As LUNAR’s Director of User Interface Design, Gretchen Anderson designs products that are as pleasurable to use as they are powerful in expression. She seeks out those design challenges that ultimately make a positive impact on people’s daily lives and environment. With a design philosophy rooted in the belief that a user interface should be seamless and invisible, she has designed a wide variety of products and experiences: from medical devices to casino entertainment to business productivity tools. Gretchen graduated with honors from Harvard University. Her experience spans 15 years, and prior to joining LUNAR, she worked for several Bay Area design consultancies. Her clients include: Johnson & Johnson, TurboChef, Microsoft, Virgin Records and HP. She also enjoys teaching design and research methodologies to fellow designers and business people alike.
Chris Avore is an interaction designer in the Washington DC area, specializing in usable interface design and information architecture.
After years of working independently, he grew tired of asking his bulldog for persona advice and began pestering other user experience designers for feedback, and thus UX Show & Tell was, well, you get the idea.
Richard Banks is a senior interaction designer for Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. He’s part of a team that spends most of its time looking at family life, trying to understand the complexities of home, in order to figure out how the digital should fit in appropriately. Richard joined Microsoft (quite a while ago) after graduating from the Royal College of Art in London. Since then he’s worked as a design manager in Seattle on Microsoft’s Office, Windows and MSN products before moving home and into research.
Steve Baty is the founder of UX Book Club and one of the coordinators for the Sydney UX Book Club group. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Interaction Design Association; is a contributing editor for Johnny Holland; editor of Boxes & Arrows; contributor to UXmatters; and organizer of the UX Australia conference. Steve is a practitioner with over a decade of experience and a passion for solving problems through design. He likes to go fishing, but doesn’t get to very often.
Solomon Bisker, Carnegie Mellon/School of Architecture
Solomon Bisker is a student at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), where he is pursuing a Masters of Tangible of Interaction Design focusing on design for the built environment. Before that, he worked as an interaction designer at Cambridge Systematics, consulting with federal and state transportation agencies to explore how their processes and public interactions could be improved by technology. Before THAT, he conducted research into mobile barcode interaction design in crowds and public spaces with MIT’s Mobile Experience Lab, part of the MIT Design Lab. He has a BS and M.Eng in Computer Science from MIT.
Nate Bolt serves as El Presidente of Bolt | Peters where he is fascinated by the role of research and design in our lives. He has overseen hundreds of user experience projects for Sony, Oracle, Volkswagen, Greenpeace, and others. He is co-author of the Rosenfeld book, Remote Research, and created the world’s first moderated remote testing software in 2003, Ethnio, which is now being used around the world to recruit hundreds of thousands of live participants for research.
Nate gives talks about research and design in both commercial and academic settings, including a recent keynote for the Urban Libraries Council. Last century, he worked with faculty at the University of California, San Diego, to create a degree titled “Digital Technology and Society,” which focused on the social impact of technology. He also completed a year of communications studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he failed every class, and was jailed briefly for playing drums in public without a license.
Kevin Cheng splits his crayon time between many endeavors. He is a product manager at Twitter, the co-founder and artist for OK/ Cancel, a webcomic on user experience, and the author of the upcoming book, See What I Mean: How to Communicate Ideas with Comics. Most recently, he is also co-produced an iPhone augmented reality ghost hunting game. Kevin blogs at kevnull.com and has been known to Twitter as @k.
Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is the editor-in-chief of Core77.com, the widely read design website, Coroflot.com design job and portfolio site, and DesignDirectory.com design firm database. He has been named on numerous design and utility patents, and has received awards from I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club and The One Club. He teaches in the graduate departments of Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Maria Cordell is Principal User Experience Architect at Macquarium in Atlanta. In a career that dates way back, Maria has led and produced numerous successful enterprise software and Web design projects–from corporate Web sites to enterprise-class rich Internet applications and desktop apps–for companies in telecommunications, industrial wireless data transmission, retail sales, terminal server optimization, and optical physics. Maria holds an MS in Information Design and a BS in Physics, both from Georgia Tech. She’s an avid photographer, auto racer, gardener, and amateur radio operator, and the main instigator
behind IxDA Atlanta.
Matt Cottam has been responsible for setting strategic direction for Tellart since co-founding the company in 1999. He provides both inspiration and direction through active involvement in client projects, academic research and teaching, as well as international design and technology conferences worldwide.
With Tellart Matt has directed design and strategy projects for clients including Nokia Design, Humana Inc. and Otis Elevator (United Technologies Research Center). He has been publishing and presenting for over a decade and has become an internationally recognized speaker on a wide range of design and technology topics. Recent lecturing venues have included the Google Tech Talks series, the d.school at Stanford University, the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies conference (ETech), Intel’s Future Technologies Research Summit, PICNIC08, SIGCHI, IDSA/ICSID, DEFCON and the Designing User Experience (DUX).
Matt is a member of the part-time faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he has taught studio courses since 1999 on wide-ranging topics such as emergency medicine, physical computing and service design. He is also an Adjunct Professor at UmeΠInstitute of Design (UID Sweden) where he leads core interaction design modules and contributes to ongoing curriculum development. He is a member of the Visiting Faculty at the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID, Denmark). Matt is also a visiting speaker at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO, Norway), and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA).
