Most Significant Industry Evolution: Virgin America’s Responsive Redesign by Work & Co.
Virgin America’s Responsive Redesign
The first truly responsive airline site, with an unique booking user experience.
Virgin America, in partnership with Work & Co., today announced the launch of a revolutionary approach to booking travel. The new website is the first fully responsive major airline website and represents the first significant improvement to the airline websites user experience in years. Luanne Calvert, CMO at Virgin America, said “Our new website, like our plane cabins and most other aspects of the Virgin America experience, was created by listening to what travelers liked and didn’t like. The goal of the redesign was to better reflect their needs and how people book and manage travel today.”
Felipe Memoria, Partner & Product Design; Joe Stewart, Partner& Design; Gene Liebel, Partner & Product Management; Rafael Marin, Product Designer; Dever Thomas, Senior Designer.
Gold Prize
Best Brand Experience: The New VW.com by Deutsch LA
The New VW.com
vw.com is the first inventory-led automaker website that matches shoppers to real cars nearby.
“Most car sites—including our old vw.com—are glorified car brochures. Car configurators don’t help you find your dream car. They let you build a digital car that may or may not exist, then send you to dealerships with fingers crossed. It’s out of touch for shoppers who are used to e-commerce sites like Amazon and Zappos. So what makes the new vw.com so innovative? We took cues from an unlikely source: online dating sites. The new vw.com uses matchmaking functionality to help shoppers find their dream car based on whatever they’re looking for—a particular model, features, color, or even price. Then it pairs them with new or used Volkswagen cars in their area. Each car even has its own profile page with images, features, specs, and payment estimator.”
Adam Sant, VP Experience Director; Fred Leveau, Senior Experience Designer; Cory Roth, Experience Designer.
Gold Prize
Best Contribution to UX: Material Design by Google, Inc
Material Design
An approach to cross-product, cross-platform design using tangible surfaces, bold graphic design, and meaningful motion.
When we started building for the first mobile devices, mobile meant less: less screen space, slower connection, fewer features. A mobile experience was often a lesser experience. But mobile devices have evolved—they have become more powerful, faster, and more intuitive—so must our approach to design. We challenged ourselves to create a visual language for our users that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science. We called it material design.
A material metaphor is the unifying theory of a rationalized space and a system of motion. Our material is grounded in tactile reality, inspired by our study of paper and ink, yet open to imagination and magic. In material design, surface and shadow establish a physical structure to explain what can be touched and what can move. Content is front and center, using principles of modern print design. Motion is meaningful, clarifying relationships and teaching with delightful details. And as Google, including the Android platform, expands into new form factors, we’re using this design to bridge devices across mobile, desktop, and beyond.
At Google I/O, we introduced material design to the public. We needed something that felt at home on the smallest watch, the largest TV, and every screen in between. We used it for Android Wear, our project to extend Android wearables, as well as Android TV, and Android Auto. So as developers and designers create applications and services for this expansive new range of devices, we’re building one unified set of style guidelines that works across any platform. An initial draft of these guidelines is available on google.com/design. This is a first step; we recognize that design is never finished, only built upon by better design. We believe a design system should be consistent, coherent, but not static. Material design will grow and evolve.
Nicholas Jitkoff, Matias Duarte, Christian Robertson, Jon Wiley, Jonathan Lee.
Gold Prize
Best Enterprise Experience: SAP Consumer Insight 365 by SAP Labs LLC
SAP Consumer Insight 365
Help market analysts to get consumer insights easily from billions of mobile network data.
SAP Consumer Insight 365 helps enterprise professionals understand consumer preferences. Utilizing partnerships with telecommunication companies, we aggregate customer profile information and transactions of mobile calling and data. Consumers’ identities are protected because the data is anonymized. Our product gathers and aggregates 14 billion data points per day.
Our challenge was to organize this data into meaningful structures and visualizations for a professional analyst. The universal challenge of taking apart massive data was finding a starting point. We had a different priority than the project owners and developers who were focused on the data itself. We asked ourselves “What questions are we trying to answer?” Using the design thinking process, we found analysts spend 50-60% of their time cleansing data to prepare for analysis, and deliver simplified visualization reports to their clients. We also discovered that analysts had diverse sets of use cases, but similar needs. Marketing analysts we talked with had different problems to solve such as looking to deliver insights or recommendations on where to open a new retail branch location, understanding the impact of an email marketing campaign, or discovering the best target audience for a product. But, the usefulness of having access to aggregated data at different snapshots in time or having the potential to find consumer patterns of geo-location and activity were common across.
It is challenging to predict what data users will want to extract. Our design gives users control of creating queries from scratch with the flexibility of mixing subsets of variables from different categories of telecommunications data to discover insights in areas not on their radar. We use location and time to create order and consistency between charts on a page. The interface supports visualizations to see patterns quickly, as well as support for drill down interactions and direct manipulation.
Best Next-Generation Experience: Muse: The Brain Sensing Headband by Interaxon Inc.
The Brain Sensing Headband
A comprehensive human-centered design strategy leads to the first consumer-ready brain sensing technology.
Muse: the brain sensing headband is a daily use tool that helps you do more with your mind by training you to calm and settle your mind. Muse senses the activity of your brain, much like a heart rate monitor senses the activity of your heart muscles, and provides real-time feedback through a connected Android or iOS app. When the project started, we had a research prototype of the hardware and an algorithm that could detect and quantify the changes in brain state associated with focused attention exercises. Our UX team had to develop an application from the ground up which established a mental model that would help users understand and engage with the complexities of the technology while offering a positive user experience. We did all of this with a small team and limited resources applying user experience methodologies in unique and novel contexts.
In one year, we analyzed UX data from 134 participants engaging with 62 product iterations in 21 user studies. We used collaborative design thinking exercises, lean UX processes, rapid iterative testing & evaluation, and long term journal studies. Our data shows that the resulting system helps people understand the technology (near 100% acceptance of our metaphor-based mental model), teaches people how to fit the headband and get good signal on the first try (over 90%), and offers an engaging and rewarding user experience that keeps them motivated. At the time of this submission, we’ve just started shipping and are thrilled with the positive response: “Muse is the first device that has the potential to bring brain enhancement to the masses. And that makes it the most important wearable innovation on the market this year.” – VentureBeat “Within two days of using Muse, I had my family and friends asking me what I was doing differently. [It’s] teaching me how to control my head, something I have never been able to do before.” – User Feedback
Trevor Coleman, Chief Product Officer; Jay Vidyarthi, Senior Interaction Designer; Michael Apollo, Director of Applied Mind Science; Tim Gaweco, User Experience Intern; Matt Wellman, Freelance Graphic Designer.
Silver Prize
Best Multichannel Experience: LUSH Handmade Cosmetics: Redefining the Brand Experience by Method
LUSH Handmade Cosmetics: Redefining the Brand Experience
Method redefined the LUSH brand experience and connected with the story behind its products.
Method has partnered with LUSH, the British cosmetics brand, to redefine their brand experience and connect consumers with the story behind its products. Setting out on an eight-month program, Method worked closely with LUSH to develop a new digital brand strategy and design direction across multiple channels. This included the transformation of Lush.co.uk into an editorially-led, fully responsive e-commerce platform; the redesign of LUSH’s print consumer magazine “The LUSH Times”, and the creation of the new exclusive online service “LUSH Kitchen”, where digital becomes a sensory experience. Here, customers can get access to exclusive, limited edition products made fresh daily and get a closer look at how those products are made.
Aware of how digital platforms influence and shape the customer buying journey, LUSH came to Method looking for a compelling way to tell their incredibly rich story, which is focused on the welfare of its suppliers and a genuine and transparent approach to business. Working closely with the team, we encouraged LUSH to take bold steps in their digital journey and challenge the standards in the cosmetics and digital industry by capturing a sensory experience online. We then worked alongside the print team to implement the system and make sure Lush could own the process for future editions. Last but not least, we developed the concept and brand strategy for a new service, the LUSH Kitchen – a brand new concept where small batches of fresh, handmade cosmetics are made daily and available to purchase exclusively online. Customers get a view ‘behind the scenes’ with real-time updates on social media and expert Q&A’s streamed live. We selected a name that represented the proposition; defined the brand and service strategy; designed the customer experience and delivered the service as part of the beta release of Lush.co.uk.
