RE:DESIGN/UX Design speakers

Albert believes in beautiful software experiences. Efficiency, clarity and emotional resonance are all necessary parts for a great interface. To successfully design these experiences requires more than familiarity with design principles. It requires sincere empathy to understand the user, their context and needs. He has lead large scale product and platform engagements for Sony PlayStation, EA, Google and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Prior to Odopod, Albert was a User Experience Architect at Adobe and Principal Designer at Yahoo!.

Andrew Crow designs products and services that delight people and exceed business expectation. Nearly 20 years of experience in visual, interaction and product design have given him a deep perspective on creating meaningful experiences for consumers.

Andrew is an Experience Design Director at GE where his team provides leadership to UX teams worldwide. Prior to this, he was Vice President of Experience Design and Mobile at Razorfish and a Lead Experience Designer at Adaptive Path.

Continually obsessed with the latest technologies in the mobile and mixed-media spaces, Andrew consults on the design of mobile applications, social networking, and collaboration software. He is an advocate of ubiquitous computing and approaches projects with a desire to ensure that the experience of a product stems from a strong overall strategy.

Andrew is a member of American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Interaction Design Association (IxDA), the Information Architecture Institute (IAI), Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (BayCHI), and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).

Ben Clemens started out as an art student, painter, and print designer, supporting himself doing four-color separation at a typesetting house. Over the past 15 years he’s worked on web-based community and generative design projects with the New York Times, Razorfish, Yahoo, Current TV, and Blurb. Ben is a Sr. Interaction Designer at Ancestry.com. He loves making pictures of all kinds, and turning them into books–most recently working for his demanding seven year-old daughter. He blogs at practicalist.com and posts an occasional photo at sweetobscurity.com. Don’t look at his Twitter feed @benvoluto, it’s pretty reckless.

Ben helps to lead Method’s interaction design team in San Francisco. His twelve years of experience span working within teams large and small, both in-house and consultancy, and from startups to corporate behemoths. Ben has worked on projects with many different areas of focus, beginning on the web but expanding to include mobile, brand, application, strategy, product and service. Prior to joining Method, Ben has spent time at Adaptive Path, IDEO, Twitter, Samsung, UK-based service design pioneers live|work, and Oyster Partners, a big British web agency you’d probably only remember if you still have the scars from the first dot bomb.

He teaches, currently at the California College of Arts, has written for Interactions magazine, Core 77 and FastCompany among others, and has spoken at a few different places. He is also involved as a mentor with the Designer Fund, and has sat on the committee of the last few Interaction conferences for the IxDA. Ben’s work has been recognized by the IxDA’s Interaction Awards, the BAFTAs, the Spark and the Pixel awards.

Design and Data.

Over the last 12 years Charlene has focused on the design, development and promotion of content-rich experiences and shaping strategic visions for clients including Microsoft, Intel, the State Library and Archives of Texas, Red Bull and Target. Along with all the expected UX deliverables she also produces strategic, social and content strategy. In her current Sr. UX Designer role she helps AKQA’s clients keep humans at the heart of their products.

An overactive sense of empathy and a passion for web accessibility naturally led her to user-centered design. She is enjoying watching UX evolve as insights gleaned during the creation of the work itself shape each practitioner’s craft, sometimes blossoming into new schools of thought.

She is most intrigued by engaging experiences that are created at the intersection of science, psychology and art. In the last couple of years she has blogged for Intel at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco and Beijing, and spoken at SXSW on surgery simulation.

A native Austinite, she migrated to the Bay Area in 2007 as a founding member of the McCann SF User Experience Team, breaking a promise to herself to never work in advertising. (It must be okay – she’s still doing it.) In her spare time she provides sweat equity to a startup or two, flirts with big data vis and is learning ruby on rails.

In his day job as a Director at Cooper, Chris designs products, services, and strategy for a variety of domains, including health, financial, and consumer. In prior experience he has developed interactive kiosks and spaces for museums, helped to visualize the future of counter-terrorism, built prototypes of coming technologies for Microsoft, and designed telehealth devices to accommodate the crazy facts of modern healthcare.

His spidey sense goes off about random topics, and this has led him to speak at conferences about a wide range of things including interactive narrative, ethnographic user research, interaction design, sex-related interactive technologies, free-range learning, and, most recently, the relationship between science fiction and interface design. Chris was one of the founding graduates of the now-passing-into-legend Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Ivrea, Italy, where his grad thesis was a service design for lifelong learners called Fresh.

At MegaPhone, Dan oversees all technical operations and deployments, including both client facing applications, broadcast operations center hardware integration, and cloud based server processing. Before MegaPhone, Dan started iminlikewityou/OMGPOP as part of the YCombinator incubator program. He previously launched netflix.com while working for marchFIRST, produced nttdocomo.com while at Dentsu Tokyo, and received an Ars Electronica Net Vision Award of Distinction for Newsmap, a visualization of news media data. Dan studied at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and the Biomedical Engineering Center at Columbia University.

