CHIChicago

D. Denenge Akpem is an Afro-Futurist space sculptor, performance artist, designer, writer, and educator.  She teaches Black Arts Movement, Black World Ritual Performance, Arts of Africa, and Afro-Futurism: Pathways to Black Liberation at Columbia College Chicago. For the last fifteen years, her work has bridged the disciplines of interior design, site-specific sculpture, public art practice, and science fiction.

George is the co-founder of Greater Good Studio, an award winning consultancy that designs tool for positive behavior change. He is also a tenure-track Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He brings 7 years of design consultant experience at IDEO, working across the healthcare, consumer packaged goods and consumer electronics industries.

Joel is a Southern California native working as a Mobile UX Designer at Google. Aside from Google Analytics and Android, he also advises on other startups in the valley and spends his free time hosting The Blnce podcast.

Michael Boeke is a designer, product guy, and startup veteran, who currently designs and produces software at online payments company Braintree. He focuses on applying design thinking and modern technology to shake-up traditional (read: boring) industries.

As an Experience Design Director with Mad*Pow in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Adam combines his interaction design experience with his background in Computer Science, Film and Visual Design to create effective, efficient, and easy-to-use applications, websites, and interactive media.

J has been making websites and software for the web since 1998, and has been credited with creating several software features that web designers and developers take for granted today. He is the President of Nine Labs, an experience and strategy consultancy where he works with companies far and wide to improve their products and services. 

Andrew is UX Director at Essence Digital's London office. He uses his expertise to define, design and build cross-platform digital interfaces with a key focus on quality, usability and creating the most engaging experience possible for the user.

Patrick has spent his career using the web to create connections between audiences and organizations. To form those connections he sketches ideas and stretches ideas; makes stuff and fakes stuff; combines things and refines things. It’s a process that leads to work that resonates with users and generates positive impact for businesses. He currently leads the interaction design practice at Manifest where he partners with great colleagues and clients.

Dan is the co-founder and creative director at UX at Code and Theory, a creative agency that creates products, content and brand campaigns across platforms. The full suite of services offered touch nearly every industry, from fast food to cosmetics to major magazines, and tout a client list of household products and brands, including Dr Pepper, BURGER KING, Maybelline New York, Vogue, the LA Times and Mashable, to name only a few.

Always imbued with the spirit of an entrepreneur, Sarah launched the hybrid agency Harley & Co. in the spring of 2012, with a particular focus on working education related start ups and venture capital firms. Bridging the divide between the analytical and creative, Sarah's diverse background has included a stint as a UN delegate, along with various consulting positions within the public health, education and workforce development sectors.

As president and founder of Nebo, Adam helps oversee brand strategy, user experience and creative direction for the 50 person independent agency. His passion is helping clients craft interactive experiences that connect with their customers and believes that a good user interface shouldn't require instructions.

Shawn  focuses her personal passion for accessibility on bringing together the needs of individuals and the goals of organizations in designing human-computer interfaces. Her book Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design offers an approach for developing products that are more usable for everyone. Shawn leads the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) education and outreach activities promoting web accessibility for people with disabilities.

Sarah started her career in interaction design in 1991 at the Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media, creating award-winning interactive instructional software. She was an instructional technologist at Dartmouth College for 11 years before becoming Director of Web Strategy and Design. She is a renowned author of four books on web design and accessibility whose latest book is A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences.

As principal of Content Science, Colleen has advised Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and boutique brands on content and user experience strategy. Colleen shares insights from her consulting in her two books with New Riders: Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content and Does Your Content Work?

For 18 yrs, Gabe has been designing interactive exhibits and interfaces, and leading teams to create innovative experiences. In 2003 he founded Belle & Wissell in Seattle–a studio that crafts memorable, participatory experiences by blending inventive design and technology.

