Theresa Neil
Theresa Neil is an independent interface designer based in Austin, Texas. She has led the design for more than 80 live web, desktop and mobile applications since 2001. Recent clients include PayPal, Pearson, UnboundID and a number of start-ups. Her portfolio and blog are at www.theresaneil.com. Theresa and Bill Scott co-authored "Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions" published by O’Reilly Media in January of 2009. More about the book including the Flickr photo stream and blog are at www.designingwebinterfaces.com.
Corrina Liao Ph.D.
Corrina Liao had extensive product design experience prior to moving to Sydney, Australia – as part of the User Experience Design Team at Dell, Inc (Singapore) and prior to that, Business Imaging Division, Hewlett Packard (Singapore). As a Dell Senior Usability Category manager, Corrina successfully managed the usability portfolio of inkjet printers and Display (TVs, flat panel monitors & projectors) line of business during her tenure at Dell. At Hewlett Packard, Corrina played a pivotal role in setting up and mentoring a group of human factors professionals. In Sydney, as a Senior Usability Engineer at Silverbrook Research Pty Ltd, she managed the user experience of the wireless interactive digital pen. Recent career expansion was to join Different and venture into the world of service design research. As part of the UX team at Different, Corrina innovated and delivered experience architectural deliverables such as research findings, persona and user scenarios, interaction specifications, design requirements and customer journeys across various service sectors and industries. Currently, Corrina is working at Telstra as an UX Product Specialist. She can be contacted at [email protected]. https://au.linkedin.com/in/corrinaliao
Different
This user does not have bio yet.
A Customer Experience Designer, passionate about participatory design, design strategy and ethnography with experience in finance, government, telecommunication, media and professional services.
Current obsessions include escape rooms, non-mouse interactions and quilt making.
Jordan's been a freelance experience strategist for the past 5 years, working with organizations across North America. He's in the process of establishing Hostile Sheep, a boutique experience lab created to help organizations produce better digital products and services. He's worked with brands like Coke, Nike, BMW, Canadian Olympic Committee, HP, GE, Ford, Canadian Tire, Kraft, Telus, P&G and Diageo. He's worked with agencies like Critical Mass, Razorfish, W+K, TAXI, Trapeze, Ogilvy One, Proximity/BBDO, Cheil, JWT, and others. Follow Jordan on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Paul Noble-Campbell
Paul Noble-Campbell is Director of Design and Strategy at M3 Design. He creates opportunities through design strategy that make organizations, people and society thrive. By combining his human-centric approach with his diverse experiences, Paul creates rich brand experiences, design strategies and future visions. His collaborative leadership has guided multi-national clients through hundreds of initiatives resulting in the design of products, digital interfaces, web experiences, brand identities, interactive exhibits, interiors, packaging and environmental graphics. Twitter: @pauljnc
Rachel Hinman
Rachel Hinman is a researcher, designer and a recognized thought leader in the mobile user experience field. Her passion for art, design and cultural study coupled with the belief that people can use technology to improve the human condition have been the driving forces in her career for over a decade. Currently, Rachel is a Senior Research Scientist at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, California. There she focuses on the research and design of emergent and experimental mobile interfaces and mobile experiences for emerging markets. Prior to joining Nokia, Rachel was and experience design director at Adaptive Path, and a mobile researcher and strategist for Yahoo's mobile group. Rachel's innate sensitivity to people and culture have proven powerful skills in the field, enabling her to successfully lead research studies on mobile phone usage in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa. Rachel writes and speaks frequently on the topic of mobile research and design. She is the creative force behind the 90 Mobiles in 90 Days Project and her perspectives on mobile user experience have been featured in Interactions Magazine, BusinessWeek and Wired. Currently, Rachel is writing The Mobile Frontier: A Guide for Designing Mobile User Experiences with Rosenfeld Media. Expected publication is winter of 2011. Rachel holds a Masters Degree in Design from the Institute of Design in Chicago.
Cynthia Thomas
Cynthia Thomas is partner at Translator, a digital experience agency focused on connecting online and offline, customer and brand, and person-to-person through smartly designed experiences. She leads strategy, conceptual incubation and user experience thinking for agency clients, helping them navigate the digital landscape. Cynthia’s passion for the UX discipline and experience thinking as a whole has driven her focus on studying the social, cultural and behavioral influence of the digital space on human interactions and expectations. A digital native, Cynthia started out in her career both as a web designer and a developer writing code. This hands-on experience gradually led to an interest in strategy and user experience design, which she parlayed into a job within the interactive group at Laughlin/Constable, one of Milwaukee's largest ad agencies. It was there she introduced research, strategy and the UX discipline to LC’s process. In 2005 she joined Fullhouse as an Interactive Strategist, refocusing and establishing the UX discipline and parlaying it into a service offering for the agency. During this time, she also introduced experience design (XD) as both a team structure and philosophical approach to solutioning, helped implement a collaborative work environment. She speaks and writes on the subject of user experience and experience design on a regular basis, and is a frequent contributor to the Translator blog Just Sayin’.