On March 31, 2014, the brand transformation program came together with the launch of lush.co.uk, Lush Times and Lush Kitchen. The final output is a design system that has the flexibility to blend editorial with product, connects print with digital, and can scale internationally. The website received a standing ovation upon unveiling it to the company and customers have been overwhelmingly positive. Commercial success has quickly followed with a sales increase of 21% YOY reported in the first week. Further site refinements and an international roll out is scheduled through 2014. Lush Times is now available nationwide and internationally with Lush Kitchen as the front cover and leading story. Customers have embraced the new service with products selling out as soon they go on sale and positive responses on social sites.
Best Cultural Experience: Qatar Museums’ Website by Cogapp
Qatar Museums’ Website
Qatar Museums’ website: A contemporary approach to traditional Middle-Eastern culture
Qatar is changing at an extraordinary pace. Its ambitious cultural programme required an online presence that allows users to express their creativity, get involved with local activities, and have a dialogue with the museums. Our challenge was to align these contemporary aspirations with Arabic traditions and heritage. Working closely with Qatar Museums and Wolff Olins, we created a website which is bold and playful, whilst respecting the distinctive character and aesthetics of the region. A detailed six-month research programme, conducted in both Doha and London, gave us the understanding we needed to then design and implement the new website.
Alex Morrison, Managing Director; Joshua Routh, Senior Producer; Chris How, Head of User Experience.
Bronze Prize
Best Theoretical Exploration: Method Money: Translating Exploratory Research Into Future Scenarios by Method
Method Money: Translating Exploratory Research Into Future Scenarios
Method has launched an exploratory research project on the future of money.
Method has launched an exploratory research project on the future of money using an insights-led approach to speculative design based on the concept that money is pervasive and integral to the majority of our experiences. Recent changes in the financial landscape – from mobile payments to peer-to-peer lending and the rise of local and crypto currencies – mean that now is the time to take a critical perspective on the future of money and the interactions that we will have with it. The project used trend analysis and ethnographic research to inspire future scenarios based on three questions: If finances were public, would you change? If money were smart, would it have personality? If behavior is hormonal, should financial services monitor the body? Method ultimately sought to bring the future into the present and create social experiments in which possible futures could be lived and experienced to stimulate critical discussion.
Philip O’Dwyer, Creative Director; Nuno Oliveira, Project Manager; Philip Blaikie, Designer; Brian Oko, Interaction Designer; Daniel Nacamuli, Interaction Design Lead.
Bronze Prize
Most Authentic Experience: The Newport Folk Festival® App by Cantina
The Newport Folk Festival® App
The app educates the user before the event and then helps them navigate festival.
The Newport Folk Festival®, one of the nation’s best-known and longest-running live music festivals, had a simple goal for their mobile app: enhance the festival experience by providing access to up-to-the-minute artist, schedule and venue information in a tool that kept the audience focused on the festival, not the app. The app needed to consider three distinct contexts. Prior to the event, the attendee’s primary goal is discovery, to learn who is performing at the festival and get a general sense for the schedule. During the three days when they’re at the festival, the goal becomes almost entirely logistical. At that point, the user wants immediate and unfettered access to who’s playing now, who’s playing next and who has already played. Both of these contexts needed to be handled gracefully through a unified user experience. The final context is largely hidden from the festival goer, though no less important.
The festival team needed to manage schedule changes and proactively notify attendees immediately, as well as to push impromptu messages throughout the course of the event. The app actually changes while the festival is happening, continually realigning itself and it’s content to reflect the up-to-the-moment state of the event. We decided the schedule would be the primary view, with all other functionality playing second fiddle. For example, eliminating a navigational landing screen and dropping the user directly into the schedule meant one less step each time the app launched. With the schedule-centric model in mind, the team continued working together toward a fully realized app.
First low-fidelity wireframes captured various scheduling approaches, to visually validate and refine the direction. We then moved thru prototyping in a higher-fidelity, interactive form. In parallel we crafted the general visual design approach, mindful of the festival brand, lineage and existing aesthetic. When it came time to code the app, we frequently worked together in a dedicated workspace, broadcasting the app on a big screen as it came to life. As lines of code were authored, everyone on the team collaborated in real time, sculpting and refining the concept as the app evolved.
Chris Lamothe, Director, User Experience, Cantina; Amber Heinbockel, Creative Director, Cantina; George White, SVP Innovation, Cantina; Andrew Paradise, Senior Technical Consultant, Cantina; Christopher Capotosto, Creative Director, Newport Folk Festival
Bronze Prize
Best Everyday Utility: Everything You Love About Conference Calls by UberConference
UberConference
UberConference is visual conference calling done right. Simple design for easy team communication.With UberConference it’s simple to join conference calls from your phone without having the headache of remembering and entering PINs. We also let you see who is in the call and who is speaking at any time, so you never have to wonder “who’s here” and “who said that”. With powerful call management tools (the organizer can even slap “earmuffs” on you!), UberConference is free conference calls done right. UberConference is part of Firespotter Labs, which is backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures. Led by Craig Walker, the founder of GrandCentral and Google Voice, the team has deep experience in developing innovative telephony features at scale.
Craig Walker, CEO; Vincent Paquet, VP Product; Brian Peterson, VP Engineering; John Rector, VP Telephony.
Honorable Mention
10,000ft by 10,000ft
A design-driven planning solution to better manage your business, teams and projects.
10,000ft was built by a team of designers and software developers to accommodate the rise of the creative thinker: the modern problem solver who is motivated by getting things done, masterfully. Creative thinkers collaborate with others on a shared goal, but with no clear path to get there. That’s where the creativity comes in. We recognize that businesses today need to make strategic decisions on the fly. They are constantly adjusting the plan, reshuffling priorities, or reassigning employees, and need a way to capture the big picture of what makes their business successful. Current tools either address one aspect of the business, or focus on the tactical details, failing to provide this big picture. 10,000ft helps businesses and the creative thinkers they employ to get a big picture view of their business, teams, and projects. 10,000ft launched in June 2012 and we haven’t looked back since. We have subscribers in over 40 countries and are tracking over 100,000 projects, totaling more than 7 million hours of work.
SwiftKey Keyboard: Fast, Easy and Fun Typing by SwiftKey
This best-selling Android app replaces your keyboard with the fastest and easiest way to type.
SwiftKey Keyboard for Android replaces the device’s on-screen keyboard to help users type faster and more easily. It includes SwiftKey Flow, a gesture typing method, and a triple prediction bar. In our latest release, we added the SwiftKey Store, where new themes can be found. We designed more than 30 beautiful new keyboard themes and a newly designed and improved flow trail. We also added an optional number row, an emoji panel filled with over 800 emoji, and emoji prediction. A big part of this project was the migration of our existing user base from a paid application to a free one. We modeled five user types with personas, scenarios, and prototypes that we iteratively tested for usability in order to get the migration messaging, gifting of a special “Premier Pack” of themes, theme discovery, purchase, and assignment correct.
Scott Weiss, VP of Design; Nick Sutherland, Product Manager; Ben Medlock, CTO.
Honorable Mention
QardioArm by Qardio Inc
QardioArm, a smart wireless blood pressure monitor
We gave ourselves a challenge to create a medically reliable blood pressure monitor that wouldn’t look like a medical device and eliminate all the inconveniences that come with regular blood pressure monitoring. There are 83mm Americans currently living with some heart related condition. Cardiovascular diseases are chronic: once diagnosed, they stay with you for life. Complications are preventable however, regular monitoring is the key.
QardioArm blood pressure monitor came to life after numerous consultations with cardiologists asking for a smart blood pressure monitor that would allow its user to live a daily life without the inconveniences a traditional blood pressure monitoring entails: bulky devices nobody wants to have around, can’t be easily carried around, require manual tracking and so on. We thought of every little detail such as creating a simple 3 step manual wrapped inside the cuff for the user to find it before the first use or doubling the use of the cuff as a protective sleeve. We wanted to develop a BP monitor that would fit a modern lifestyle and people would want to use and have around.
Marco Peluso, CEO; Rosario Iannella, CTO; Adrian Westaway, co-founder of Special Projects (previously co-founder and director of Vitamins); Clara Gaggero, co-founder of Special Projects (previously co-founder and director of Vitamins); Duncan Fitzsimons, founder of 17th Studio (previously co-founder and director of Vitamins).
Honorable Mention
Kennedy and Oswald by Mullen/Mark Boroyan
KennedyandOswald.com was the interactive companion site for National Geographic Channel’s Killing Kennedy docudrama.
