UX Week 2010 » Speakers

Aaron Forth

Aaron_Forth_hi-res Aaron brings more than 10 years’ of product development and product management experience to Mint. Prior to joining Mint, Aaron held several leadership positions at eBay and Half.com (acquired by eBay Inc.). Most recently, as Director of Advertising, Aaron was responsible for product strategy, design and product development….

Alex Zafiroglu

alex_zafiroglu_200 Alex Zafiroglu is an anthropologist with the User Experience Group in Intel Corporation’s Digital Home Group. She has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Brown University. Since joining Intel in 2004, Alex has conducted ethnographic research in households in North America, Western Europe and South and East Asia as well as in youth hostels, RV parks & rallies and retail locations from boot sales to mega-stores.

Alexa Andrzejewski

Alexa Andrzejewski is an interaction designer for Adaptive Path. She is driven by the belief that improving even one person’s life through attentive design can have far-reaching effects. This belief was born from her extensive experience designing complex interactive products for industries ranging from healthcare to finance…

Bernhard Seefeld

Bernhard Seefeld is the product manager for Google Maps. Prior to Google, Bernhard was the Lead Software Engineer at Endoxon AG, a Swiss mapping company that pioneered AJAX-based mapping and CTO and Co-founder of search.ch, one of the first local search engines.

Brandon Schauer

Brandon Schauer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. He speaks, writes, trains, and practices experience design as a differentiator for business strategy.

Brandon’s passion for finding and understanding the unmet needs of customers has led him to diverse environments, from the homes of cancer patients to tunnels beneath Walt Disney World. This insight with customers — plus a solid grounding in business analysis and a mastery of design methods — allows Brandon to help organizations define and design more meaningful experiences for their customers…

Charlie Brown

Charlie_Brown Charlie Brown is the Executive Director of Ashoka’s Changemakers, an online community that “open sources” innovative solutions to entrenched problems worldwide and builds communities of action to support them.

Dan Harrelson

Dan Harrelson is a senior technologist at Adaptive Path. He has an extensive background in web application development, IT administration, systems analysis, and design. He has over 10 years of technical and business experience, with expertise in all aspects of architecting and coding online media. Dan’s unique understanding of both design and back-end systems allows him to help clients realize their product’s full potential…

Darren David

Darren David is an award-winning pioneer in the field of RIA development, with a 13-year career in the industry. His list of firsts includes leading development for the first Flash-based online SAT preparation course, developing the first WPF-based application to be publicly deployed on Windows Vista, and engineering the UI for the world’s largest multi-touch wall…

David Merrill

merrill-head-250 David Merrill is a principal of Taco Lab, a design/engineering firm in San Francisco specializing in physical-to-cloud interfaces. He is a graduate of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab, where he studied with Pattie Maes…

Elizabeth Windram

elizabeth_windram250 Elizabeth is a senior user experience designer on YouTube. She previously lead the design group for Google Maps and has also supported Google Web Search. Prior to Google, Elizabeth managed the website  for the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago and designed websites for corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Hachette Filpacci, Sun Microsystems, and Bell and Howell.

Erin McKean

Erin McKean calls herself a Dictionary Evangelist. She was most recently Chief Consulting Editor, American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, and was the editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2e. She is the editor of VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly. and the author of Weird and Wonderful Words, More Weird and Wonderful Words, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, and That’s Amore (also about words)…

Henning Fischer

Henning Fischer is a design strategist for Adaptive Path. His principal focus is on design research and strategy development. He has worked with a diverse group of organizations to develop multi-channel strategies for communications, services, and products for the web and beyond.

Jesse James Garrett

Jesse James Garrett, Co-Founder and President of Adaptive Path, is one of the world’s most widely recognized technology product designers. At Adaptive Path, Jesse supports the company’s designers and strategists with creative guidance and helps them advance the company’s thought leadership position…

John Peterson

john_peterson John Peterson created Public Architecture in 2002 and joined its staff fulltime in October 2008. John serves as the chief spokesperson and strategist for Public Architecture as well as design director and a member of the board of directors.

Julia Houck-Whitaker

Julia Houck-Whitaker is a Project manger at Adaptive Path. Here at Adaptive Path, she works with companies from the legal industry to the travel and leisure industry, and helps develop and manage events, large and small…

Kristina Halvorson

halvorson_061_300x300 Kristina Halvorson is widely recognized as one of the country’s leading web content strategists. For more than a decade, she has led content projects for hundreds of web initiatives across dozens of industries…

Lee Brenner

lee_brenner Lee Brenner is a principal developer at thirteen23. Though mostly a coder, he often finds himself animating, designing, and providing a healthy amount of creative direction across a variety of projects.