Cathleen Zapata
Cathleen Zapata is currently the Vice President of Research and Customer Experience at Metrics Marketing Group, an analytics-driven database and interactive marketing firm in Cleveland. She is also the President of the Northeast Ohio chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association, one of the most trusted organizations in the field of usability with over 2500 members worldwide. Cathy has over 15 years experience in quantitative and qualitative research, specializing in usability. Her background includes a wealth of experience in usability testing, eye tracking, heuristic evaluations, user research and conversion enhancement strategies. She is the architect and manager of MetricsLabSM, a groundbreaking research facility in Cleveland, Ohio, making Metrics Marketing the only interactive marketing firm with a full solution of both owned in-lab and mobile eye tracking across the entire Midwest. Cathy has been featured in MarketingSherpa, About.com, Crain's Cleveland Business and The Columbus Dispatch, and regularly teaches on topics of usability and conversion strategies at colleges, conferences and events internationally, including Shop.org, BAI Retail Delivery, UPA, and more. She has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies to improve their user experiences including American Greetings, Sherwin-Williams, Coach, Inc., Midas, Speedway, KeyBank, Citizens Bank, The Cleveland Clinic, Medical Mutual of Ohio, Nationwide Insurance, and more.
Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine
I am a tech-focused jack of all trades and the editor-in-chief of UX Magazine. I'm also the author of Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software, published by O'Reilly Media. Through its partnership with UX Magazine, I am also a senior advisor to Didus, a recruiting and career development company focused on user-centered professionals. As well, I'm engaged as the Managing Director, Product Strategy & Design for Dapperly, a fashion-oriented software product startup, and am the Principal of First Day, a small private equity and consulting company. From 2005 to 2009, I helped found EffectiveUI, a leading UX strategy, design, and development agency focused on web, desktop, and mobile systems.
I’ve been fortunate to participate in work that’s on the leading edge of user-centered strategy and design, customer experience, and software development. Everything is converging around an increased attention to the quality of user experiences, around web-enabled or web-like software, and around technologies that can create unified experiences across multiple platforms, devices, and applications. I’ve built on my experience at UX Magazine, EffectiveUI, and in writing my book to undertake a major project to find ways to make dramatic improvements to the user-centered field and to increase the perception of user-centered design, research, and technology as being core strategic values.
My work can be very hard to explain because what I do day-to-day is extremely varied since my role is usually to be a jack-of-all-trades. If I’m performing any one job function this week or month, it’s always in the broader context of fulfilling the needs of that business (whatever they might be) and in the even broader context of the private equity holding and management activities of First Day.
My primary value has been to be an adaptable, fearless, fast-learning manager of and versatile resource to a large number of small businesses, where I hold the line in diverse functions while the companies are too small to hire specialized professionals for any given part of their business. This means I’ve had my hands in almost every aspect of starting, growing, and managing a small business, including finance, accounting, legal, management, HR, marketing/brand, PR, IT, resource management, facilities, general operations, corporate governance, project management, product development, change management, and many others.
Alex Rainert
Alex has been working in the interactive industry for 12 years. He's spent that time working on a variety of platforms on the interactive agency side and as the co-founder of a startup, dodgeball.com (acquired by Google in 2005). Since then, he's managed the UX and Creative teams at Schematic NY and is currently working with a local startup on an early 2010 launch. Over the years, he's done work for clients including Verizon Wireless, Nokia, HBO, IBM, CBS, Core Performance, Freshdirect and Thomson Reuters. He blogs about innovation in design at everydayux.com, his sub-140 character thoughts can be found at @arainert and he consults on mobile, social and emerging technologies at Tinker Studio.
Alex Schleifer
Alex is CEO of Sideshow , an award winning creative agency. You can read his blog here.
I'm a father, husband and a sometimes night-owl with a deep affection for salads, water and cherry Nibs. An IxDA mentor and former UX’er at nForm, Critical Mass and Habanero Consulting Group, I can now be found at Central 1 Credit Union where I'm a Senior Product Manager, Direct Banking and overseeing a wide range of online, web and phone banking products used by 300+ Canadian credit unions and a number of banks.
