Austin Govella

User experience strategist and designer

Austin Govella has designed successful user experiences for over a decade. He co-authored the second edition of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the web with Christina Wodtke for New Riders/Peachpit, and he’s spent the last few years improving how user experience and agile work together.

Recently, Austin worked as a senior user experience designer at Convio, where he helped design the software that powers some of the country’s largest non-profit organizations.

Prior to Convio, Austin Govella joined Comcast Interactive Media’s IA and Usability team as a Sr. Information Architect where he worked as a project lead IA on Comcast Interactive’s two largest and most important products: Comcast.net and Fancast.Comcast.net is a news and entertainment portal used by over 15 million unique visitors each month. Austin also worked on Fancast, a next generation entertainment site that was featured at the Consumer Electronics Show (C.E.S.) in January 2008 and currently leads all sites on the web in video engagement.

Before Comcast, Austin worked as a project lead for Satyam Computer Services, one of Forrester’s top 50 global IT integrators. As a member of Satyam’s award-winning User Experience Management group, Austin helped improve user experience at the World Bank while working on projects for enterprise search, mapping (GIS), mobile, intranets, extranets, knowledge management, and workplace collaboration.

Austin’s industry experience includes financial services, education, non-profits, and entertainment. His broad expertise spans visual design, client- and server-side development, information architecture, search engine optimization and marketing, accessibility, interaction design, usability, and experience strategy.

Austin co-authored the second edition of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the web with Christina Wodtke for New Riders/Peachpit. His work is also featured in the third edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (the Polar Bear book), and he served as the technical editor for Nathan Curtis’s Modular Web Design.

As an active member of the user experience community, Austin is a development editor at Boxes and Arrows, one of the web’s leading design publications, and he is a member of the Information Architecture Institute, helping design and manage the Institute’s IT infrastructure.

Austin’s writing has appeared in ASIS&T’s Bulletin and Boxes and Arrows, and he has presented at several I.A. Summits, industry conferences, and local meetings.