Christopher Fahey is a founding partner and user experience director at Behavior, an award-winning New York web design consultancy focused on building compelling and elegant user experiences for business and culture.
At Behavior, Chris has led the IA and UXD strategies for clients and projects in many industries, including BusinessWeek, The National Geographic Channel, UNICEF, HBO, The Smithsonian Institution, McGraw-Hill, JPMorgan Chase, XM Satellite Radio, AARP, the AIGA, and The Onion. In his 14+ years as a professional interaction designer and manager, Chris’s projects have covered everything from business- critical web applications to sci-fi adventure games and artificial intelligence chatbots.
Chris is an active speaker on user experience design, with recent events including SXSW, An Event Apart, the ASIS&T IA Summit, Euro IA, The Society for Technical Communications Summit, and the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo NYC.
He teaches at the School of Visual Arts’ new interaction design MFA program in 2009, and has also taught at FIT, Brooklyn College, and the City College of New York. His internet artwork has been featured in the Whitney and the New Museum. Chris also blogs about design, technology, culture, and whatever else he’s interested in at http://www.graphpaper.com.
Ben is an interaction designer with an interest in exploring the implications of the increasing influence of design and technology on our lives. He currently works at IDEO in the Bay Area, having previously spent time at Twitter. Before moving to California, Ben worked in London at Samsung’s European design studio, pioneering service design and innovation consultancy live|work, and digital full service agency Oyster Partners (now LBi) during the early years of the web.
Ben has produced work for clients including Orange, the BBC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Samsung, Twitter, T-Mobile, the V&A Museum, the Rothschild Foundation, Boots, the Design Council, Qwest, BAA, the US Government, and Macmillan Cancer Research. He has written for the ACM’s “Interactions” magazine, has been a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Arts, the UC Berkeley iSchool and NYU’s ITP, and has spoken at Design Engaged and SXSW Interactive.
He holds a BA in Contemporary Literature and an MA from the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London, where he explored the development of technology within the context of the academic study and experience of material culture. Projects that Ben has worked on have been nominated for a BAFTA and won a Spark Award, among others.
Jamin Hegeman is a senior designer at Nokia Design in San Francisco, where he works across the Nokia organization to define new services, experiences, and business opportunities. His 13 years of experience includes being a journalist, editor, web developer, interaction designer, teacher, and business owner. He has a masters in design with a focus on interaction design from Carnegie Mellon University, and a degree in poetry writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Jamin has been on the Service Design Network planning board for the 2008 and 2009 conferences. He also directed CMU’s Emergence service design conference in 2007.
Mike Kruzeniski is a UX Creative Director for the Entertainment Experience Group at Microsoft, in Seattle. Before joining Microsoft, Mike was a Designer on Nokia Design’s Insight & Innovation team in Los Angeles, where he worked on projects such as the Nokia 2010 View of the Future, and the concept design for the Nokia 8800 Arte. He has a Master’s of Interaction Design from the Umea Institute of Design in Sweden, and a Bachelor of Industrial Design from the Emily Carr Institute of Design in Vancouver, BC.
Livia Labate is a user experience designer practicing in Philadelphia at Comcast Interactive Media. She also currenty on the IA Institute Board of Directors and co-chairing the 2010 and 2011 IA Summits. In other words, she loves the UX world and enjoys giving back to the community.
Alexis Lloyd is a Creative Technologist for the Research and Development group at The New York Times Company. She is responsible for researching technology trends and prototyping future interfaces for content consumption across multiple platforms and devices.
In addition to her work at the Times, Ms. Lloyd has over 12 years experience as a multimedia and interaction designer, and has designed award-winning projects for clients such as FOX, Columbia University, American Express, The New York Historical Society, PBS, and others. In addition, her new media art and design work has been shown internationally, in such venues as SIGGRAPH, the Chelsea Art Museum, Artgadgets (Netherlands), MAD Emergent Arts Center (Netherlands), the Melvin Art Gallery, and Symphony Space. Ms. Lloyd holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School for Design.
Erin Malone, a Principal with Tangible UX, has over 20 years of experience leading design teams and developing social experiences for companies like Yahoo!, AOL, AltaVista, Intuit and others. She is the founder of the Yahoo! Pattern Library and a founding member of the IA Institute.
Christian Crumlish is the curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, a design evangelist with the Yahoo! Developer Network, and a member of Yahoo!’s design council. He is also co-chair of the monthly BayCHI program, a member of the Open Web Foundation, and a director of the Information Architecture Institute.
Rob Nero is currently working on his Master’s thesis at the Interaction Design Masters program at Malmö University, in Malmö, Sweden. Before deciding to move to Sweden, he designed enterprise web applications for large and Fortune 500 companies for 10 years. Rob’s design projects while attending the Masters program include a music remix web site that was used in a national campaign for refugees, a Bluetooth-enabled music distribution box for an inner-city hip-hop club, and multiple physical prototyping projects with the Arduino platform.
After graduation in 2010, Rob is seeking employment opportunities in the physical and tangible interface areas. He hopes to continue his work in rapid physical prototyping, electronics, and people interaction in every adventure and future employment.