During the media chaos surrounding the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, we were faced with a cluttered online landscape. We broke through by telling not one story, but two— Kennedy’s and Oswald’s. With the two sides of the site pushing away from each other, we showed their lives moving in opposite directions, only to meet one fateful day in Dealey Plaza. The site has two core features. Opposite-direction scrolling reinforces the storylines at play. “Passive parallax” allows users to explore 2-D content in an unobtrusive 3-D way. The core style of the site is reminiscent of a different time—the early 1960s in both the US and the USSR. We allowed mobile device orientation data to control site elements the same way mouse position does. If you visit KennedyandOswald.com on a smartphone or tablet, your device’s tilt influences the parallax throughout the entire experience.
Mark Boroyan, ACD,UX; Kenji Ross, ACD,Technology; Joe Palasek, Sr. Creative Technologist; Jon Reil, CD; Christian Madden.
Best Student UX
Zone by 2nd Year Industrial Design Students at Virginia Tech
Zone utilizes wireless technology to improve the lives of parents and children with mild autism.
Zone is the product of a group of Virginia Tech Industrial Design Students, as a part of their sophomore wireless technology project. The team of four students did preliminary research on autism spectrum disorders through online websites and journals, information provided by the CDC, and communication with educators at associated nonprofits such as Autism Speaks. Members also gained insight to the problem by talking to real moms and dads who have children on the spectrum as well as teachers of autistic children. The team ideated on solutions and came to appropriate conclusions involving wearable technology and mobile displays. Sketching, graphic software, and 3D modeling software was used to explore the form of the final product and device/mobile architecture.
The prompt was to create a universal design solution for a mother and her mildly autistic child, aimed at helping the child when he struggles socially and behaviorally. The solution aids autistic children in communicating how they feel, which is usually difficult for them to express, and helps parents gain a better understanding of their child, thus a greater ability to help their child. Zone has two components: a watch that the child wears and a corresponding app for a parent’s and teacher’s mobile device. Sensors on the underside of the watch utilize skin conductance technology to detect stress, a physical indicator of emotional outbursts. When stress is detected, and after the child is calm, he/she answers a series of questions prompted on the watch screen. This data is recorded in a database located on the parent’s mobile app. Within the app parents can access the history of outbursts, including outburst causes and intensity, and can receive live-updates when their child becomes stressed. Teachers can also stay connected and have the ability to make their own notes to add insight when outbursts occur. This offers a new way to track short-term and long-term behavioral development of children with autism.
Katherine Simmons, Second Year Industrial Design Student; Kyle Stewart, Second Year Industrial Design Student; Brad Regruto, Second Year Industrial Design Student; Stephen Shickel, Second Year Industrial Design Student.
TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon Best UX
Kioto
Kioto drives user engadgement with anotation and sharing.
Kioto provides an engaging reading experience through annotation and sharing. Users would be able to highlight any text on a website ,write a comment inside the bubble that will automatically send the notes and highlighted text to the users “Evernote Notebook” and will be listed in reading order. This not only creates an interactive experience for viewers of a website, but also drives user engagement for Evernote including content creators across the web. Kioto isn’t just an application, but an experience.
William Bussey, Developer and Designer at Triple Helix Corporation; Wale Ogundipe, Front End Web Developer at Screen Verve; Jared Camins-Esakov, Bibliographer and founder of C & P Bibliography Services, LLC; Damien Marie, developer.
Secret Admirer Award
UX Framework: Serve Responsive Web by American Express Serve
UX Framework: Serve Responsive Web
Redesigning Serve with a responsive experience and tech platform that puts customers first.
At American Express Serve, we want to reshape how people manage their money and bring better, more affordable services to those who need them most. Today in the U.S., nearly 70 million people are unable to use traditional financial services because they’re not universally affordable, accessible, or available. Many rely on costly and time consuming methods to get cash, pay their bills, and manage their budgets, using only a mobile phone to access the internet at home. For them, mobile isn’t just about access on the go—it’s about access, period. To meet this particular need, we built a fluid, responsive web experience and code base that can grow and change as our users do, without app updates or device discrimination. By having an adaptable tech platform, we’re able to meet our customers wherever they are faster than ever, positioning Serve as an industry leader for financial inclusion.
Claudio Esposito, Director Product Design (American Express); Miles Begin, Director Product Design (American Express); Marshall Zealy, Project Manager (American Express); Ben Miller, Developer (American Express); Shannon O’Brien, Principal (Moment).
Secret Admirer Honorable Mention
Honorable Mention: The Eventbrite Reserved Seating – Seat Designer Application by Eventbrite
The Eventbrite Reserved Seating – Seat Designer
The seat designer is a rich interactive web-based seat map and ticket creation management tool.
Until now there hasn’t been an elegant and simple way of creating and managing reserved seating events in a self service fashion. Reserved seating events allow event organizers to optimize revenue with tiered ticket pricing whilst providing attendees with a better event experience through selecting their own seat at the time of purchase. Reserved seating solutions until now were expensive, hard to use, visually uninspired and simply out of reach for many event organizers.
Eventbrite now offers a product that is free to use (if the event is free) or charges a small fee when tickets are sold to paid events. Reserved seating was traditionally in the realms of the industry giants and other fee for service companies. The team at Eventbrite set out to create a browser based, on brand, visually inspired design tool that enables seat map creation in a self service fashion. The project faced many challenges not only from a solution design perspective, great care had to be given to ensuring it was as simple to use as possible for millions of potential users. Our target audience is massive, our reserved seating platform can be used by event organizers hosting a multitude of event types of all different sizes. Technically the project was very challenging and pushes the boundaries of javascript and vector graphics browser based applications and is very forward focused.
Jason Bayly, Lead UX Architect; Kyle Crumrime, Senior Product Designer; Joshua Price, Product Designer; Alex Roberts, Senior Front End Engineer; Parris Khachi, Front End Engineer.
People’s Choice Award
MaVeZe – UX Redesign of Leading Tel-Avivian Blog by UXVision
A complete redesign of the leading Tel-Avivian blog called maVeze aimed for Generation Y users.
The redesign of MaVeZe was aimed to create a new place to be, read and write, for the amazing colorful Tel-Avivian blogging scene. Creating a blog and media website for generation Y have made us look for new ways and approaches to communicate with this tough crowd. In the creative path we’ve been through we reset the way content should be created, we implemented a horizontal navigation model and found a way to make it fit and even support the business model. We found new ways for bloggers to create and pass what they have to say and for readers to absorb and provide feedback, breaking the walls between a blogger and his readers. Changing the rules was the right approach when dealing with generation Y and we were happy to see the immediate impact on the audience and market.
Tal Florentin – UXVision – CEO and Lead UX Designer; Sebastian Romero – UXVision – Graphic Design; Tal Wolkowitz – MaVeZe – Founder and Co-CEO; Yael Monrov – MaVeZe – Founder and Co-CEO.
People’s Choice Honorable Mention
Project Drive.SAP by SAP Ireland Ltd.
Project Drive.SAP
A tool that allows you to get feedback about applications as you design them.
Drive.SAP is a tool that helps us design better applications. It enables designers to get feedback on their designs as soon as there is some artefact to be shown – even a photo of a rough concept drawn on a napkin. Designers upload screens into Drive.SAP tool and send studies to clients or anyone who would be fit to give feedback. Results are then analysed and designers can decide on the next iteration of designs. It started on the initiative of Sam Yen (SAP Chief Design Officer) and as a necessity since it took too long for clients to actually see any progress during design stages. As sending screens in email was not effective enough, we set out to create Drive.SAP. Project was created, and is being upgraded and maintained by an internal team of SAP designers and developers. There are many features being considered on the development roadmap, and we listen to the feedback of the users using it. One of the goals for Drive.SAP is to become an open project anyone on the internet can use, not just remain an internal tool.
Michael Brown, Director Global Design Group; Ben Ceaser, Project Manager; Goran Peuc, Principal UX Designer; Caroline Welsh, Product Owner;Janis Shuttleworth, Design Director.
Alex Wright is the Head of Research at Etsy, where he leads a team of qualitative and quantitative researchers trying to deepen Etsy’s understanding of its global marketplace and drive ongoing UX improvements. Previously, he was Director of User Experience at The New York Times, VP of User Experience at Phoenix Pop, and Senior Manager of User Experience at IBM. He has also led high-profile UX projects for Yahoo!, The Long Now Foundation, The California Digital Library, and the Internet Archive, among others.
Alex is also the author of Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, published in June 2014 by Oxford University Press.