Martyn Ware

martyn_ware Martyn Ware is global creative director of Sonic ID and a renowned pioneer in electronic music and immersive media.

Martyn founded the seminal bands Human League and Heaven 17 and produced albums for Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby and others, totalling sales of more than 60 million records…

Matias Duarte

matias-headshot_300 Matías Duarte is the Senior Director of Human Interface and User Experience at Palm. His team was responsible for all aspects of the user experience on the Palm Pre, the newest addition to Palm’s family of revolutionary mobile devices. Matías’ team continues to develop the design and user interface of Palm webOS, the next generation operating system from Palm…

Matt Webb

matt_webb Matt Webb is CEO of the design shop Schulze & Webb, which has a special focus on the social life of stuff. Projects include material prototypes for Nokia, Web strategy for the BBC, and an electronic puppet that brings you closer to your friends.

Michal Migurski

Stamen partner Michal Migurski architects the technical aspects of Stamen’s work, moving comfortably from active participation in Stamen’s design process, designing database schemas and API’s, to creating the dynamic applications that Stamen delivers to clients…

Nathan Moody

Pixels and people, media and metaphor, business and brand. This summarizes Nathan’s incredibly broad creative career that spans almost every digital medium, most content delivery platforms, and most major software technologies over nearly two decades…

Peter Merholz

Peter Merholz is president and one of the founders of Adaptive Path. For more than six years, Peter has been instrumental in developing Adaptive Path’s ability to provide world-class consulting, training, and public events.

Rachel Glaves

Rachel is an experience designer at Adaptive Path. She is fascinated with the current pace of technology and believes that human-centered design has the power to create understanding and inspire delight in a frequently chaotic world….

Rachel Hinman

Rachel Hinman is a designer and recognized thought leader in the mobile user experience field. She writes and speaks frequently on the topic of mobile research and design and is the creative force behind the 90 Mobiles in 90 Days Project.

Robin Hunicke

Robin_Hunicke Robin is a Game Designer and Producer at who specializes in new IP for new players – including MySims and Steven Spielberg’s BAFTA award-winning BOOM BLOX franchise for Nintendo Wii. She recently joined thatgamecompany, whose Playstation Network releases flOw and Flower are celebrated for their beauty, whimsy and zen-like economy of action.

Sara Summers

Sara_Summers Sara Summers is a User Experience Evangelist for Microsoft based out of Austin, TX. Sara is currently coauthoring a book for experience designers, entitled Dynamic Prototyping, expected to be on bookshelves by the end of this year. She has a personal mantra of design democracy – happy, healthy designers and developers working and playing together to create beautiful, inspirational products.

Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones is a Tony Award winning playwright and performer. Her multi-character solo show Bridge & Tunnel was originally produced Off-Broadway by Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, and went on to become a critically acclaimed, long running hit on Broadway….

Sarah B. Nelson

Sarah B. Nelson is the Principal of Tapir Studios, a user experience design, strategy and mentorship practice. She has nearly 15 years of experience in interactive media, designing kiosks, mobile, and online experiences for clients in a variety of industries….

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud has been writing, drawing, and examining comics since 1984. He’s best known for his seminal work Understanding Comics, which has developed a cult following among UX professionals and visual thinkers the world around….

Scott Snibbe

Scott Snibbe is a pioneer of social interactive experiences that evoke powerful emotional and social engagement. He currently serves as the CEO of Snibbe Interactive, Inc., which sells and distributes social immersive media systems; and he is the founder of Sona Research, which engages in educational and cultural research.

Steve Gundrum

Steve Gundrum is the President and CEO of Mattson, the largest independent developer of new food and beverage products in the US. For over 31 years, Mattson has focused exclusively on food industry new products innovation, and has been involved in the launch of over 285 product lines and more than 1,500 individual products.

Temple Grandin

temple_300 Temple Grandin earned her Ph.D. in animal science from the University of Illinois, went on to become an associate professor at Colorado State University, and wrote two books on autism, including the seminal Thinking in Pictures. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Tom Carden

Tom Carden joined Stamen in November 2006. Before that, he wrote passenger flow simulation software for London-based architecture firm YRM and studied for his Masters in Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation at University College London. He also has a Bachelor’s degree in Artificial Intelligence with Mathematics from the University of Leeds…

Todd Wilkens

Todd Wilkens is a design researcher for Adaptive Path. Thanks to over a decade of experience in research and design, Todd holds a passionate belief that by truly understanding people, we can create compelling product and service experiences as well as real value.

2010 Location:

Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF
1675 Owens Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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