Nicolas Nova is both researcher at Liftlab – with a specific interest in user experience and foresight in particular with regards to future technologies/practices and their implications – and the editorial manager of the Lift conferences (Switzerland, South Korea, France). He has a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL, Lausanne) where he also worked as a research scientist at the Media and Design Lab.
He runs field studies that aim at informing design projects for various companies and institutions in domains such as mobile/urban/location-based applications, tangible and gestural interactions, social computing, gaming and networked objects.
He blogs at Pasta and Vinegar, about future technologies/practices and their implications. He speaks and lectures widely on these topics at such institutions and conferences as Mediamatic (Amsterdam), the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto), Experientia (Torino), the Annenberg Center for Communication (Los Angeles), Ubicomp, NordicCHI to name just a few. He teaches design research at ENSCI (Paris) and HEAD (Geneva).
Lara Penin, PhD is a full-time Professor of Transdisciplinary Design at the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design, where she teaches at the Design and Management and Integrated Design programs. Her work focuses on Design for Sustainability, Design for Sustainable Social Innovation and Service Design. At Parsons, she coordinates the Area of Study of Service Design and is co-founder and member of the Research Lab Design and Social Innovation for Sustainability (DESIS Lab).
Lara has a successful record of research, education and development projects on an international scale. In her previous position as a research consultant at Milan Polytechnic University, she has managed the project “Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles”, funded by the United Nations’ Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles, dedicated to research and modeling sustainable ways of living in Brazil, India and China through design methods and tools. She has successfully launched and managed the project LENS, the Learning Network on Sustainability, focused on education for Design for Sustainability and Product-Service Systems, financed by the European Commission, coordinated by Milan Polytechnic University in partnership with six universities in Europe and Asia.
She holds a PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication from Milan Polytechnic University, Italy and a BA in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She has lectured in Europe, China, India and Brazil and has published several papers and articles.
Federico Casalegno
Federico Casalegno, Ph.D., is the Director of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab and Associate Director of the MIT Design Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2006, he is the director of the Green Home Alliance between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy.
A social scientist with an interest in the impact of networked digital technologies in human behavior and society, Casalegno both teaches and leads research at MIT, especially focusing on the area of rethinking and designing interactive media to foster connections between people, information and physical places using cutting-edge information technology.
Dennis Schleicher uses his background in business and industrial anthropology to design interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives. In addition to being a past chair of the largest Information Architecture Summit, he continues to be a leading force in the design community and is actively involved with the Information Architecture Institute, the ASIST Special Interest Group of Information Architecture, Overlap, and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Dennis is Director, User Experience Architecture at Sears Holdings in Chicago. He has worked with American Public University Systems, Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, United States Air Force, Microsoft, Comcast, Dominos, White Castle, Bosch, and Numara. His corporate pedigree includes work at Argus Associates, the company that wrote the book on Information Architecture, and the Ford account at JWT, the largest account at the largest advertising company in the US.
My unique combination of skills allows me to move fluidly between design research and interaction design. While at lextant, I have worked on diverse projects including health care systems, retail environments, medical devices, financial service design, and enterprise management applications.
I am responsible for both account and project management, however my true passion is in designing solutions that resonate with consumers. I’ve been told that I have an innate ability to immerse myself in the consumer’s domain. My sensitivity to both implicit and explicit communications between people, artifacts, and context of use allows me to excel in identifying patterns, breakdowns, and opportunities.
On the client level, my goal is to align interdisciplinary teams around a common goal by facilitating communication across the disciplines of marketing, business, design, and engineering. I have established productive partnerships with companies such as Cardinal Health, CheckFree, Cordis, Dell, Diebold, Hewlett-Packard, Hollister, Hunter, Moen, Nationwide Insurance, and GE Healthcare.
Kel Smith is a nationally recognized authority on Web accessibility, with a list of publications that have been cited by the Pentagon Library, Kent State’s Knowledge Management Program, and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. In February 2008 he founded Anikto (ah-NEEK-toh) as a consultancy to explore and support the creation of barrier-free digital experiences spanning multiple disciplines, markets and contexts. He presented on the topic of virtual world applications at the CSUN 2009 Technology Conference for Persons with Disabilities and at the TechShare 2009 conference in London, UK. Kel is a member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and the Information Architecture Institute (IAI), and he currently serves as Vice Chair of the Philadelphia chapter of ACM/SIG-CHI for computer-human interaction. He earned his BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and studied cognitive science as part of MS program at Philadelphia University.
Jeanne Turner is the Leader of IxDA Portland and an Information Architect at ISITE Design. At ISITE, Jeanne conducts user research to understand the needs and goals of people in a variety of target audiences — such as academic researchers trying to peruse colleagues’ working papers and restaurateurs eager to source food from local farmers. She applies that understanding to the design of thoughtful and appropriate interactive experiences. Outside of ISITE, Jeanne plans design jam sessions, coordinates lectures and workshops, and serves the IxD community. She has a degree in Computer Science with a focus on human-computer interaction from the University of Hawaii.
