UX Awards

The Premier Awards for Exceptional Digital Experience

About the UX Awards

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Overview

The UX Awards honor the innovators behind the digital products and services that define our world. The UX Awards inspire technologists to create human-centered products that solve real customer problems based on exceptional case study showcases of outstanding digital product design and user centered design process.

The Awards are future-oriented and aim to showcase not only the latest and best in this fast-moving industry, but also where we’re headed and how to design for the near and distant future. The 2017 theme is “The Future of UX”.

The Awards span all aspects of “UX”: product design, service design, interaction design, experience design, service design, design strategy, usability, user research, design thinking, information architecture, content strategy, UI design, and increasingly industrial design and urban design when there is a digital component.

The UX Awards were the first Awards dedicated exclusively to showcasing the best in UX. They are a community-driven, independent Awards for the UX profession, with full transparency in the consensus judging process based on a rotating panel of expert judges, alongside public crowdvoting. We aim to:

* INSPIRE: Showcase incredible work that reveals the future, breadth and impact of UX.

* EVANGELIZE: Spread awareness of the essential value of UX

* HONOR THE BEST: Celebrate and reward exceptional UX practitioners and companies for their contributions

* LEAD BY EXAMPLE: Advance and evolve the craft of UX as a discipline through exceptional case study examples and speakers

* REFLECT THE COMMUNITY: Elevate and gather forward-thinking senior practitioners in a forum of concentrated thought leadership combined with practical insights and approaches to creating exceptional work

* SHOW REAL VALUE: Educate the broader business and technology community about the benefits and ROI of UX.


UX Awards 2015 Judges 2017 Event photo

2017 Advisory Board

We’ve formed an UX Awards Advisory Board of notable individuals and organizations who have shown significant support for the Awards to help shepherd and guide the Awards forward. Current Board members include:



Phil

Phil Balagtas

Design Director GE Aviation, Founder Design Futures & PRIMER, UX Awards Advisory Board

Phil has been a Visual & UX Designer since 2001 and has experience designing across a variety of devices and platforms within non-profit, retail, advertising, and enterprise software organizations. He is currently a Design Director for GE Aviation Digital Solutions working with airlines to use big data to improve operational & fuel efficiency. An educator and futurist, he also organizes and leads design skill programs and is the founder of Speculative Futures and the PRIMER conference which focuses on cultural and social impact of design for the future.

Company: GE Aviation
LinkedIn: Phil Balagtas


Janaki Kumar

Janaki Kumar

VP & Head of Design SAP Labs, Faculty Stanford Business, Boards of Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce & UX Awards

Janaki Kumar is the Head of Strategic Design Services, America in SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center. She leads a team of designers who work directly with customers to transform their user experience. She has over a 15 years of experience building, coaching, and leading high performance teams to deliver design-led innovation.

She is the co-author of the book, Gamification at Work – Designing Engaging Business Software. Janaki has a Masters in Information Systems from Boston University. She has authored 20 intellectual property patent applications of innovative user experiences.

Company: SAP
LinkedIn: Janaki Kumar
Twitter: @janakikumar


Todd Lefelt

Todd Lefelt

Managing Director UX Huge, UX Awards Advisory Board + Former Design Director Ecos, Time, Kozmo.com, R/GA

Todd Lefelt is Managing Director of User Experience at Huge in Los Angeles. Since joining Huge in 2006, Todd has been instrumental in building the agency’s user experience team and helping to define the philosophy and process applied to user-centric design. In 2010, Todd joined Huge’s Los Angeles office, where he has played a key role in the development of the company’s West Coast presence. Todd has directed interactive design and research for some of Huge’s largest engagements and has worked with clients including Clear Channel, National Geographic, NBC Universal, Samsung, Toyota and Warner Music Group. With nearly two decades of industry experience, Todd held senior positions at a number of other companies prior to joining Huge, including Time Inc. Interactive, Ecos Technologies, Pathways Flandrau Science Center, Wave Technologies, Kozmo.com, R/GA and Ultra 16.

Todd received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MA from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He currently lives in Silver Lake with his wife Holly, son Ira, and cat Pippa.

Company: Huge Inc.
LinkedIn: Todd Lefelt


Scott McDonald

Scott McDonald

Digital Consultant, UX Awards Advisory Board + Former MD Modus Agency, Strategist Scient, Supervisor Y&R

Scott is an Inc. 5000 entrepreneur and co-founder of New York-based digital innovation and UX consultancy Modus. Prior to founding Modus, Scott was a strategist with the New York office of Scient Corporation and creative supervisor at Young & Rubicam’s Brand Dialogue interactive group.