As VP of Project Delivery, John Montgomery is responsible for refining the company’s project management systems and processes to ensure customer satisfaction. In this role, John has also been tasked with helping uTest scale its capabilities to keep up with its expansive growth.

John has held senior positions in quality assurance, engineering, and operations at Openwave, Polycom, SPL WorldGroup and Oracle. At Oracle, John led a global Quality & Development team responsible for engineering productivity tools and test automation. He also developed and implemented test engineering methodologies for Vantive, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. John earned his degree in International Business Management from Texas A&M University.

John Nack is Principal Product Manager for Digital Imaging at Adobe. Prior to joining Adobe John was a Web designer and animator at AGENCY.COM New York, where we developed online content for clients such as Gucci, Nike, British Airways, and Coca-Cola. As a Photoshop product manager he helped build versions CS through CS5, championing non-destructive editing, customizability, and Web and design features. With Photoshop Touch he’s trying to bring Adobe imaging magic to a whole new audience, making creative imaging more delightful.

Jonathan Korman has been an interaction designer for over fifteen years, working on a wide range of projects. He served as a consultant at Cooper for a decade, and is currently works as principal user experience designer at Riverbed Technology. He coined the abbreviation “IxD,” which is less a mark of great influence than of great age.

Marc Escobosa is a design strategist, UX designer and software executive. As the VP of Marketing & Design at Arena Solutions, he’s helping to change the way innovative products like the Lytro camera, the Square mobile payment system, and the Sonos wireless hi-fi system are designed and manufactured.

Prior to Arena, Marc co-founded a boutique design firm where he and his co-conspirator designed all sorts of things from brand identity systems to websites to user interfaces for consumer and enterprise web applications. They also designed the guest experiences for one-of-a-kind places to stay like The Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, and an unnamed destination in Belize that would have rocked your world had it ever opened.

Marc studied interaction design at the illustrious but ultimately ill-fated Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy and studied the biological underpinnings of human psychology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.

Marisa Gallagher is vice president and executive creative director for CNN Digital. Named to this position in September, 2010. Gallagher is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta and reports directly to KC Estenson, senior vice president and general manager of CNN Digital.

Gallagher runs the experience design practice for CNN across its web, mobile, tablet and other emerging digital platforms. In this role, she leads a team of user experience, video and motion graphics, rich media and visual designers – as they seek to create breakthrough work that makes news and CNN’s insightful journalism come alive for people around the world.

Prior to joining CNN, Marisa led the user experience practice for the California offices of Razorfish and served in many other roles during her 10 years there. Before that, she worked in product development at CNET Networks and editorially driven search for LookSmart, a human-powered, human-curated search engine.

Gallagher’s work in user-centered design has helped organizations as diverse as ESPN, Singapore Airlines, NASA, McKesson, Visa, Disney World and Cisco to use the digital channel to delight and honor their audiences and customers, while also driving business growth.

Gallagher received her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Film & Media Studies from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Mark Coleran is a visual designer and graphic artist working across a diverse set of disciplines from identity and branding, type, motion, visual effects and concept interface design to user experience, software and visual design.

Working for a large range of clients in the design, technology, broadcast and film industry, his work is most noted for the creation of Fantasy User Interfaces in films as such as Children of Men, The Island, Mission Impossible 3 and many more. After specializing in this area over a period of 10 years, he crossed over to work in software and spent 3 years working with Gridiron Software in Canada on the unique workflow application Flow before moving to San Francisco. He is now working with Platfora, designing interfaces to explore and visualize large data sets in new ways.

A fascination for the way we think and approach our work–from the tools we use, to the underlying patterns we take for granted and the diverse work he has been engaged in, brings a unique insight and perspective to the projects he creates.

He also flies big kites and makes typefaces for fun.

Nadya Direkova works at Google X as a UX designer and game mechanic. In the past, Nadya designed websites at Razorfish and video games and toys at Leapfrog and Foundation 9. She’s a frequent speaker at SXSW and has taught workshops on design at MIT and Google Ventures. She’s been voted as one of the “Top 10 Women in Gamification.”

Until his recent move to Cooper, Nate Clinton led the design team at Thomson Reuters dedicated to creating products that solve problems for investment managers – the people who manage the mutual fund you invest in or make sure the pension fund doesn’t go bust – everything from complex portfolio analysis and large-scale data visualizations to managing the flood of documents in their inbox.

In previous lives, he was a member of the product team at StarMine – a successful start-up in San Francisco focused on developing sophisticated analytics to pick stocks in the market – and a senior research analyst at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC.

In his spare time, Nate plays the glockenspiel in the nation’s preeminent Star Wars Cantina Band and the piano at home, sometimes dressed as a Bith, sometimes not.