Barbara Holmes has been working in interface design and content development since 1989, when she participated as a lead instructional designer in the development of a series of computer-based, laserdisc (who remembers those?) training courses for Nissan Motors. Since then, she’s worked as a freelancer, on staff, and at agencies, designing a wide range of digital training and simulations for the military, medical, oil extraction, automotive, financial, high tech, higher education and public non-profit sectors. During the last nine years she’s transitioned her focus from pure instructional design to information architect/interaction designer, and now works in the agency/vendor world. Currently a Senior Information Architect at ISITE Design in Portland, Oregon, she unites her passions for user-centered design and a deep love of meaningful content to teach, preach and practice usability, plus design interfaces for software applications, social networking, B2C and B2B websites. She is a senior member of the Society for Technical Communicators and also a member of ASTD, CHIFOO, and one of the planning board members of IxDA Portland. A lifelong learner, Barbara has completed training in usability techniques, project management, instructional design and interaction design techniques from industry conferences. She received an undergraduate degree from University of California, Berkeley and a graduate degree from San Diego State University.
Martin Tomitsch is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Sydney. He teaches Interaction Design (undergrad) and Human-Computer Interaction (postgrad). In his free time (aka ‘research’) he likes to think about interactions beyond the screen. This quest has also inspired his PhD on the use of interaction design methodologies for designing smart environments, which he completed in 2008. Before joining the University of Sydney he taught User Interface Design and Usability Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology and worked as usability consultant at a Vienna-based R&D spin-off.
Jeremy Yuille is an interaction designer, digital media artist and academic with a background in digital art, music, performance and architecture. He has a Bachelor of Design Studies from the Architecture department of the University of Queensland and a Masters of Design from SIAL at RMIT University. Jeremy is a co-founder of the Media and Communication Design Studio at RMIT, where he undertakes collaborative research with the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID), supervises postgraduate students, and holds interaction design studios. He is also a certified scrum-master, and a director of the Interaction Design Association.
As teachers in design programs, both Jeremy and Martin are very experienced with facilitating professional and student input in a discussion format. They can also tap-dance when required.
Guillermo Torres is part of Adobe’s XD team where as a Sr. UX Designer he works on crafting the experience for products like Flash Catalyst. Prior to joining Adobe, he navigated between interaction design and development at AKQA and Method. Always bringing a mix of both left and right brain to everything he does. In his 10 years of in the industry he has created engaging, award winning interactive experiences for global brands such as Nike, Microsoft, Visa and Target.
Greg Vassallo is a Senior Associate in the User Experience Design group at Moment, an independent interaction design firm in New York. Greg holds a Bachelor’s degree in photography from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, and a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University.
Greg’s work focuses on generative research, design strategy, information architecture, and interaction design for web-based and mobile applications. He’s passionate about user experience design and how it can change the world. He also has a slightly unhealthy fetish for wireframes and design documentation.
Kate Walser became a user experience designer in 1997. Since then, she’s talked with and observed audiences from lower-literacy, rural patients to business professionals and high-wealth consumers to understand what their users want and design Web sites and software that make sense to users and engage them. She’s worked with the US Departments of Health & Human Services, Justice, Defense, and Veterans Affairs; US Postal Service; IRS; Small Business Administration; and Commonwealth of Virginia; as well as companies including AXA/Equitable, T. Rowe Price, and PEPCO. Her work has received awards, including eHealthcare and Government Trailblazer awards. She’s presented at conferences including Social Media for Government, The New New Internet Conference, Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) International, and The Internet Security Conference.
Kate established and led Usability Centers of Excellence at SRA International and American Management Systems, before starting a consulting division focused on customer experiences, CX Insights, at Tritus Technologies. She serves on several advisory boards, including the DC chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA-DC) and the Section 508 refresh federal advisory committee.
Dan Willis has been building Web products and creating “no-duh” deliverables for something like a hundred years and although he usually hides behind his alter ego UX Crank, he has agreed not to wear a mask for the duration of this session. At least not on his face.
Donna Spencer is a freelance information architect, interaction designer, world-renowned speaker and workshop leader, and author of a wildly popular book about card sorting. (Seriously, it’s bigger than “The Da Vinci Code” in Slovenia.) She’s Australian so she talks funny and laughs a lot, both of which should make Visual Thinker’s Pictionary a big hit.
Gretchen Anderson, LUNAR
As LUNAR’s Director of User Interface Design, Gretchen Anderson designs products that are as pleasurable to use as they are powerful in expression. She seeks out those design challenges that ultimately make a positive impact on people’s daily lives and environment. With a design philosophy rooted in the belief that a user interface should be seamless and invisible, she has designed a wide variety of products and experiences: from medical devices to casino entertainment to business productivity tools. Gretchen graduated with honors from Harvard University. Her experience spans 15 years, and prior to joining LUNAR, she worked for several Bay Area design consultancies. Her clients include: Johnson & Johnson, TurboChef, Microsoft, Virgin Records and HP. She also enjoys teaching design and research methodologies to fellow designers and business people alike.
The Importance of Facial Features
Chris Avore, Erova Studios LLC
Chris Avore is an interaction designer in the Washington DC area, specializing in usable interface design and information architecture.
After years of working independently, he grew tired of asking his bulldog for persona advice and began pestering other user experience designers for feedback, and thus UX Show & Tell was, well, you get the idea.