Chief Experience Officer and General Manager of the User Experience Center of Excellence (UX CoE) at GE Software
Greg Petroff is the Chief Experience Officer and general manager of the User Experience Center of Excellence (UX CoE) for GE Software. The UX CoE is charged with elevating the quality of digital experiences created by GE for its customers. At GE, Greg is leading efforts to define the human interface to the Industrial Internet, connecting people to machines and systems in meaningful ways.
Greg has more than 25 years of industry experience in user-interface, experience and interaction design. Prior to GE, Greg worked at SAP in a variety of design roles, including VP of product management for the design and new applications team, where he was responsible for bridging great user experience with next generation SAP technologies to market faster.
Greg is a prominent industry personality known for his ability to use design skills to solve business problems. He is an accomplished author, speaker and has been a guest lecturer at institutions such as Parsons The New School for Design and UCLA Graduate School of Architecture. He earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and his master’s in architecture from UCLA.
Michal Pasternak was until April 25 the Chief Experience Officer at Huge, where she oversaw one of the world’s largest and most talented UX teams. As CXO, Michal has driven the creation of user-friendly experiences on many of the agency’s most prominent e-commerce and media engagements. Michal joined Huge in 2004 as the company’s ninth employee and one of its very first interaction designers. Since then, she has been instrumental in growing Huge’s User Experience and Strategy practices, specializing in the development of best-in-class experiences that improve people’s lives.
In addition to running the UX team, Michal has also helped to develop Huge School, a discipline-specific, paid apprenticeship program designed to give talented individuals the skills required to be successful in a career at Huge. The school allows for Huge to give back to the community, while training the next generation of creatives, designers and technologists. Previously, Michal worked at IDEO and Applied Materials, where she designed user-centered products in the physical world. Michal earned an MS and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. She has also studied, taught and performed improv comedy for more than 15 years. Michal was named to Advertising Age’s list of “40 Under 40” for 2014.
Janice is one of America’s leading experts on Lean Startup, having advised many successful companies including Task Rabbit, Lyft, and Sharethrough. She frequently trains White House staff on innovation, and her workshops have been sold out around the world. Janice is a serial entrepreneur and an interaction designer. She was one of the first UX designers, was cofounder of leading UX firm Adaptive Path, and acted as the company’s first CEO. Janice is a keynote speaker at startup conferences around the world and at top universities and business schools, including Stanford, Kellogg, and Haas.
Margaret Gould Stewart currently serves as Director of Product Design at Facebook. She previously served as Director of User Experience at YouTube. Prior to that, she spent two years leading Search and Consumer Products UX at Google. Over the course of her career, Margaret has led the design teams for 5 top 10 most visited websites in the world. (note: Tripod.com, Angelfire.com, Lycos.com, Google.com, YouTube.com…now leading the Ads design team for Facebook.com).
Margaret has been a leading practitioner and manager in the field of User Experience for over 15 years. After graduating from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 1995, Margaret consulted extensively with New York media companies such as the New York Times, Time-Warner, and Scholastic to develop many of their first forays into the web.
She subsequently joined Tripod, Inc, the pioneering homepage building site and online community, in 1995 as its first Creative Director. Tripod was acquired by Lycos, Inc in 1998. Margaret served as General Manager of Tripod.com and Angelfire.com, and then as Senior Director of Network Design and Integration for the Lycos Network. In 2005, she joined Wachovia as its Web Usability Manager. She relocated to California in early 2007 to join Google, and in early 2009 moved to YouTube to lead their user experience team.
Margaret has served on the jury for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards, and is a frequent speaker about design, user experience, creative management, and the changing landscape of media at a variety of industry events such as the TED Conference, CHI, and Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience Conference. She serves on the Board of Directors of Architecture for Humanity, and on the Strategic Board for the California College of the Arts’ Interaction Design Program. She lives in Palo Alto with her husband, three children, and various and sundry pets.
Vice President of User Experience Design at Amazon
Brian Kralyevich is Vice President of User Experience Design at Amazon overseeing design for the Kindle Digital Products group based in Seattle, Washington.
Brian Kralyevich is an industry veteran with more than eighteen years of experience in design, architecture, new media and user experience design for award winning software and services. Prior to joining Amazon, Brian was Executive Creative Director for XBOX where he directed interdisciplinary design teams dedicated to delivering end-to-end consumer experiences across game consoles, Kinect, PC, mobile and web. Brian was head of user experience design at Nokia Design based in London and was responsible for the leading the team that drove the design and delivery of the Nokia N9. Brian also directed Zune’s User Experience Design for Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division. Before joining Microsoft in 2003, Brian founded Scenic Creative in San Francisco where he led interactive projects with brands like XBOX, MSN and Puma. As Chief Creative Officer for Mediatruck, Inc., he defined creative solutions for the company’s clients and its proprietary design products. Earlier in his career, Brian served as Creative Director for Rare Medium’s Broadband and Convergence Group, Science and Fiction. Brian also served as Design Director for Circumstance Design, where he led award winning projects such as James Cameron’s Titanic Explorer, Fox’s Sports and King of the Hill. Brian has a Master degree in Architecture from The University of Texas where he studied and practiced architecture while developing an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving that is fundamental toBrian’s design innovations at Amazon.
Brian’s designs have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Cnet.com, Communication Arts, Secrets of Successful Web Sites by David Siegel, Design Matters (SFMOMA Architecture + Design Forum) and have received awards from New Media magazine, INVISION New Media and One Show Interactive. Brian has overseen design on projects for XBOX, Nokia, Zune, Media Center, MSN, Macromedia, Nieman Marcus, Puma, FOX, Intel, ZDTV, Sony and Ericson.
Turi focuses on developing participatory design and creative collaboration processes and skills within Frog and for Frog clients. She partners closely with companies seeking to develop new skillsets and creative collaboration capabilities to identify strategies and projects where skills can be built through a learn-by-doing approach. Her clients include GE, Honeywell, ETS, Humana, Mars Drinks, UNICEF, Colgate and MTV.
Turi’s background is in interaction design, design research, and experience strategy. She holds an MFA in Design and Technology from the Parsons School of Design.
She has lived, researched, and worked extensively in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, Nepal, Korea, and China. Her academic background is in Anthropology with emphasis on symbolic anthropology and ethnography. Outside of the office, she blows glass and travels the world.
Cliff Kuang is an articles editor at WIRED, where he oversees its design coverage and helps lead its new-product initiatives. Before that, he was the design editor at Fast Company, and founding editor of it’s spin-off site, Co.Design. Under Kuang’s direction, Co.Design became one of the most trafficked design sites in the world and won a National Magazine Award. Previously, he has been an editor at I.D. and The Economist. During his career, he has edited over 5,000 design articles, and written on myriad design topics, ranging from experience design to the 9/11 Museum. With Robert Fabricant, he is now writing a book about user experience design, to be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Rafe has over 25 years of experience covering new technology products and companies. He is currently the Editorial Director at Yahoo Tech. In the past, Rafe was Director of Developer Relations at Evernote where he lead the team at Evernote which runs hackathons, workshops, outreach, and other activities to support the Evernote platform and API. In addition, he was also Editor-at-large at CNET, Columinst at Business 2.0, and much more.
Rafe has interviewed over a thousand startup CEOs and analyzed their businesses and products. He wrote and distributed a daily column online before blogging was a thing. In addition, he had always been fascinated by the directions entrepreneurial thinking and technology products are taking.
Rafe has worked as a product reviewer, a magazine and Web site editor, a news writer, a podcaster, and a video interviewer. His specialities include writing, analyzing products, working on camera, and hosting live events. Rafe received his BA from Reed College in Psychology.
Executive Director of the UX Awards, Principal of Oxford Tech + UX
Beverly has over 17 years’ experience in tech, product development and user experience. She is the founder of Oxford Tech + UX, a boutique user experience and product strategy agency in NY and San Francisco that focuses on data-driven UX approaches. She is also the acting President of NYC-CHI, NYC’s largest and longest-running UX group, and the founder and Executive Director of the User Experience Awards.
Beverly’s experience spans management, strategy, UX, design, development, and content. After starting as a music promoter, music journalist and graphic designer, Beverly helped found one of Canada’s first digital agencies and helped grow Canada’s first startup incubator. Since then, she has helped launch hundreds of digital products and services at digital agencies R/GA, iDeutsch, BBDO and Euro; educational software company Wireless Generation/ Amplify; Rodale digital media; and at the United Nations before starting Oxford Tech + UX in 2008. Oxford Tech + UX has aided many of NYC’s top media companies, including Turner, Hearst and Consumer Reports, with a particular focus on CMSes, video, personalization and health tracking. Her passion is to evangelize the impact of great UX.