Hana Schank
Hana Schank has been in Information Architecture for 14 years. She began her career at Andersen Consulting where she designed an award-winning interactive training program, and went on to work on designing the first website for CBS News. As the first hands-on Information Architect at OgilvyInteractive, Hana helped to establish a detailed documentation methodology and information architecture process which led to successful engagements for several clients who were designing and building sites for the first time. In her role as Director of Information Architecture at Zentropy Partners, she developed an IA process for the global organization, as well as leading the information architecture development for a range of high profile clients. Hana founded Collective User Experience in 2003, and now oversees all IA and UX work in addition to working directly with a range of clients to help make their web sites and applications more usable. Hana and several of the team members from CollectiveUX blog about IA in the real world at beautifulbutdumb.blogspot.com. She has finally broken down and started tweeting @hanaschank. Hana lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Megan Grocki
Megan bakes the best brownies on the planet. The end. Actually, that's just the beginning. Sassy, smiling and straightforward, Megan’s a senior member of Mad*Pow’s experience design team. With over 15 years of experience in research and experience design, Megan specializes in helping clients discover the attitudes, intents and behaviors of their users and understand what is truly important to them. By being the ultimate user advocate, she is able to improve the organization and presentation of content and refine the messaging in a way that rings true with the audience(s) and meets business goals. She has worked with clients including Bank of America, Aetna, Constant Contact and McKesson to sharpen their understanding of their audiences and design new digital experiences steeped in rigorous research and design thinking. She has been able to flex her marketing strategy muscles, creating new brand identities and developing clear and meaningful strategies for evolving brands. Until recently, Megan was also the mastermind behind Mad*Pow’s marketing strategy. From evaluating market conditions to directing digital marketing and social media strategies, Megan guided the marketing direction for all our events and promotional activities while collaborating with sales to support them in generating maximum buzz. Now that she has passed the Marketing torch, she is happy to wear just one hat as Experience Design Director. Prior to Mad*Pow, Megan served as marketing manager with Momenta as well as senior product manager and user interface manager at Bottomline Technologies. Megan holds a BA from the University of New Hampshire and is always seeking to continue her education by attending conferences, seminars and reading her weight in UX books. She is a founding member of the NHUPA. Her speaking gigs have included Refresh Boston, the 2010 IA Summit in Phoenix, the 2010 Usability Professionals' Association International conference in Munich, 2010 UPA Boston and Interaction11 in Boulder. In addition she served as IxDA’s Interaction12 conference program director. A die-hard tennis fan, Megan enjoys traveling the world, splashing in the waves at her favorite local beach and coffee shop-hopping around town with her husband and two young children. Megan is on Twitter at @megangrocki.
Dan Florio
Dan Florio was an average designer who learned enough about writing code to become average at it as well. But he liked coding more than designing. Besides, it makes a great deal more money. Plus, all clients think they can design and create good UX. But none of them think they can write code. Back in 2008 he quit working for Microsoft XBox and became a freelance developer. It seemed that Flex was in high demand so he set out to teach himself to become a Flex/Actionscript developer. He needed a good project to work on that would push his skills to improve so he turned to an old idea he had about making a website that would help people know the best times to run and pee during a movie. He built it. Named it RunPee and then watched it spend a year being lonely and getting no visitors. Then someone in the media - Leo Laporte - learned about it. And others learned about it from him and so on and so on. Eventually Dan was doing radio interviews for stations as far away as South Africa. RunPee was surprisingly a success. Dan now lives in the South Bay area of Los Angeles where he is working hard - hardly working - to create another successful project. Most aren't but it's fun trying. You can read Dan's developer blog at polyGeek.com.
Aarron Walter
Aarron Walter is the user experience design lead for MailChimp. Aarron writes about web design for industry publications, and has written a few books, the latest of which is Designing for Emotion to be published in the summer of 2011 by A Book Apart. He's also 50% of the magic behind the UX Sketchbook, an essential tool for capturing interface design ideas. Follow his ramblings on Twitter: @aarron.
Aarron Walter
Aarron Walter is the user experience design lead for MailChimp. Aarron writes about web design for industry publications, and has written a few books, the latest of which is Designing for Emotion to be published in the summer of 2011 by A Book Apart. He's also 50% of the magic behind the UX Sketchbook, an essential tool for capturing interface design ideas. Follow his ramblings on Twitter: @aarron.
Frank Garofalo
Frank Garofalo is a user experience architect living in Kansas City. Currently, he has two roles, one running his own company Cyber View, an online media and interactive solutions agency, and second as a User Experience Developer for Garmin International. He started designing and building web sites in 1999. Frank has a Master of Science in Computer Graphics Technology with a specialization in qualitative research for interactive multimedia from Purdue University. His passion lies in producing quality experiences for users by combining creative designs and functional development to achieve a balance of information architecture. You can follow him on Twitter @fgarofalo.
Harry Vertelney
Harry Vertelney is currently Director of R&D of User Experience at VMware. He has 30 years of continuous experience working for such industry leaders as VMware, Apple, Intuit, Sun Microsystems and Pacific Bell as an individual contributor and manager. He has received several domestic and international patents. Harry has degrees from the University of Southern California and California State University. He is passionate about building high performing teams and relentlessly pursues design excellence.
Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine
I am a tech-focused jack of all trades and the editor-in-chief of UX Magazine. I'm also the author of Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software, published by O'Reilly Media. Through its partnership with UX Magazine, I am also a senior advisor to Didus, a recruiting and career development company focused on user-centered professionals. As well, I'm engaged as the Managing Director, Product Strategy & Design for Dapperly, a fashion-oriented software product startup, and am the Principal of First Day, a small private equity and consulting company. From 2005 to 2009, I helped found EffectiveUI, a leading UX strategy, design, and development agency focused on web, desktop, and mobile systems.
I’ve been fortunate to participate in work that’s on the leading edge of user-centered strategy and design, customer experience, and software development. Everything is converging around an increased attention to the quality of user experiences, around web-enabled or web-like software, and around technologies that can create unified experiences across multiple platforms, devices, and applications. I’ve built on my experience at UX Magazine, EffectiveUI, and in writing my book to undertake a major project to find ways to make dramatic improvements to the user-centered field and to increase the perception of user-centered design, research, and technology as being core strategic values.
My work can be very hard to explain because what I do day-to-day is extremely varied since my role is usually to be a jack-of-all-trades. If I’m performing any one job function this week or month, it’s always in the broader context of fulfilling the needs of that business (whatever they might be) and in the even broader context of the private equity holding and management activities of First Day.
My primary value has been to be an adaptable, fearless, fast-learning manager of and versatile resource to a large number of small businesses, where I hold the line in diverse functions while the companies are too small to hire specialized professionals for any given part of their business. This means I’ve had my hands in almost every aspect of starting, growing, and managing a small business, including finance, accounting, legal, management, HR, marketing/brand, PR, IT, resource management, facilities, general operations, corporate governance, project management, product development, change management, and many others.
Hunter Whitney
Hunter Whitney is a consultant, author, and instructor who brings a distinct UX design perspective to data visualization. He has advised corporations, start-ups, government agencies, and NGOs to achieve their goals through a thoughtful, strategic design approach to digital products and services. Hunter is the author of "Data Insights: New Ways to Visualize and Make Sense of Data”. He was also asked to contribute a chapter in the book, “Designing for Emerging Technologies: UX for Genomics, Robotics, and the Internet of Things”. Additionally, Hunter has written numerous articles covering a range of subjects for various online and print publications including UX Magazine.
Ryan Betts
Ryan Betts (@hitsmachines) is an interaction designer at Nitobi Software, creators of PhoneGap. He holds a BSc in Interaction Design from Simon Fraser University. Presently focused on designing and developing for mobile phones and tablets, he is very excited about the future of urban computing.
Kim Bartowski
Kim is a creative director with 12 years of experience working for entertainment, travel and luxury brands. She arrived at Digitas in 2007 and is currently a group creative director overseeing an integrated team on American Express and heads up all mobile projects for DTAS North America. Since joining Digitas, she's directed worldwide campaigns and productions for Delta and American Express, and pitched and won the Comcast business. Prior to joining Digitas she was in Miami working on the many niche and luxury brands in the region. She launched campaigns for the opening of the W Hotels in South Beach and Ft. Lauderdale, and created brand campaigns and imagery for clients like the Ritz-Carlton among others. Before Miami, she was an art director at top Philadelphia agency—Red Tettemer, where she created campaigns for vast amounts of cable TV networks including: the launch of Rainbow Network’s WE tv (Women’s Entertainment Channel), AMC, and Comcast just to name a few. During those five years she worked heavily on Comcast as they quickly became the biggest cable network in the US. In addition, Kim has won a number of awards for the work she’s done including One Show, Communication Arts, FWA and a feature in Contagious Magazine. Kim graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology and lives in New York City with her husband Michael Ferrare.
Andrew Carlson
Andrew Carlson is a VP/Creative Director focusing on UX and design for the Digitas Mobile team. Throughout his career, Andrew has focused on interactive design, product and service development, creating experiences meant to maximize customer enjoyment and client benefit while pushing the medium to its limits. Andrew blogs about mobile and digital design at https://tempodesign.tumblr.com/
Jay Eskenazi
Jay Eskenazi (@jayeskenazi) is a seasoned user researcher and manager of user research teams, and has personally conducted or supervised 500+ usability studies in the U.S. and internationally since 1999. His research career spans 20 years, with the last 12+ years focused on user interface issues. Prior to co-founding Customer Experience Labs, a boutique usability firm, he worked as a user researcher on Microsoft’s e commerce properties and then created and served as Director of the User Experience Research team at Expedia for 7+ years. Jay earned his B.A. in Psychology from University of California at Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Communication (Social Psychology) from University of California at Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Alliant International University in San Diego.