Activity: UX Show & Tell
Richard Banks, Microsoft Research
Richard Banks is a senior interaction designer for Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. He’s part of a team that spends most of its time looking at family life, trying to understand the complexities of home, in order to figure out how the digital should fit in appropriately. Richard joined Microsoft (quite a while ago) after graduating from the Royal College of Art in London. Since then he’s worked as a design manager in Seattle on Microsoft’s Office, Windows and MSN products before moving home and into research.
The 40 Year Old Tweet
Steve Baty, Meld
Steve Baty is the founder of UX Book Club and one of the coordinators for the Sydney UX Book Club group. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Interaction Design Association; is a contributing editor for Johnny Holland; editor of Boxes & Arrows; contributor to UXmatters; and organizer of the UX Australia conference. Steve is a practitioner with over a decade of experience and a passion for solving problems through design. He likes to go fishing, but doesn’t get to very often.
Discussion: UX Book Club – What is Interaction Design?
Solomon Bisker, Carnegie Mellon/School of Architecture
Solomon Bisker is a student at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), where he is pursuing a Masters of Tangible of Interaction Design focusing on design for the built environment. Before that, he worked as an interaction designer at Cambridge Systematics, consulting with federal and state transportation agencies to explore how their processes and public interactions could be improved by technology. Before THAT, he conducted research into mobile barcode interaction design in crowds and public spaces with MIT’s Mobile Experience Lab, part of the MIT Design Lab. He has a BS and M.Eng in Computer Science from MIT.
Citizen Volunteerism and Urban Interaction Design
Nate Bolt, Bolt | Peters
Nate Bolt serves as El Presidente of Bolt | Peters where he is fascinated by the role of research and design in our lives. He has overseen hundreds of user experience projects for Sony, Oracle, Volkswagen, Greenpeace, and others. He is co-author of the Rosenfeld book, Remote Research, and created the world’s first moderated remote testing software in 2003, Ethnio, which is now being used around the world to recruit hundreds of thousands of live participants for research.
Nate gives talks about research and design in both commercial and academic settings, including a recent keynote for the Urban Libraries Council. Last century, he worked with faculty at the University of California, San Diego, to create a degree titled “Digital Technology and Society,” which focused on the social impact of technology. He also completed a year of communications studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he failed every class, and was jailed briefly for playing drums in public without a license.
Remote Design Research
Kevin Cheng, Twitter
Kevin Cheng splits his crayon time between many endeavors. He is a product manager at Twitter, the co-founder and artist for OK/ Cancel, a webcomic on user experience, and the author of the upcoming book, See What I Mean: How to Communicate Ideas with Comics. Most recently, he is also co-produced an iPhone augmented reality ghost hunting game. Kevin blogs at kevnull.com and has been known to Twitter as @k.
Augmented Reality: Is It Real? Should We Care?
Allan Chochinov, Core77
Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is the editor-in-chief of Core77.com, the widely read design website, Coroflot.com design job and portfolio site, and DesignDirectory.com design firm database. He has been named on numerous design and utility patents, and has received awards from I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club and The One Club. He teaches in the graduate departments of Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Girls and Women: Object Lessons in the Primacy of Interaction
Maria Cordell, Macquarium
Maria Cordell is Principal User Experience Architect at Macquarium in Atlanta. In a career that dates way back, Maria has led and produced numerous successful enterprise software and Web design projects–from corporate Web sites to enterprise-class rich Internet applications and desktop apps–for companies in telecommunications, industrial wireless data transmission, retail sales, terminal server optimization, and optical physics. Maria holds an MS in Information Design and a BS in Physics, both from Georgia Tech. She’s an avid photographer, auto racer, gardener, and amateur radio operator, and the main instigator
behind IxDA Atlanta.
Interaction Design for the Fourth Dimension
Matt Cottam, Tellart
Matt Cottam has been responsible for setting strategic direction for Tellart since co-founding the company in 1999. He provides both inspiration and direction through active involvement in client projects, academic research and teaching, as well as international design and technology conferences worldwide.
With Tellart Matt has directed design and strategy projects for clients including Nokia Design, Humana Inc. and Otis Elevator (United Technologies Research Center). He has been publishing and presenting for over a decade and has become an internationally recognized speaker on a wide range of design and technology topics. Recent lecturing venues have included the Google Tech Talks series, the d.school at Stanford University, the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies conference (ETech), Intel’s Future Technologies Research Summit, PICNIC08, SIGCHI, IDSA/ICSID, DEFCON and the Designing User Experience (DUX).
Matt is a member of the part-time faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he has taught studio courses since 1999 on wide-ranging topics such as emergency medicine, physical computing and service design. He is also an Adjunct Professor at UmeΠInstitute of Design (UID Sweden) where he leads core interaction design modules and contributes to ongoing curriculum development. He is a member of the Visiting Faculty at the Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (CIID, Denmark). Matt is also a visiting speaker at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO, Norway), and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA).
Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics
Christopher Fahey, Behavior Design
Christopher Fahey is a founding partner and user experience director at Behavior, an award-winning New York web design consultancy focused on building compelling and elegant user experiences for business and culture.
At Behavior, Chris has led the IA and UXD strategies for clients and projects in many industries, including BusinessWeek, The National Geographic Channel, UNICEF, HBO, The Smithsonian Institution, McGraw-Hill, JPMorgan Chase, XM Satellite Radio, AARP, the AIGA, and The Onion. In his 14+ years as a professional interaction designer and manager, Chris’s projects have covered everything from business- critical web applications to sci-fi adventure games and artificial intelligence chatbots.