Beverly has an Executive MBA from the University of Oxford, a technology Master’s in software systems from New York University, and a BA in English from University of Toronto. She is a triple UK- Canadian- US citizen.
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.
Head of Strategic Design Services, America in SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center
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.
Andrew is the Head of Design at Uber where he and his team are creating the future of local transportation and delivery.
Prior to Uber, Andrew was the Global Director, Brand & Design for GE and collaborated with GE’s businesses to set and execute on a vision for great brand experiences. Leading both the Design and Brand Councils, Andrew worked directly with product leaders blending brand and design to affect positive outcomes for customers.
He leans on 25 years of experience in visual, interaction, and product design and has a deep perspective on creating meaningful product experiences for people. Andrew has led design and brand teams on projects for both enterprise clients and startups; he is passionate about designing products and services that delight people and exceed business expectations.
Prior to GE, Andrew was VP of Mobile and Experience at Razorfish, and a Lead Experience Designer for Adaptive Path.
Adam is a graduate of Stanford’s d.School, he leads the Experience Design department at Deutsch LA and leads all UX efforts on VW, this includes a recent complete redesign of vw.com. Prior to Deutsch he worked at Crispin Porter + Bogusky where he led UX on Kraft Foods, Domino’s, Burger King, and Vail Resorts’ Epic Mix. Adam previously worked at IDEO and at social gaming start-up, Trippert Labs that was later acquired by Playdom.
Paul is a Principal at Method who is working to help define the future of experience design. He has been a designer for 20 years, with work ranging from visual, interaction and service design, to programming, to industrial design and architecture, to strategy and brand development. He works to develop lasting partnerships with clients and to establish a strong strategic spine to all projects. Paul has been involved with Method for over 12 years.
Prior to joining Method Paul worked on a diverse group of projects. He co-founded 8020 Publishing, a venture-funded media company that produced the reader-created magazines JPG and Everywhere, designed and launched Current TV’s groundbreaking user generated TV network, launched the innovation group within Macy’s and Bloomingdales, and spent several years as the managing director of the San Francisco studio of Deepend, the award winning UK based digital agency.
Outside of work, he enjoys vintage cars, making cocktails, cooking and travel. He owns a restored vintage RV and returned recently from a yearlong road trip around the US.
Martijn van Tilburg is the co-founder and CEO of 10,000ft, a software company in Seattle, WA. His early career includes nearly 10 years at Microsoft where he designed the UX for Office 2000 to Office 2007, and led the design for the first version of Microsoft SharePoint. More recently, Martijn was Director of Design and part of the founding executive team at Artefact, a technology and product design firm. He is a design-entrepreneur who is driven by the desire to improve the human and, particularly, the work experience by making new things.
Mathew is Mullen’s Director of Interactive and since 2011 has helped define the agency’s approach to experience, design and creative application of technology. He previously led creative technology efforts for Crispin Porter + Bogusky on domestic and international brands as diverse as Volkswagen, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Domino’s Pizza. Prior to CP+B, Mathew served as Director of Research and Development for IQ Interactive in Atlanta and helped build a large interactive team while producing award-winning work for AUDI, IBM, Royal Caribbean and UPS. While pursuing Computer Science at Georgia Tech, Mathew decided to switch gears and follow more creative endeavors with a degree in fine arts from SCAD and still enjoys breaking out the sketchbook when not nerding out.
Joe is responsible for SwiftKey’s global marketing operation, which comprises the consumer growth, communications and community teams. He also represents the company at public events and in the press.
Joe joined SwiftKey’s London team when it was a tiny startup in late 2009 and now heads the downtown San Francisco office. Prior to joining, he worked as a journalist for News Corporation and Sky News.
Goran has been working in the digital design industry for well over a decade now. He was working in top digital agencies in Croatia, catering to majority of big brands in the region, and about two years ago moved to Ireland to work in SAP as a Principal UX Designer.
He is zooming around SAP locations, Dublin, Waldorf, Palo Alto, working on exciting projects all the time.
Jay Vidyarthi, InteraXon’s Senior Interaction Designer, is the inventor of Sonic Cradle, an award-winning persuasive medium for mindfulness meditation. Jay has helped optimize user experiences for clients as diverse as UNESCO, Cirque Du Soleil, and Yellow Pages Group. He has also presented his work at many international conferences (including TED), published academic papers, and been the subject of press features by CBC Radio, Vice, and Conde Nast.
Trevor Coleman combines a deeply empathic understanding of customer experience and pragmatic business sense to his role as Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Interaxon, where he currently oversees development of apps for Muse: brain sensing headband.
As a founder and Chief Product Officer of InteraXon, he is committed to delivering compelling and innovative user experiences through brainwave-enabled applications.
Jon Wong is a San Francisco-based designer and illustrator who aims to create purposeful, story-driven designs. Prior to joining UberConference, he worked at Dwell Magazine, ISO50, and Office: Jason Schulte Design. He draws inspiration from a trifecta of childhood influences: movies, comics, and video games.
UberConference can keep you on schedule by calling you. Never worry about dialing in again. We can even call your guests mid-call to have them join. Of course, we’ll always support calling-in the traditional way.
Jerome Tavé is a User Experience designer focused on creating better services for the needs of tomorrow. After receiving his degree in Industrial Design, he worked at RKS Design for two years where he helped clients develop engaging product experiences across a variety of industries. After moving to the Bay Area and contracting with a few startups, he turned his focus to UberConference, with the goal of improving the way we communicate.
Felipe Memoria is Partner, Product Design at Work & Company. He sits at the critical intersection between user experience, visual design, and code, while driving Work & Company’s unique vision for building successful products and services.
Felipe was previously Partner, Global Head of User Experience at Huge. He spent six years helping the company grow from 60 to 600 people, managing teams across seven offices worldwide. He designed some of its most celebrated projects, including CNN.com, HBO GO, Banco Itaú, Newsweek.com, TED Talks and Eurosport. Felipe also founded three of the companies’ offices: Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Portland.
Prior to this, Felipe served as Creative Lead at Globo.com, where he designed several of the most visited sites in Brazil including Globoesporte.com. He also taught post-graduate courses as an associate professor at PUC-Rio. One of the best-known designers in Brazil, Felipe is the author of the best selling Brazilian book on User Experience, Design para a Internet.
Felipe has an M.S. in Usability and Human-Computer Interaction and a B.S. in Graphic Design, both from PUC-Rio.
Joe Stewart is Partner, Design at Work & Company where he oversees design and branding across all client engagements.
Prior to founding Work & Company, Joe was Partner & Global Creative Director at Huge where he was responsible for managing the agency’s global portfolio, overseeing all creative output, and personally directing and designing for key accounts, including Target, JetBlue, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, MoMA, NYC, Under Armour, and Reuters.
Joe has over 16 years of digital experience. Over that time his work has won dozens of awards and has been featured in Ad-Age, Ad-Week, Apple.com, Creative Bloq, Creative Review, Fast Company, How Magazine, The New York Times, Step, and many more. Joe was named one of Fast Company’s ‘Most Creative People in Business’, and one of the ‘Top 50 Web Designers’ in the world by Net Magazine.
Joe has an active profile within the design community as a public speaker, writer, and juror for Cannes, SXSW, The Webby Awards, The Pixel Awards and Fast Co. Design Awards.
CEO at UXVision, a leading UX consulting boutique, Founder & Director at UXV – Israeli UX Certification Program.
Tal Florentin is an award winning User Experience practitioner who successfully led dozens of companies and organization to effective products using a winning User Experience strategy.
Director of Design – Enterprise Growth Serve at American Express
Katie Koch is a user experience designer and teacher in Brooklyn. As Design Director at American Express, Katie works with her team to create new products and services that meet the needs of people traditionally underserved by financial institutions. As part of an in-house design team, she collaborates with partners in business to strategize and execute on big ideas, working across disciplines to create the best possible customer experience.
Beyond work, Katie is a co-founder of Project: Interaction, an after-school program that teaches interaction design to high
school students, and recently finished her tenure as adjunct faculty at Parsons, the New School for Design.