Tyler Tate
Tyler Tate is a user experience designer focused on making the complex feel simple. He's also the founder of Crema.co, empowering you to discover single-origin coffees, get to know the people who grew them, and have the beans delivered to your door. Tyler lives in London with his wife Ruth and son Galileo. You can keep up with him on Twitter.
Eric Fisher
Eric Fisher is a product designer and social design evangelist at Facebook. With a background in layout and architecture, he's obsessed with creating things that conceptually make sense. Eric previously worked on the search design team at Google and the evangelism team at Apple, where he contributed to the Human Interface Guidelines and devised design concepts for building iPhone applications. In conjunction with his work at Facebook, he independently advises a cluster of smaller startups in the Bay area on product strategy and user experience design. Eric holds a bachelors of engineering in Digital Media Design from the University of Pennsylvania where he explored web development, human-computer interaction and minored in psychology. He writes about design at FishoftheBay.com and maintains the daily wordplay game OneUpMe.com, a personal project, on the side. Follow Eric on Twitter: @fishofthebay
UX Magazine Staff
UX Magazine was created to be a central, one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Our primary goal is to provide a steady stream of current, informative, and credible information about UX and related fields to enhance the professional and creative lives of UX practitioners and those exploring the field. Our content is driven and created by an impressive roster of experienced professionals who work in all areas of UX and cover the field from diverse angles and perspectives.
Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.
Susan Weinschenk first used a computer in the mid-1970’s, in graduate school. "I wrote and ran my first computer program, and the printer spit out a piece of paper that said 'JOB ABORTED.' Rather than being discouraged I was fascinated! What would happen when 'normal people,' not computer scientists, interacted with these things called computers?" She thus started a 30-year career in applying psychology to the design of technology. Susan has a Ph.D. in Psychology and is the author of How to Get People To Do Stuff, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People, and Neuro Web Design: What makes them click. She is a presenter, speaker, and consulting, writes a popular popular blog at her website, and also writes the Brain Wise blog at Psychology Today.
Stephanie Arnold
Stephanie Arnold is the Executive Director of User Experience Design at AT&T Interactive, the cross-platform local advertising branch of AT&T. She leads a team of information architects, usability researchers, and visual designers that support AT&T Interactive's consumer and advertiser products. Stephanie has worked in the UX industry for 8 years, having previously worked at Kelley Blue Book, Perot Systems and Travelocity. She has a strong background in Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI), with a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Human Factors, and is a strong believer in the saying "Keep It Simple." Besides being a UX fanatic, she is also an Apple gadget geek, a die-hard UCLA fan, and someone who gets the breaking news from her Facebook news feed.
Donna Maurer Spencer
Donna (Maurer) Spencer is a freelance information architect, mentor, writer and trainer. She has eight years’ experience working in-house and as a consultant doing strategic and tactical design. She has designed large intranets and Web sites, ecommerce and search systems, business applications, design patterns and a CMS. Donna is an experienced speaker who has taught workshops and presented sessions at local and international conferences, on information architecture, interaction design and whatever else crosses her mind. She spends her (little) remaining time on the board of IAI and writing a book on card sorting. Sometimes she even gets time to weave and sew.
Matt Miller
Matt Miller currently resides in Bountiful, Utah with his wife and three children. He has over twelve years of experience in web design and development. He has an undergraduate degree and completed graduate coursework in Exercise Physiology from the University of Utah which led him to his first career as a Kinesiologist. Along the way he worked part-time in the IT world and developed his first web site using HTML 2.0 in 1996. In 1998 he transitioned from software development as a secondary job responsibility to his full-time gig. Now he has over twelve years of enterprise web application design and development experience from his employment at Intermountain Healthcare and the LDS Church where he is currently employed as an interaction designer. While his degree is atypical for a design career the academic and years of real-world research methodology and statistics experience has proven valuable in the design and creation of metrics and dashboards. In addition to having a passion for creating enterprise software for real people and developing metrics that actually mean something he enjoys photography, running, cycling, hiking and most outdoor activities that don’t involve freezing temperatures. As a personal project to keep his development skills up to date and fund his obsession with outdoor gear he has created GearCodes.com. Home remodeling projects fill any remaining time in his life and inspired his newest blog The Plywood Floor Experiment. Other Websites & Blogs
John Dilworth