Chris is an active speaker on user experience design, with recent events including SXSW, An Event Apart, the ASIS&T IA Summit, Euro IA, The Society for Technical Communications Summit, and the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo NYC.
He teaches at the School of Visual Arts’ new interaction design MFA program in 2009, and has also taught at FIT, Brooklyn College, and the City College of New York. His internet artwork has been featured in the Whitney and the New Museum. Chris also blogs about design, technology, culture, and whatever else he’s interested in at http://www.graphpaper.com.
The Human Interface (or: Why Products are People, Too)
Ben Fullerton, IDEO
Ben is an interaction designer with an interest in exploring the implications of the increasing influence of design and technology on our lives. He currently works at IDEO in the Bay Area, having previously spent time at Twitter. Before moving to California, Ben worked in London at Samsung’s European design studio, pioneering service design and innovation consultancy live|work, and digital full service agency Oyster Partners (now LBi) during the early years of the web.
Ben has produced work for clients including Orange, the BBC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Vodafone, Samsung, Twitter, T-Mobile, the V&A Museum, the Rothschild Foundation, Boots, the Design Council, Qwest, BAA, the US Government, and Macmillan Cancer Research. He has written for the ACM’s “Interactions” magazine, has been a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Arts, the UC Berkeley iSchool and NYU’s ITP, and has spoken at Design Engaged and SXSW Interactive.
He holds a BA in Contemporary Literature and an MA from the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London, where he explored the development of technology within the context of the academic study and experience of material culture. Projects that Ben has worked on have been nominated for a BAFTA and won a Spark Award, among others.
Designing for Solitude
Jamin Hegeman, Nokia
Jamin Hegeman is a senior designer at Nokia Design in San Francisco, where he works across the Nokia organization to define new services, experiences, and business opportunities. His 13 years of experience includes being a journalist, editor, web developer, interaction designer, teacher, and business owner. He has a masters in design with a focus on interaction design from Carnegie Mellon University, and a degree in poetry writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Jamin has been on the Service Design Network planning board for the 2008 and 2009 conferences. He also directed CMU’s Emergence service design conference in 2007.
Service Design: an Interaction Design Perspective
Mike Kruzeniski, Microsoft
Mike Kruzeniski is a UX Creative Director for the Entertainment Experience Group at Microsoft, in Seattle. Before joining Microsoft, Mike was a Designer on Nokia Design’s Insight & Innovation team in Los Angeles, where he worked on projects such as the Nokia 2010 View of the Future, and the concept design for the Nokia 8800 Arte. He has a Master’s of Interaction Design from the Umea Institute of Design in Sweden, and a Bachelor of Industrial Design from the Emily Carr Institute of Design in Vancouver, BC.
Poetry & Polemics in Creating Experience
Livia Labate, Comcast / IAI
Livia Labate is a user experience designer practicing in Philadelphia at Comcast Interactive Media. She also currenty on the IA Institute Board of Directors and co-chairing the 2010 and 2011 IA Summits. In other words, she loves the UX world and enjoys giving back to the community.
Ceci n’est pas une KPI
Alexis Lloyd, The New York TImes
Alexis Lloyd is a Creative Technologist for the Research and Development group at The New York Times Company. She is responsible for researching technology trends and prototyping future interfaces for content consumption across multiple platforms and devices.
In addition to her work at the Times, Ms. Lloyd has over 12 years experience as a multimedia and interaction designer, and has designed award-winning projects for clients such as FOX, Columbia University, American Express, The New York Historical Society, PBS, and others. In addition, her new media art and design work has been shown internationally, in such venues as SIGGRAPH, the Chelsea Art Museum, Artgadgets (Netherlands), MAD Emergent Arts Center (Netherlands), the Melvin Art Gallery, and Symphony Space. Ms. Lloyd holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School for Design.
New Interactions With News
Erin Malone, tangible ux
Christian Crumlish, Yahoo!
Erin Malone, a Principal with Tangible UX, has over 20 years of experience leading design teams and developing social experiences for companies like Yahoo!, AOL, AltaVista, Intuit and others. She is the founder of the Yahoo! Pattern Library and a founding member of the IA Institute.
Christian Crumlish is the curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, a design evangelist with the Yahoo! Developer Network, and a member of Yahoo!’s design council. He is also co-chair of the monthly BayCHI program, a member of the Open Web Foundation, and a director of the Information Architecture Institute.
Designing Social Interfaces: The Game
Rob Nero, Malmö University
Rob Nero is currently working on his Master’s thesis at the Interaction Design Masters program at Malmö University, in Malmö, Sweden. Before deciding to move to Sweden, he designed enterprise web applications for large and Fortune 500 companies for 10 years. Rob’s design projects while attending the Masters program include a music remix web site that was used in a national campaign for refugees, a Bluetooth-enabled music distribution box for an inner-city hip-hop club, and multiple physical prototyping projects with the Arduino platform.
After graduation in 2010, Rob is seeking employment opportunities in the physical and tangible interface areas. He hopes to continue his work in rapid physical prototyping, electronics, and people interaction in every adventure and future employment.