Mitchel Ahern, VP Marketing for Cantina, has been in digital marketing for a very long time, with titles like SYSOP, Webmaster, Digital Media Producer, Product Manager, and Director of Communications for companies such as One to One Interactive and Eastern Acoustic Works and working with clients like Aegon, UPS and Royal Carribbean. He writes for industry publications and speaks at various events. When he’s not at his day job Mitchel is a regular DJ at WCUW 91.3 FM, a multimedia performance artist, instrument inventor, and letterpress printmaker. He has a degree in Philosophy from Clark University.
Josh is a product designer at the Eventbrite in San Francisco. Josh came from a visual design agency in Boulder Colorado. In 2011 his maker spirit brought him to San Francisco, where his role among other things has been a product design leader at Eventbrite. Josh represents a group of talented UX and Product designers whose mission is to bring the world together through live experiences. Recently, Josh worked as the visual designer on Reserved Seating, an application that empowers organizers to create graphical representations of venue
spaces.
Alex Morrison is managing director of digital specialists, Cogapp (www.cogapp.com). Alex founded Cogapp in 1985 and has been working on aspects of digital media and the digital user experience ever since. His client list includes Apple, Microsoft, the BBC, the London Olympics, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Qatar Museums and nine other national museums.
Outside Cogapp, Alex sits on the board of a couple of successful non-profits and has failed to change the face of online entertainment with his now defunct talent show start-up, Noostar. Alex and Cogapp are based in thriving digital hotspot, Brighton, England.
Originally from Eastampton, New Jersey, Kyle is currently in his third year of undergraduate studies in the Industrial Design program at Virginia Tech. He is an avid reader and runner and loves just about anything outdoors. His main design interests include design for the bottom of the pyramid, sustainable packaging, and design inspired by biology. Outside of class he has been an officer for the Environmental Coalition, a representative for the Student Government Association, and a member of IDSA. This past summer he and a few other students in the Industrial Design program ran their own business, called Local Design, for which they made and sold hand-made wood products at the local farmer’s market. He is projected to earn his degree in the spring of 2016 and after that he hopes to find a job wherever he can.
Qardio is a technology company making heart health monitoring easier and better for everyone. Our medical devices are based on proprietary technologies and are beautifully designed, with incredible attention to detail, to fit eortlessly into everyday life, making healthcare easier and more personal.
Qardio’s team is proud of the uncompromising attention to detail we take in every aspect of our work: we use proprietary technologies, world-class design and state- of-the-art manufacturing processes to create a new generation of consumer health medical devices that make healthcare smarter.
Rosario Iannella’s fourteen-year career span of designing and implementing highly complex IT platforms includes time working for Sun Microsystems and for Oracle as a Principal Solution Architect. Prior to co-founding Qardio, Rosario was COO and CTO of a telecom services startup for two years, during which time he radically restructured the company’s operations, taking it from $20mm to $120mm in revenues. During this restructuring he redesigned operations for scalability, rebuilt all operational platforms, and managed the manufacturing of custom hardware.
Rosario has worked on projects across four continents, and his international project experience includes designing the architecture of execution-critical systems for several globally recognizable clients. Rosario holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Naples, Italy.
Design Lead at SAP Design and Co-Innovation Center
Eliad is a Principal UX designer with 12 years of experience both in enterprise and consumer software design. Currently, he is a team lead in the Design and Co-innovation Center, where he provides strategic design services to SAP customers. Previously, Eliad worked on Social on Demand and Sustainability products at SAP. Prior to SAP, he worked at Education.com, Top Tier software.
Eliad has a education in multi media from Sivan Technology College in Israel.
In his spare time, Eliad is an avid mountain biker. He was part of a rock band in Israel.
Anticlockwise Arts is a group of artists, engineers, scientists, and data explorers. We research emerging interface technologies in computer vision and tactile media for interactive installations, data visualization, and augmented storytelling. We create experiences for museums, professional spaces, festivals and other events on a permanent or rental basis. We are highly collaborative and often work alongside the design and development teams of other organizations and agencies.
Concept and programming by Joshua Goldberg
Photography by Andrew Yao-An Lee
Joshua Goldberg is an artist, programmer and educator obsessed with performative abstraction and machine-vision control.
He has shown work, taught workshops and built installations on four continents.
His work has been enjoyed in art galleries from Johannesburg to Seoul, at festivals from Hong Kong to Burning Man, and in museums from Amsterdam to Mexico City.
He is currently the Software Producer at Obscura Digital in San Francisco.
Taurin Barrera is an American electronic musician and multimedia artist whose work explores the interactive connections between technology and sensory perception. Barrera combines computer vision, data visualization, and algorithmic composition techniques to program audiovisual instruments and installations. He uses emerging technologies to augment our sensory experiences of sound and visual art. He designs sounds you can see, images you can hear, and interactive audiovisual sculptures you can touch.
Barrera received his Master’s degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College where he studied with Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, and Laetitia Sonami. While at Mills, Barrera developed interactive multimedia systems and environments for creative and playful exploration of digital media.
At General Assembly, we are creating a global community of individuals empowered to pursue work they love, by offering full-time immersive programs, long-form courses, and classes and workshops on the most relevant skills of the 21st century – from web development and user experience design, to business fundamentals, to data science, to product management and digital marketing.
TechCrunch is a blog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, TechCrunch profiles existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.
The User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) is an international association devoted to assisting new and established professionals in the user experience disciplines.Through networking, publications, conferences and classes, UXPA can help you hone your skills and deepen your involvement in the UX community.
Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with locations in more than 130 countries, SAP AG is the world leader in enterprise software and software-related services. Explore our 42 year history of innovation and access late breaking company news, financial and investor information, career opportunities, and more.
Infor is the third-largest provider of enterprise applications and services in the world. We create beautiful work engagements with innovative software that’s specialized by industry. We enable our customers to work smarter and faster to help them drive growth, improve operations, and quickly adapt to changes in business demands. In the cloud or on-premise, we make it happen.
Fjord has been pioneering service design since we opened our doors in 2001. Together with our clients, we’ve created services that make millions of people’s lives a little better every day. We’re human-centered, with an eye on disrupting whole industries.
Modus Associates is a digital innovation consultancy founded to help global brands and visionary start-ups more fully realize the business potential of the digital age, where customers rule, connectivity is everywhere, and creating value for profit and social impact is the name of the game.
VerbFactory has built our reputation by working with clients to position them as unique and relevant players in their industries and helping them “move the needle” by generating solid results. Our areas of excellence include writing, messaging and branding, graphic and web design, social media, press relations, tradeshow support and awards programs.
WunderLand is the destination for hiring talent, and for finding jobs in the U.S. We recruit UX Designers, UX Researchers, Web Designers, Web Developers, Graphic Designers, Copywriters, Content Managers, Marketers, Project Managers and more, for placement in jobs with established businesses or start-ups.
Conjure is a UX and development agency with a passion for making data easy to understand and use. We specialize in building new data-related products, improving user experience & scaling your team.
We help companies structure, build and integrate more stable and sustainable design teams, and we help the designers to navigate their careers in a more meaningful, considered way.
Flying Pancakes Productions is an award-winning video production studio spanning documentaries, narrative feature films and shorts that have been shown at more than 30 film festivals.
The Interaction Design Foundation – the IDF – is a ten year old transformative non-profit enterprise focused on educating, informing and stimulating the global design community. The organization has created a powerful cloud based publishing model, blending free video material and textbooks with an immersive web site and social media presence for thought leaders, students, authors, academia, and design professionals.
Loop11 is the only way to get quantitative usability metrics…affordably. It’s the SurveyMonkey of usability testing. A self-serve, browser-based solution for usability professionals, web managers and web designers to create their own online, usability testing projects to get the metrics needed to optimize website usability.
We bring your vision to life, creating brilliant software and fielding an integrated team of talented engineers, designers and product managers who move fast and make things happen.
We’ve been at the forefront of agile development for more than two decades building highly scalable mobile and web software that reaches across a variety of industry verticals, software platforms and device types. We help you bring a new product vision to market, accelerate your existing development efforts and prepare your team to bring agile practices home to strengthen your in-house development.
Pow Interactive is a boutique design studio specializing in web, mobile and emerging technologies. Whatever the platform, we seek to engage users and improve their experiences.
Proto.io is a mobile app prototyping platform, that enables designers, product managers, developers and entrepreneurs to easily create fully interactive prototypes for their mobile app that look and feel exactly like the finished product.
We connect people interested in designing better user experiences with the best expertise available—in the formats that make the most sense, and in ways that demonstrate the value of UX.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a leading national research university and the state’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education.