John Dilworth currently resides in Ogden, Utah with his wife and two children. He has been working in the field of interactive media and design for over 15 years. Through his career, John has been involved in numerous media projects for both local and international business. He has a passion for art, design, and how technology influences the lives of people. He holds a BFA in visual communications from Weber State University and an MFA in Computer Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California. John is currently Sr. Director of User Experience at Ancestry and maintains his own fine art studio to develop his personal artwork. He also enjoys getting away from computers and is active in trail running, mountaineering, rock climbing and mountain biking. More information can be found on his personal website: https://.johndilworth.com Other Websites & Blogs https://store.johndilworth.com https://.northtemple.com Twitter: @johndilworth
Brian Genisio
Brian Genisio is a passionate software consultant at SRT Solutions in Ann Arbor, MI and an active member of the Midwest software community. For over 10 years, Brian has worked with many languages and technologies. Currently, he is focusing on RIA technologies in Silverlight and Flex while exploring dynamic concepts in his static world. He also loves to talk about testing philosophies and methodologies. He can talk your ear off. Just humor him. In his spare time, he enjoys being a cooking nerd which includes traditional barbecue, baking bread, brewing beer and making as much as he can from scratch. https://HouseOfBilz.com https://ActionLinq.org @BrianGenisio
Called an interface guru by publications like Wired and Fast Company, Aza is the co-founder of Massive Health, and was until recently Creative Lead for Firefox. Previously, he was a founding member of Mozilla Labs. Aza gave his first talk on user interface at age 10 and got hooked. At 17, he was talking and consulting internationally. Aza has founded and sold two companies, including Songza.com, a minimalist music search engine that had over a million song plays in its first week. He also creates modular cardboard furniture called Bloxes. In another life, Aza has done Dark Matter research at both Tokyo University and the University of Chicago, from where he graduated with honors in math and physics.
With strong roots in user interface, interaction, and experience design, Kevin approaches usability from a holistic, 'big-picture' perspective. Ranging anywhere from information architecture, to performance optimization, to hand-crafting UIs for mobile and TV, Kevin's deep fascination with the way people communicate with technology is what drives him to make things "the way they should be."
In the past few years, Kevin has been a part of developing engaging content and contextual applications for brands like Pepsi, Honda, Procter & Gamble, and several major medical and higher-learning communities.
An accomplished author, Kevin served as a Technical Reviewer for the Flex 4 Cookbook, was a reviewer for Learning ActionScript 3.0 (2nd ed), was a featured author for O'Reilly Media's InsideRIA, and is currently a contributor here at UX Magazine.
Kevin is an Adobe Community Professional, and speaks at a number of the top conferences in the industry including Flash and the City, FITC, 360Flex, and OSCON. He’s received numerous accolades, including being listed among the "Top Presentations of the Day" and having the "Most discussed presentation on Twitter" by Slideshare.
Follow Kevin on Twitter (@kevinSuttle), on Quora, and KevinSuttle.com for more.
John Yunker (@johnyunker) is a leading expert on web and content globalization and author of the book The Art of the Global Gateway: Strategies for Successful Multilingual Navigation. He writes the popular blog Global by Design and is co-founder of Byte Level Research.
Brett Sandusky is Product Manager at Macmillan New Ventures where he oversees user experience design, agile development of new digital products, eCommerce, research and data analysis, and mobile applications. Formerly Director of Product Innovation for Kaplan Publishing, Brett’s expertise also includes digital strategy, product usability, content integration cross-platforms, and digital marketing. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and can be found at various locations online.
Richard Dalton
Richard Dalton (@mauvyrusset) manages a User Experience team at Vanguard where he passionately advocates designing user experiences within the context of user and business goals. In 2008 he had the honor of being the conference chair for the IA Summit in Miami and is still recovering. He has been a practitioner and manager in the UX field since 1994 in both the US and the UK. Richard has been in the United States with Vanguard since 1999, before that he lived in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North of England where he was a co-owner of a leading UK Web Consultancy. When he’s not working he enjoys hanging out with his wife and three children, playing table tennis at a local club, reading, playing guitar and juggling.
Jonathan Anderson | UX Magazine
I am a tech-focused jack of all trades and the editor-in-chief of UX Magazine. I'm also the author of Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software, published by O'Reilly Media. Through its partnership with UX Magazine, I am also a senior advisor to Didus, a recruiting and career development company focused on user-centered professionals. As well, I'm engaged as the Managing Director, Product Strategy & Design for Dapperly, a fashion-oriented software product startup, and am the Principal of First Day, a small private equity and consulting company. From 2005 to 2009, I helped found EffectiveUI, a leading UX strategy, design, and development agency focused on web, desktop, and mobile systems.
I’ve been fortunate to participate in work that’s on the leading edge of user-centered strategy and design, customer experience, and software development. Everything is converging around an increased attention to the quality of user experiences, around web-enabled or web-like software, and around technologies that can create unified experiences across multiple platforms, devices, and applications. I’ve built on my experience at UX Magazine, EffectiveUI, and in writing my book to undertake a major project to find ways to make dramatic improvements to the user-centered field and to increase the perception of user-centered design, research, and technology as being core strategic values.