TRKBRD: From Idea to Conception with Physical Prototyping
Nicolas Nova, Lift lab
Nicolas Nova is both researcher at Liftlab – with a specific interest in user experience and foresight in particular with regards to future technologies/practices and their implications – and the editorial manager of the Lift conferences (Switzerland, South Korea, France). He has a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL, Lausanne) where he also worked as a research scientist at the Media and Design Lab.
He runs field studies that aim at informing design projects for various companies and institutions in domains such as mobile/urban/location-based applications, tangible and gestural interactions, social computing, gaming and networked objects.
He blogs at Pasta and Vinegar, about future technologies/practices and their implications. He speaks and lectures widely on these topics at such institutions and conferences as Mediamatic (Amsterdam), the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto), Experientia (Torino), the Annenberg Center for Communication (Los Angeles), Ubicomp, NordicCHI to name just a few. He teaches design research at ENSCI (Paris) and HEAD (Geneva).
From Observing Failures to Provoking Them
Lara Penin & Federico Casalegno
Lara Penin
Lara Penin, PhD is a full-time Professor of Transdisciplinary Design at the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design, where she teaches at the Design and Management and Integrated Design programs. Her work focuses on Design for Sustainability, Design for Sustainable Social Innovation and Service Design. At Parsons, she coordinates the Area of Study of Service Design and is co-founder and member of the Research Lab Design and Social Innovation for Sustainability (DESIS Lab).
Lara has a successful record of research, education and development projects on an international scale. In her previous position as a research consultant at Milan Polytechnic University, she has managed the project “Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles”, funded by the United Nations’ Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles, dedicated to research and modeling sustainable ways of living in Brazil, India and China through design methods and tools. She has successfully launched and managed the project LENS, the Learning Network on Sustainability, focused on education for Design for Sustainability and Product-Service Systems, financed by the European Commission, coordinated by Milan Polytechnic University in partnership with six universities in Europe and Asia.
She holds a PhD in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication from Milan Polytechnic University, Italy and a BA in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She has lectured in Europe, China, India and Brazil and has published several papers and articles.
Federico Casalegno
Federico Casalegno, Ph.D., is the Director of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab and Associate Director of the MIT Design Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2006, he is the director of the Green Home Alliance between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy.
A social scientist with an interest in the impact of networked digital technologies in human behavior and society, Casalegno both teaches and leads research at MIT, especially focusing on the area of rethinking and designing interactive media to foster connections between people, information and physical places using cutting-edge information technology.
Discussion: DESIS-USA: Demands and Initiatives on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability in the U.S.
Dennis Schleicher, Sears
Dennis Schleicher uses his background in business and industrial anthropology to design interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives. In addition to being a past chair of the largest Information Architecture Summit, he continues to be a leading force in the design community and is actively involved with the Information Architecture Institute, the ASIST Special Interest Group of Information Architecture, Overlap, and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Dennis is Director, User Experience Architecture at Sears Holdings in Chicago. He has worked with American Public University Systems, Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, United States Air Force, Microsoft, Comcast, Dominos, White Castle, Bosch, and Numara. His corporate pedigree includes work at Argus Associates, the company that wrote the book on Information Architecture, and the Ford account at JWT, the largest account at the largest advertising company in the US.
Activity: Bodystorming
Kendra Shimmell, Lextant
My unique combination of skills allows me to move fluidly between design research and interaction design. While at lextant, I have worked on diverse projects including health care systems, retail environments, medical devices, financial service design, and enterprise management applications.
I am responsible for both account and project management, however my true passion is in designing solutions that resonate with consumers. I’ve been told that I have an innate ability to immerse myself in the consumer’s domain. My sensitivity to both implicit and explicit communications between people, artifacts, and context of use allows me to excel in identifying patterns, breakdowns, and opportunities.
On the client level, my goal is to align interdisciplinary teams around a common goal by facilitating communication across the disciplines of marketing, business, design, and engineering. I have established productive partnerships with companies such as Cardinal Health, CheckFree, Cordis, Dell, Diebold, Hewlett-Packard, Hollister, Hunter, Moen, Nationwide Insurance, and GE Healthcare.
Environments: The Future of Interaction Design
Kel Smith, Anikto LLC
Kel Smith is a nationally recognized authority on Web accessibility, with a list of publications that have been cited by the Pentagon Library, Kent State’s Knowledge Management Program, and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. In February 2008 he founded Anikto (ah-NEEK-toh) as a consultancy to explore and support the creation of barrier-free digital experiences spanning multiple disciplines, markets and contexts. He presented on the topic of virtual world applications at the CSUN 2009 Technology Conference for Persons with Disabilities and at the TechShare 2009 conference in London, UK. Kel is a member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and the Information Architecture Institute (IAI), and he currently serves as Vice Chair of the Philadelphia chapter of ACM/SIG-CHI for computer-human interaction. He earned his BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and studied cognitive science as part of MS program at Philadelphia University.