We are optimists and approach each challenge with the attitude of “why not.” No matter what stage your business or product is in, there is always opportunity to uncover. We are committed to unearthing and clarifying those opportunities and driving consensus among teams to bring them to fruition.
GarysGuide is a global resource and community of professionals that are interested in startups, entrepreneurship, social media and technology. It is one of the best resources for discovering technology and startup related events, classes, workshops and jobs in New York City, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, London, Boston, Los Angeles, Austin and other cities.
We’ve built The Hired Guns to help the digital creative class expand their potential far beyond the 9-to-5, bringing their expertise to companies in unexpected and exciting ways and guiding their careers through transitions from freelance gigs to fulltime jobs and back again.
Get in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and much more.
The MIT Enterprise Forum is dedicated to strengthening technology clusters globally so that the innovation economy can grow and bring new and interesting technologies and innovation into the marketplace. The MIT Enterprise Forum is the preeminent organization of entrepreneurs in the global innovation economy.
Social Media Today is an independent, online community for professionals in PR, marketing, advertising, or any other discipline where a thorough understanding of social media is mission-critical. Every day, we provide insight and host lively debate about the tools, platforms, companies and personalities that are revolutionizing the way we consume information.
SoDA is the primary multinational organization focused solely on leading and representing top digital agencies and elite production companies through unparalleled collaboration, knowledge-sharing, business support and exploration of how technology can be leveraged to transform consumer experiences.
TiE, a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals, was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley, California, USA. Although its birth name, The Indus Entrepreneurs, signifies the ethnic South Asian or Indus roots of the founders, TiE stands for Talent, Ideas and Enterprise. It is an open and inclusive organization that has rapidly grown to more than 60 chapters in 17 countries. TiE seeks to cultivate and nurture the ecosystem of entrepreneurship and free-market economies everywhere, as it sees this to be the single most powerful instrument of prosperity.
This is a group for User Experience Design professionals to expand our network of people and ideas. This group serves as a common platform ,which brings all User Experience Professionals, Information Architect, Graphic designers, User interface designers, Human factor researcher in one roof.
We imagined WeWork as the home for entrepreneurs, a community filled with fascinating members collaborating, learning and growing together. We hope you see it that way too. Our goal is to empower you to do what you love while we handle the rest.
Design professionals from all over the world gather for four days of community, inspiration and skills building. Now in its 12th year, UX Week delivers new tools you can put to use immediately. UX Week will take place September 9 – 12 in San Francisco, CA. Use code “UXIE15” for 15% off your UX Week registration!
AgileCamp is an event bringing together the Silicon Valley Agile community for a day filled with learning in Agile and Lean practices.
Led by the Silicon Valley’s leading agile experts, this is one of the largest, most exciting Agile gatherings in the Silicon Valley. Our objective is to bring together Agilists, from novices to experts, and advance Agile knowledge to the community.
AgileCamp attracts professionals from various disciplines and levels who are interested in Agile techniques and gather to listen, learn, discuss and teach practices that help businesses succeed. Moreover, a large majority of our attendees will be from technology companies such as eBay, PayPal, Yahoo!, Cisco, LinkedIn, StubHub, Ericsson, HP, Comcast, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce, Symantec, Oracle, Visa, and many more.
The Silicon Valley Agile Leadership Network (SV-ALN) is the Silicon Valley’s most active and largest Agile/Lean community. Launched in 2011, we’ve grown from 17 members to nearly 1000 members. Our purpose is to evangelize and educate Agile and Lean skills to our members as well as building our community to serve as a networking platform.
Our members include agile coaches, scrum masters, executives, project managers, product managers, engineers, QA, designers, and many others from Apple, Adobe, Cisco, Comcast, eBay, Ericsson, The Gap, Good Technology, HP, LinkedIn, PayPal, PG&E, Visa, Walmart.com, Yahoo! among many other large firms and start-ups.
The Tri-Valley/ East Bay Agile Leadership Network (TV/EB-ALN) is a Agile/Lean community based in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area that includes counties of Amador Valley, Livermore Valley, and San Ramon Valley. It includes cities of Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville as well as other East Bay locations in Contra Costa county like Walnut Creek and Concord. Our purpose is to evangelize and educate Agile and Lean skills to our members as well as building our community to serve as a networking platform for those companies in the area using Agile/ Lean methods to create great products. Our members include agile coaches, scrum masters, executives, project managers, product managers, engineers, QA, designers, and many others from Cisco, eBay, GE, HP, PayPal, PG&E, Visa, Western Digital, Yahoo! among many other large firms and start-ups.
BASE offers unbelievable social networking opportunities with people from all backgrounds and philosophies. We encourage everyone to join who has a love for new technologies, software engineering, and the opportunity to network with people building the future.
BayCHI, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), brings together scholars, practitioners, and users to exchange ideas about computer-human interaction and about the design and evaluation of human interfaces.
We organize events for web & mobile product designers. User Experience Design, User Interface Design, HTML5, CSS3, JS, Content Strategy, Usability, etc.
Promoting collaboration between artists and technologists interested building the future, where imagination is the only limit. CODAME aims to demystify technology to artists and recognize the value of art as a vital activity for innovation.
Coding Dojo provides a 12 week immersive training environment for developers in Silicon Valley, CA and Seattle, WA. At Coding Dojo, students quickly learn to code and think like software engineers and develop web applications as an end result. Our students meet from 8 A.M.-6 P.M. (M-F) and spend 50-70 hours in class each week with actual developers as their guide. Lunch and healthy snacks are included. We cover HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MVC, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, OOP, and much more. Our students receive mentored guidance, quick feedback and curated course content, all while building real applications and solving real problems.
A place for UX designers, developers, product managers, and entrepreneurs to discuss innovations in all aspects of user experience design. A networking and learning event designed for some fun along the way.
We all have founded, worked for or invested in startups that have failed. We’re smart, we keep up with the latest in technology trends, but sometimes things just don’t go as planned. How can you predict what will work and what won’t? Well, you can’t. But that doesn’t mean you should stop trying. It just means you should start exchanging stories of what didn’t work and how you pivoted, why you couldn’t raise money, what the wrong hires were like, and when you decided it was time to let go. Entrepreneurs need to hear that from each other: it’s okay to fail; it doesn’t mean you’re worthless. You’re just like the rest of us, learning from making mistakes and building something bigger next time. FailCon was started in San Francisco in 2009 as a response to events repeatedly highlighting only success, while providing so guidance or safe spaces for failure. Our first event launched with over 400 attendees, and we’ve continued to grow ever since. We hope you’ll join us and add your unique story and experience to our own.
Meet fellow UX and Interaction Designers near you! Come to a Meetup to compare tools, methods, design patterns, case studies, and experiences. Trade advice on careers, workflow, and share cool sites and apps for the web and mobile devices. We also have great opportunities to network with peers and colleagues and find freelance and job opportunities.
Silicon Valley Designers (Formerly IDSA – Silicon Valley Chapter)
As a voice for the local design community, the Silicon Valley Designers Meetup (Formerly IDSA Silicon Valley Chapter) aims to: Celebrate Silicon Valley design, and the people who practice it; extol the value of good design to business leaders and the public alike. Fan the flames of inspiration by providing opportunities to learn from and share knowledge with others. Bring people together, face-to-face, to form meaningful relationships with other designers and those in related fields.
Igniters: Stanford Entrepreneurs & Silicon Valley Founders Meetup
The Igniters Meetup group is a strong community of entrepreneurs and founders in Silicon Valley who have the burning desire to grow their company. We bring in influential speakers to give startup tips, and offer great opportunities for networking.
The Interaction Design Studio organizes workshops, discussions, and presentations aimed at discovering and sharing knowledge related to user interface and user experience design, both as a live or digital experience. We also explore technology as it applies to Storytelling using trans-media platforms or software and their application to live or recorded media. Our goal is to bridge the knowledge-base gaps that exists between designers and developers.
The Chicago area chapter of the global Interaction Design Association (IxDA) exists to bring together local area designers in all disciplines that overlap with interaction design, whether it be product, digital, space, research, or even business, that strive to create user-centered design solutions. This organization is volunteer-driven and always looking for sponsorship or hosts for upcoming events.
IxDA San Francisco is the SF local group of the Interaction Design Association. The IxDA is a member-supported organization committed to serving the needs of the international interaction design community.
The IxDA New York City local group organizes monthly presentations and workshops for people interested in interaction design. Our events gather together a vibrant community of professionals who design interactive systems, services and products of all kinds: web, desktop, enterprise, mobile, consumer electronics, digitally-enhanced environments, and more.
