where to buy good wine at fair prices.

Elsewhere on the web:

Diigo
Flickr
GoodReads
LinkedIn
Twitter