Sarah Murgel is an Experience Director with Razorfish. She has more than 16 years experience (she must have started REALLY young) developing successful web strategies and design for leading brands such as Visa, Genentech, Microsoft, and BEA Systems. Having held senior positions in both creative and UX on both the agency and client side, Sarah appreciates the needs, challenges, and perspectives from both sides of the curtain. Prior to joining Razorfish, Sarah was the Manager of User Experience and Interface Design for Genentech, a Bay Area biotech firm, where she led UX initiatives around knowledge management, collaboration, and software design. She holds a BA in Studio Art and Graphic Design from Cedar Crest College. A self-declared hyperconnected mom, Sarah has tremendous passion for social media and the impact it has on culture. When not tweeting or pinning, Sarah enjoys spending time with her family, skiing, and practicing yoga.

Scott’s current design practice resides within the community at frog where he is a creative director in their Seattle studio. He joined this community in 2007 in frog’s San Francisco studio as a self-described “HCI generalist”. Prior, he had been a principal investigator with the Sun Labs in Menlo Park. Scott holds patents in the areas of visual media search methods as well as graphical user interface approaches for 10′ interaction.

A graduate of the Art Center College of Design, Scott holds an MFA in Media Design. Fortified with an undergraduate degree in philosophy, in the last twenty four years he has been a journeyman along the path of visual communications and production throughout film, photography, editorial graphic design and interaction design for both screen and built environments. He has instructed at all levels of the design curriculum, most recently as an adjunct professor at California College of Arts.

Scott has an abiding interest in speculative fiction and its influence over popular expectations around human-computer interaction. Equally fascinated by historical determinism, he is also a student of the cultural perceptions and behaviors that ground new product experience.

Simona has over 10 years of experience as an interaction designer, specializing in design strategy, vision-typing and end-to-end user experience.

At the moment, she has a bad case of split personality juggling a sweat equity co-founder role at a stealth start-up and a bread winning job as a consultant.

In her consultant capacity, she focuses in helping start-ups (Indi, Polyvore, Hautelook, Wize,…) and Fortune 500 s (Intuit, eBay, the North Face) to bring their vision to life balancing innovation with execution.

Before that, she led a number of high profile strategy projects at eBay where she also introduced the discipline of vision-typing.

Simona has enjoyed her 15 seconds of fame in the blogosphere with her “Electric Cinderella” project. Her wearable innovation projects have been featured in AIGA’s 2003 list of best student projects and in exhibitions around the world (Turin, London, Perth, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Las Vegas).

Simona has always craved for mental exaltation- in her endless quest for knowledge (the more useless, the better), she has accumulated a small collection of humanistic and design degrees which she hopes to expand even more in the future.

Dreaming to be a medieval sleuth riding a dragon she often wonders how she ended up spinning gold from straw in Silicon Valley.

Stefan is a principal interaction designer at Cooper. In this role he’s focused on evolving the practice of design, exploring new ways of working, leading engagements, and pushing for courageous, disruptive approaches in the solutions developed for clients. His experience ranges over a diverse set of domains consumer experience, finance, learning, with a deep interest and portfolio of medical work. He’s helped cardiac surgeons support the hearts of their patients, expatriates file taxes, doctors and nurses quickly and easily record their patient notes, and insurance underwriters understand the risks of catastrophe for a given market. He teaches the practice and method of design for Cooper U, and advises Rock Health start-ups in how to bring their ideas to market.

Tim was born in Vegas to a jazz guitarist and a dancer choreographer. In fact, he grew up to be a musician himself – picking up a nasty soccer habit, a bit of Mandarin, and an insatiable curiosity for how the universe works along the way. Tim studied computers and learned how to silk screen in school in Arizona. From 5 to 9, Fri to Mon, Tim’s a proud father of 3 boys, an electronic producer, a fan of latin jazz…and, thus, a very busy husband. He’s passionate about the movement of information and trends from sub-cultures to popular cultures – and he has found a way to make that part of his job.

At BLITZ, he leads Experience & Strategy – a group of experience designers, researchers, analysts, and strategists. Their work shapes clients’ brand positioning, communication strategy, experience designs, social planning and content approaches – all based on a mix of consumer insights and the courage needed to take a creative leap. Tim practices a mix of executive jazzercise and conference room kung fu. He’s a mixed media idea artist…whiteboards, sticky pads, sketch books and windows. He believes that good brands can make happy people, and that happy people can make a better brand – efficiency in marketing, communicating specifically to populations based on powerful cultural connections and basic human motivations. Tim has been in the business for over 10 years – and has successfully developed experience strategy for brands like Intel, Disney, Naked Juice, HALO, Call of Duty, and the NFL.

Yu Shan Chuang is a User Experience Director at Rosetta with 15 years of experience in the industry. At Rosetta she leads UX and creative designers on client projects varying from enterprise portals to marketing sites, as well as running the West Coast user research practice. In the past, her projects have ranged from enterprise to consumer and desktop to mobile. In the past she’s led designs for Yahoo!, Microsoft, Siebel Systems, and some stealth startups. Her projects strive to strike a balance between design and user research, walking the tightrope between a design founded in user requirements and designing by instinct.

In her spare time she volunteers on local boards working to promote UX and mentoring girls and women in technology. You can find her at the local rock climbing gym in the evenings and gardening on the weekends.