My work can be very hard to explain because what I do day-to-day is extremely varied since my role is usually to be a jack-of-all-trades. If I’m performing any one job function this week or month, it’s always in the broader context of fulfilling the needs of that business (whatever they might be) and in the even broader context of the private equity holding and management activities of First Day.
My primary value has been to be an adaptable, fearless, fast-learning manager of and versatile resource to a large number of small businesses, where I hold the line in diverse functions while the companies are too small to hire specialized professionals for any given part of their business. This means I’ve had my hands in almost every aspect of starting, growing, and managing a small business, including finance, accounting, legal, management, HR, marketing/brand, PR, IT, resource management, facilities, general operations, corporate governance, project management, product development, change management, and many others.
Bruce Temkin
Bruce Temkin, Customer Experience Transformist, is the managing partner of Temkin Group and is widely viewed as a leading expert in how large organizations build differentiation with customer experience. Prior to founding Temkin Group, Bruce spent 12 years at Forrester Research where he led many parts of the research organization and was the most-read analyst in the company for 13 consecutive quarters.
Matt Galligan
Matt Galligan is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer for SimpleGeo, where he oversees the strategic direction of the company. He founded SimpleGeo in 2009 with Joe Stump. Prior to SimpleGeo, Matt founded Socialthing, a service that made it easy to keep up with friends' activity from multiple social networks. Socialthing was acquired by AOL in 2008 and is currently branded as AIM Lifestream. After the acquisition, Matt worked with AOL to further develop and define their social strategy. With a background in graphic design and user experience, Matt has also worked for MonsterCommerce, which was acquired by Network Solutions. He has long been heavily involved in the internet, starting as a graphic designer at age 15.
Sarah Doody is an NYC based user experience designer and product strategist. She works with startups to help them launch their initial product as well helping companies already in market optimize their user experiences.
Sarah publishes a popular UX newsletter, The UX Notebook. Sign up for free at: www.theuxnotebook.com
Sarah also teaching about user experience, she co-developed and taught General Assembly's first 12 week UX course. Sarah writes about user experience, design, and technology on her website, www.sarahdoody.com and can be reached on Twitter @sarahdoody.
UX Magazine Staff
UX Magazine was created to be a central, one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Our primary goal is to provide a steady stream of current, informative, and credible information about UX and related fields to enhance the professional and creative lives of UX practitioners and those exploring the field. Our content is driven and created by an impressive roster of experienced professionals who work in all areas of UX and cover the field from diverse angles and perspectives.
Dennis Wixon
Daniel Wigdor is UX Architect and Platform Architect at Microsoft and an Assistant Professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. Before joining U of T, he worked at Microsoft in nearly a dozen different roles, among them serving as the User Experience Architect of the Microsoft Surface product, and as a cross company expert in the creation of Natural User Interfaces. Before joining Microsoft, he previously conducted research in advanced user interfaces and devices at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, and at the Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard University. He is also co-founder of Iota Wireless, a company dedicated to the commercialization of NUI technologies for mobile phones. Daniel’s work has been described in dozens of publications in leading international conferences, journals, and books. His is the recipient of a Wolfond Fellowship and an ACM Best Paper Award.
Dennis Wixon
Dennis Wixon is currently Discipline Lead for Microsoft US BPD. Prior to this role he was the head of research for Microsoft Surface, and has also managed research teams at Microsoft Game Studies, and MSN/Home Products. Before joining Microsoft, Dennis managed the usability team at Digital Equipment Corporation, where a number of important usability methods such as Usability Engineering and Contextual Inquiry were developed. Dennis has been an active member of the user-research community for over 25 years. He co-chaired CHI 2002 served as Vice President for Conferences for ACM SIGCHI. Dennis has co-authored over sixty articles, book chapters and presentations on research methods and theory. He is an adjunct Full Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at University of Washington and co-edited with Dr. Judy Ramey the book Field Methods Case Book for Software Design. Dennis holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Clark University.