Los Angeles is home to one of the largest volunteer-run User Experience (UX) professional development organization in the world. The Los Angeles User Experience Meetup has more than 3,000 members.
The Lean Product & Lean UX Silicon Valley Meetup is for people interested in applying Lean Startup, Lean UX, and Agile principles to design and develop products that customers love. Our group is for product managers, designers, developers, analysts, marketers and others that are passionate about learning and applying the latest tools and techniques to deliver great products.
The intersection between Lean Thinking, Agile Development and UX is a challenging, exciting, and timely issue for a large number of practitioners in interaction design, information architecture, and related fields. Based on the earlier work of Anders Ramsay and the Agile Experience Design meetup we co-host in New York, and a highly provocative and productive Agile UX retreat in San Francisco at Cooper Design in January 2010, we couldn’t help but continue the discussion.
NYC – CHI holds UX-focused events and has an active mailing list to service the NYC region. We have over 1900 active members in all aspects of HCI, including information architects, interaction designers, user experience designers, service designers, product and museum experience designers, usability practitioners, digital librarians, user interface designers and UI developers.
We seek to bring together professionals from the marketing, design, technology and research communities so that we may share our collective experiences and create a forum for learning and professional growth. We encourage you to join us at our monthly events, which are open to members and non-members.
This Meetup group supports the SF Bay ACM Chapter. You can join the actual SF Bay Chapter by coming to a meeting – most meetings are free, and our membership is only $20/year! The chapter has both educational and scientific purposes: the science, design, development, construction, languages, management and applications of modern computing, communication between persons interested in computing & cooperation with other professional groups.
San Francisco Interactive Design & Development Meetup
This group is for San Francisco Bay-area Web and Mobile Designers, Developers, Information Architects, Usability Experts, User Experience Designers, Web Producers, Programmers, Flash Animators, etc. – anyone involved in the designing, developing, programming and implementation of web sites and mobile applications.
SF New Tech is the Bay Area’s largest and longest running monthly technology event and networking mixer for people who can’t get enough of technology. Evolved from its first meetup of eight geeks talking about tech over cold pints in April 2006, SF New Tech is now serving over 10,000 tech industry movers and shakers, VCs, journalists, hackers, developers, recruiters and more, who are signed up to hear from the hottest startups and companies at our standing-room-only events. Join us here: http://sfnewtech.com/joinus/
Idea to IPO is one of the largest and most active member organizations in Silicon Valley focusing on tech and entrepreneurship. Our mission is to promote entrepreneurship, support entrepreneurs, build community, and provide value to the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem. We partner with venture capital firms, angel investor groups,law firms, co-working spaces, startup incubators and accelerators, colleges and universities, and other entrepreneur member organizations in our mission to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals and realize their aspirations. Membership is free! Check out our events at: www.idea-to-ipo.com
SoCal UX Camp is a free, user-driven, collaborative “unconference” for User Experience Designers, Research Analysts, and students alike from Southern California. A one-day gathering of User Experience folks to share, present, network, learn and discuss.
Society for Technical Communication – San Francisco Chapter
The mission of the Society for Technical Communication is to advance the theory and practice of technical communication across all user abilities and media. To further this, the San Francisco chapter: Promotes the art and science of technical communication in the San Francisco Bay Area, Promotes career development in the technical communication profession for our members, other colleagues, and students of technical communication, Promotes respect, increased public awareness, and appreciation of the technical communication profession. The San Francisco chapter meets on the third Wednesday evening of each month. See www.stc-sf.org for details.
#techdrinkup is the world’s coolest startup party. It was started in NYC in 2011 to connect makers and innovators in the tech community over good drinks, good music, and good vibes. It has expanded from a monthly party in NYC to an annual party at the SXSWi festival in Austin, TX and a quarterly party in the mission district in San Francisco.
TechXploration is PayPal’s free, new Technology & Art focused monthly speaker series held at eBay/PayPal Conference center in San Jose, California, USA.Enjoy conversations with silicon valley-based Tech & Art luminaries while sampling the finest craft beer and local unforgettable food!Our goal is to give back to the community and to inspire people. All are welcome. Delight us with your presence! Connect with us @ https://www.facebook.com/TechXploration
Ultra Light Startups is an online and in-person community for technology entrepreneurs. Events feature startup pitches, networking and interactive, moderated panel discussions with leading industry experts. Topics cover: design, technology, marketing and finance. Attend and participate in-person in New York, Boston and Toronto, or view the live video stream from anywhere.
The United Filmmakers Association is dedicated to the encouragement of growth in local filmmaking opportunities through networking, collaboration, team building, action and empowerment. UFA supports these efforts by providing monthly networking sessions, online community forums, monthly and annual showcasing opportunities, connection to finance and distribution options as well as our online think tank to help fine tune projects.
NYC UX Acrobatics is a community based UX Meetup. NYC UX Acrobatics primary focus is the varied facets of UX design, research and usability. Our aim is to create monthly ‘UX themed’ workshop style meetings where members work with each other learning, discovering and networking on all things UX.
The DC chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association is a highly active local community of individuals interested in usability, user experience design, interaction design, and their many related fields.
Women Who Code is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers by creating a global, connected community of women in technology. Our community provides an avenue for women to pursue a career in technology, helps them gain new skills and hone existing skills for professional advancement, and fosters environments where networking and mentorship are valued.
The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) was founded in 2006 to bring together inspirational international faculty, diverse students, clients and partners from all around the world to create an energetic and collaborative design culture. Our integrated structure creates a unique environment that encompasses world-renowned education, a cutting edge research group and an award-winning consultancy. We create impact through the design of innovative products, services and environments.
Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is one of the most prominent programs of its kind. Students with diverse backgrounds in computing, digital media, industrial design and psychology enroll in the program and its respective home unit, providing the broad base of knowledge and experiences that are so important to successful HCI practitioners.
GVU is an interdisciplinary research center that brings together people and expertise from all six Georgia Tech colleges in order to solve complex problems. Our goal is to make the world a better place through fundamental and applied interdisciplinary computing research. We want to help people and communities to be connected to one another, to communicate, to learn, to heal, to be entertained, to create, to express their ideas and visions, and to be given the tools and opportunity to expand their potential and improve their lives.
Institute of Design – Illinois Institute of Technology
IIT Institute of Design (ID) is the largest graduate design school in the US and specializes in research and strategy. ID faculty and students tackle complex issues like the future of reading, learning in the digital age, and tech-savvy, patient-centric healthcare. They develop methodology in emerging fields like urbanism, interactive place-making, quantified self, and design for social good. Some of this work is featured at ID’s annual conferences: the Strategy Conference and Design Research Conference. ID offers an MDes for candidates with or without design backgrounds, a dual MDes/MBA, a PhD, and a part-time, weekend-only MDM for professionals with eight years of leadership experience, and weeklong design camps.
ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people’s lives. Perhaps the best way to describe us is as a Center for the Recently Possible.
For nearly 80 years, the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS) has provided comprehensive, professionally oriented educational experiences to students from the New York metropolitan area, across the country, and around the globe.
Rigorous practice and critical scholarship prepare students to become leading agents of commentary and change. The School of Art, Media, and Technology offers superb training in the art and design disciplines, expanding these fields beyond their traditional boundaries through interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange.
Founded in 1887, Pratt Institute is a global leader in higher education dedicated to preparing its 4,700 undergraduate and graduate students for successful careers in art, design, architecture, information and library science, and liberal arts and sciences. Located in a cultural hub with historic campuses in Brooklyn and Manhattan, Pratt is a living lab of craft and creativity with an esteemed faculty of accomplished professionals and scholars who challenge their talented students to transform their passion into meaningful expression.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
The mission of the Industrial Design Program is to provide students with the intellectual and physical skills to assume leadership positions in the world of industrial design. The program addresses the interaction of people with objects and their environment addressing the cultural, technological, business, ergonomic, ecological and social factors that lead to more useful and meaningful products and services. In 2013, the Sophomore Team took the Silver Prize for the Best Accessibility Innovation at the UX Awards, for their project, Activ.
Oxford Tech + UX offers data-driven UX, strategy, prototyping, research and product development for data-intensive projects in mobile, web, ecommerce, software and physical products. We’re specialists with 17′ years industry expertise and 5 years’ of clients in publishing, media, tv & video, ecommerce, complex software, social apps and mobile.