An expert in customer-centered business innovation, he has led high-profile strategic initiatives for Morgan Stanley & Co., SIRIUS Satellite Radio, Sony Electronics, Comcast Corporation, InterActiveCorp, Major League Baseball, Cleveland Clinic and other leading brands.

Scott is a member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, the Digital Analytics Association and the User Experience Professionals Association. He is a co-founder of the Digital Analytics Association’s New York City chapter and serves on the board of advisors of two Internet start-ups.

Company: Modus
LinkedIn: Scott McDonald




Executive Director


Beverly May

Beverly May

Faculty Columbia & GA, Digital Specialist for CA State, MD Oxford Tech & Concepts Lab, UX Awards Exec. Director

Beverly is the Executive Director of the UX Awards. She has 2 decades of experience in tech, product development and UX and has helped define and launch hundreds of new tech initiatives at agencies, publishers, startups, and in Peacekeeping at the UN. Beverly is faculty in Digital Analytics and Product Design at Columbia University and teaches at U.C. Berkeley and General Assembly; is Senior Digital Specialist for the State of CA Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development; and has led The Concepts Lab theconceptslab.com and her own UX & product strategy consultancy, Oxford Tech since 2008, with a jaunt to Europe in 2015 as CTO & Head of Product at a social video mixing company in Berlin, Germany.

Beverly has an Executive MBA from the University of Oxford, a Master’s degree from NYU’s ITP Program, and a BA from University of Toronto. She is a triple EU- Canadian- US citizen and a regular educator and public speaker on UX, product management and analytics.


LinkedIn: Beverly May

Location: New York, NY and San Francisco, CA

2017 Extended Circle

Our Advisory Board is supplemented with several industry experts who help to extend our global reach and awareness, including:


Tomer Sharon

Tomer Sharon

VP, Head of UX at WeWork

Tomer is Head of User Experience at WeWork in New York City leading a team that designs work and living spaces, communities, and services around the world. Formerly Senior UX Researcher at Google Search, Tomer is the author of the books, Validating Product Ideas through Lean User Research(2016) and, It’s Our Research: Getting stakeholder buy-in for user experience research projects (2012). He founded and led The Israeli Chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association and has been preaching and teaching UX at Google’s LaunchPad program , a bootcamp for early-stage startups around the world, in conferences, and at Treehouse . Tomer holds a master’s degree in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University in Waltham, MA. He is @tsharon on Twitter and Instagram

Company: WeWork
LinkedIn: Tomer Sharon

Matthew Weber

Matthew Weber

VP of UX and Design, Zoomdata and Adjunct Faculty, Columbia University

Matthew Weber is an award winning UX designer, executive and teacher at NYU, who has had his work showcased by Apple and has lectured at NASA. He has a passion for making data easy to use. He has worked on projects for Thompson Reuters, CNN, Lincoln Financial, Morgan Stanley, Sesame Street, MeeGenius, Johnson Research Labs, and Persado. He is currently VP of UX and Design at Zoomdata.

In addition to teaching UX Portfolio at NYU, Matthew is a founding member of the UX Curriculum Advisory Board at NYU, and is the founder of the UX + Data Meetup in New York. Matthew has also been invited to speak at Singularity University at the NASA campus on how to build massively-parallel problem solving systems, and to the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Matthew lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children, and in his spare time, has been building an aqueduct in his backyard.

Company: Zoomdata
LinkedIn: Matthew Weber

2017 Volunteers

Each year, the UX Awards are supported by many, many dedicated volunteers that help make this event, our meetups and our thought leadership analysis a reality. 2017 Confirmed volunteers include:

Kanae Clar

Sr. UX Manager, New York

Conner Hunihan

UX Designer, San Francisco

Brittany Kaufman

UX Designer, San Francisco

Kevon Lovelace

UX Designer, San Francisco

Hannah Martin

UX Designer, New York

Lindsay Stuart

Communications Director, Los Angeles

Sam Trinh

Data Analyst, San Francisco

Timothy Lin

Data Analyst, San Francisco

Matthew Lenhart

Data Analyst, San Francisco

To get involved as a volunteer, please email volunteer@userexperienceawards.com