Diego Pulido is an Interaction Designer at Dell in Austin, TX. Prior to moving to Texas, Diego worked as an Interaction Designer at Pearson Education in Indianapolis and as a User Experience Designer at Roundarch in New York. He is passionate about Mobile UX, prototyping and sustainable design. While his background is in humanities, Diego always had a keen interest in technology and web design. It was through the field of Human-Computer Interaction that he was able to bridge the gap between his BA degree in Psychology and French from the University of Nevada, Reno and the world of User Experience Design. He earned a Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University. You can find him on Twitter: @ixDiego and his website: https://diegopulido.com
Luke Wroblewski
LukeW is an internationally recognized product design leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 700 million people worldwide. He is currently Chief Design Architect at Yahoo! Inc. where he works on forward-looking integrated customer experiences on the Web, mobile, TV, and beyond. Luke is the author of two popular Web design books: Web Form Design (2008) and Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability (2002). He also publishes Functioning Form, a leading online publication for interaction designers. Luke is consistently a top-rated speaker at conferences and companies around the world, and is a co-founder and former Board member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Previously, Luke was the Lead User Interface Designer of eBay Inc.'s platform team, where he led the strategic design of new consumer products (such as eBay Express and Kijiji) and internal tools and processes. He also founded LukeW Interface Designs, a product strategy and design consultancy, taught interface design courses at the University of Illinois and worked as a Senior Interface Designer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the birthplace of the first popular graphical Web browser, NCSA Mosaic. Visit Luke's website: https://.lukew.com/ Or his writings at Functioning Form: https://.lukew.com/ff/ And follow Luke on Twitter: https://.twitter.com/lukewdesign
Alex Schleifer
Alex is CEO of Sideshow , an award winning creative agency. You can read his blog here.
John Ferrara
John Ferrara has worked in in user experience design since 1999, designing interfaces for websites, desktop applications, and video games. Since 2006 he's been with Vanguard, and before that did significant work for Unisys and General Electric. He's been a forceful advocate for closer connections between UX and game design at the IA Summit, EuroIA, and Games for Health. He’s the author of the new book Playful Design: Creating Game Experiences in Everyday Interfaces, published by Rosenfeld Media. His nutrition education game Fitter Critters was a top prizewinner in the Apps For Healthy Kids contest, sponsored by Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign. Before entering the professional world, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in communications. Feel free to follow John on Twitter at @PlayfulDesign.
Steve Workman
Steve Workman is a consultant for PA Consulting Group in London. His job is to design and create applications and web sites using the latest standards-compliant and accessible technology. Steve is the lead mobile developer within PA, making Android and iPhone apps for the enterprise. He is also an organiser of the London Web Standards group who set up educational talks on web standards for people in the London area. Follow him on Twitter @steveworkman or read his personal blog on steveworkman.com
Frances Felske
Frances Felske is an Associate Experience Architect at MISI Company in New York City. Since joining MISI’s Experience Design department (XD) in 2009, she has worked on a variety of long and short-term engagements involving core usability methodologies, contextual inquiries, and strategic planning initiatives. Through her work at MISI, Frances has learned how user-centered design can apply to every aspect of a company’s interactions with both its customers and employees. Frances has been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on global projects, and she has conducted research for a variety of industries, including the pharmaceutical, financial, and legal sectors. She strives to expand her knowledge of experience design and usability, and enjoys learning how to apply these methodologies to new and diverse business situations. Frances has a Bachelors in Urban Design and Architecture Studies from New York University, where she learned her first lessons about designing with people in mind.
Megan Geyer
Megan Geyer is an experience design professional dedicated to ensuring that all audiences of any experience or engagement are represented throughout the conception, design, and implementation of that service, product, or model. As a Lead Experience Architect at NTT DATA, Megan has worked on a variety of projects including cross-channel audience research and strategy projects, global iPad research initiatives, enterprise iPad design standards projects, and employee communication strategies for internal grassroots political activism programs. Previous to joining NTT DATA, Megan managed end-to-end user experience design projects for a number of online experiences including consumer-facing websites. Her career experience spans industries including non-profit, pharmaceutical/ health and wellness, financial, nutrition, education, and music & entertainment. Megan is a member of the NYC Usability Professionals Association. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Rutgers University. Megan also enjoys playing a variety of games in her free time including console games, MMORPGs, and card games.
Richard Anderson is a 'user experience' practice, management, and organizational strategy consultant with international management, cross-organizational development, and more than 20 years of experience. He started and directed the Experience Center at Viant, as well as the User Research & Experience Strategy discipline at Studio Archetype and Sapient, and has held and supported other management roles in an assortment of companies. Via various consulting, advisory, and employment roles, and his workshops, courses, conference programs, and more, he has helped move 'user/customer experience' into a position of greater influence in numerous companies. At CHI 2007, Richard received SIGCHI's Lifetime Service Award for extensively facilitating and spreading the development of the field via his leadership contributions to BayCHI and to other chapters of SIGCHI around the world. He was Co-Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine from 2008 through 2010.
Richard can be followed via Twitter @riander and Riander Blog.
UX Magazine Staff
UX Magazine was created to be a central, one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Our primary goal is to provide a steady stream of current, informative, and credible information about UX and related fields to enhance the professional and creative lives of UX practitioners and those exploring the field. Our content is driven and created by an impressive roster of experienced professionals who work in all areas of UX and cover the field from diverse angles and perspectives.