The Use of Virtual Worlds Among People with Disabilities
Jeanne Turner, iSITE
Barbara Holmes, iSITE
Jeanne Turner is the Leader of IxDA Portland and an Information Architect at ISITE Design. At ISITE, Jeanne conducts user research to understand the needs and goals of people in a variety of target audiences — such as academic researchers trying to peruse colleagues’ working papers and restaurateurs eager to source food from local farmers. She applies that understanding to the design of thoughtful and appropriate interactive experiences. Outside of ISITE, Jeanne plans design jam sessions, coordinates lectures and workshops, and serves the IxD community. She has a degree in Computer Science with a focus on human-computer interaction from the University of Hawaii.
Barbara Holmes has been working in interface design and content development since 1989, when she participated as a lead instructional designer in the development of a series of computer-based, laserdisc (who remembers those?) training courses for Nissan Motors. Since then, she’s worked as a freelancer, on staff, and at agencies, designing a wide range of digital training and simulations for the military, medical, oil extraction, automotive, financial, high tech, higher education and public non-profit sectors. During the last nine years she’s transitioned her focus from pure instructional design to information architect/interaction designer, and now works in the agency/vendor world. Currently a Senior Information Architect at ISITE Design in Portland, Oregon, she unites her passions for user-centered design and a deep love of meaningful content to teach, preach and practice usability, plus design interfaces for software applications, social networking, B2C and B2B websites. She is a senior member of the Society for Technical Communicators and also a member of ASTD, CHIFOO, and one of the planning board members of IxDA Portland. A lifelong learner, Barbara has completed training in usability techniques, project management, instructional design and interaction design techniques from industry conferences. She received an undergraduate degree from University of California, Berkeley and a graduate degree from San Diego State University.
Activity: Design Jam Session
Martin Tomitsch
Jeremy Yuille
Martin Tomitsch is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Sydney. He teaches Interaction Design (undergrad) and Human-Computer Interaction (postgrad). In his free time (aka ‘research’) he likes to think about interactions beyond the screen. This quest has also inspired his PhD on the use of interaction design methodologies for designing smart environments, which he completed in 2008. Before joining the University of Sydney he taught User Interface Design and Usability Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology and worked as usability consultant at a Vienna-based R&D spin-off.
Jeremy Yuille is an interaction designer, digital media artist and academic with a background in digital art, music, performance and architecture. He has a Bachelor of Design Studies from the Architecture department of the University of Queensland and a Masters of Design from SIAL at RMIT University. Jeremy is a co-founder of the Media and Communication Design Studio at RMIT, where he undertakes collaborative research with the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID), supervises postgraduate students, and holds interaction design studios. He is also a certified scrum-master, and a director of the Interaction Design Association.
As teachers in design programs, both Jeremy and Martin are very experienced with facilitating professional and student input in a discussion format. They can also tap-dance when required.
Discussion: Who’s Gonna Teach the Next Generation?
Guillermo Torres, Adobe
Guillermo Torres is part of Adobe’s XD team where as a Sr. UX Designer he works on crafting the experience for products like Flash Catalyst. Prior to joining Adobe, he navigated between interaction design and development at AKQA and Method. Always bringing a mix of both left and right brain to everything he does. In his 10 years of in the industry he has created engaging, award winning interactive experiences for global brands such as Nike, Microsoft, Visa and Target.
Rapid Prototyping with Adobe Flash Catalyst
Greg Vassallo, Moment
Greg Vassallo is a Senior Associate in the User Experience Design group at Moment, an independent interaction design firm in New York. Greg holds a Bachelor’s degree in photography from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, and a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University.
Greg’s work focuses on generative research, design strategy, information architecture, and interaction design for web-based and mobile applications. He’s passionate about user experience design and how it can change the world. He also has a slightly unhealthy fetish for wireframes and design documentation.
10 Things I Learned About Being a Design Consultant While Living in the Hospital For a Year
Kate Walser, CX Insights
Kate Walser became a user experience designer in 1997. Since then, she’s talked with and observed audiences from lower-literacy, rural patients to business professionals and high-wealth consumers to understand what their users want and design Web sites and software that make sense to users and engage them. She’s worked with the US Departments of Health & Human Services, Justice, Defense, and Veterans Affairs; US Postal Service; IRS; Small Business Administration; and Commonwealth of Virginia; as well as companies including AXA/Equitable, T. Rowe Price, and PEPCO. Her work has received awards, including eHealthcare and Government Trailblazer awards. She’s presented at conferences including Social Media for Government, The New New Internet Conference, Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) International, and The Internet Security Conference.
Kate established and led Usability Centers of Excellence at SRA International and American Management Systems, before starting a consulting division focused on customer experiences, CX Insights, at Tritus Technologies. She serves on several advisory boards, including the DC chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA-DC) and the Section 508 refresh federal advisory committee.
The Change We Need Needs IxD: Designing Gov 2.0 that’s Inclusive
Dan Willis
Donna Spencer
Dan Willis has been building Web products and creating “no-duh” deliverables for something like a hundred years and although he usually hides behind his alter ego UX Crank, he has agreed not to wear a mask for the duration of this session. At least not on his face.
Donna Spencer is a freelance information architect, interaction designer, world-renowned speaker and workshop leader, and author of a wildly popular book about card sorting. (Seriously, it’s bigger than “The Da Vinci Code” in Slovenia.) She’s Australian so she talks funny and laughs a lot, both of which should make Visual Thinker’s Pictionary a big hit.
Visual Thinker’s Pictionary