Dan started working as an information architect in 1997, and has become highly skilled through fourteen years of practice in agency, e-commerce and non-profit contexts. An engaging and passionate advocate for the craft, Dan balances IA practice with teaching graduate students information architecture at the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

Jason wishes he had a great title like "gypsy beekeeper" or "wordologist" but has most recently performed as Director of User Experience & Product at Obama for America. You can often find him at the intersection of people and technology, advocating for elegant, simple solutions to gnarly problems. He's at his best when helping people work together using sketches on whiteboards and real-life prototypes to communicate ideas.

Intent on actively shaping a better world, Mel Lim is committed to understanding the processes of designing brands, and the ways they impact businesses and customers, both socially and environmentally.
 With over 15 years of international experience in project management, user experience design, and brand development, Mel established her own studio – MLD – in 2003.

MT Maloney is a freelance digital artist and digital media professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His animated works have screened in 5 continents, the latest of which premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Paul is a user experience strategist and designer whose career reaches back to 2000, building on nearly 20 years of design, blogging, photography, and writing. He believes that design can solve problems, both big and small, that affect all of us. In addition to his UX work, Paul's photography has been featured at Design Within Reach and published in the book Communicating with Pattern: Stripes.

David (panel moderator) is a veteran performer of The Second City, IO Theater, Improv Institute, and Annoyance Theatre. He studied under Del Close in the early 80s and became part of the first iO Harold team, Baron's Barracudas. He appeared in four Mainstage revues at Second City, where he performed alongside Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Joel Murray, and Bob Odenkirk. He has also performed in plays at Steppenwolf Theatre and the Goodman Theatre. Since 2002, he currently performs with T. J. Jagodowski in "TJ and Dave," one of the more popular running improv shows performing both in Chicago and New York.

Clarissa Peterson is a UX designer and developer, specializing in building responsive websites and training organizations in responsive design workflow. She frequently speaks on responsive design and mobile content strategy. Clarissa is also the author of Learning Responsive Web Design, coming soon from O’Reilly Media.

Andrea serves as First Deputy Commissioner for the Chicago Public Library, a system of 80 branches supporting all Chicago neighborhoods.  She leads program planning, design and evaluation and supports system-wide strategy and organizational development.  Before joining the Library leadership team, she served as Chief of Staff to Chicago Public Schools CEO, where she led strategy development and implementation of district-wide initiatives and oversaw foundation, corporate and government grant development and partnerships.

Stephanie Sansoucie leads the experience strategy and planning practice at Kohl’s Corporation. She brings deep omnichannel expertise focusing on user experience, customer experience, e-commerce, service design, organizational transformation and digital strategy. Her recent initiatives involve customer experience, omnichannel strategy, business process transformation, team leadership and experience design.

Brandon is a Senior Interaction Designer at Huge in Brooklyn, NY and is responsible for leading projects in the user experience department at their Brooklyn office. He currently oversees a replatforming project for Google's DoubleClick work and frequently contributes to new business pitch efforts.

David Sloan joined The Paciello Group (TPG) in 2013, teaming up with Sarah Horton to build the company's Accessible User Experience service. He provides pragmatic, practical advice to help organisations produce digital experiences that are as accessible and positive as possible to all users, regardless of disability.

Nick Snyder is a front-end developer, designer, speaker, and writer currently based in Boston, MA. As a Creative Technologist at Mad*Pow, Nick combines his knowledge of design and front-end development to create rich and engaging templates.

John is the president of PositivEnergy Practice, an urban systems engineering firm based on data-driven decision-making for sustainable new building design, retrofits, and urban master planning. In 2012, the White House recognized John as a ‘Champion of Change’ as part of a group of creative individuals engaged in building stronger communities through innovative approaches to problem-solving.

Silicon Valley native Megan Williams is a Senior UX Designer and spends her days focused on developing and improving PayPal’s Consumer digital wallet. Her designs focus on creating simplified and intuitive experiences. In addition to her passion for design, Megan also loves mentoring and coaching for the Santa Cruz Derby Girls - an all-female player, full-contact, flat track roller derby league based in Santa Cruz, CA.