Interaction Design Association Leadership

Experience Planning Director at Arc Worldwide (an affiliate of Leo Burnett)

Janna manages a team of experience planners at Arc Worldwide in Chicago, designing multi-channel brand experiences. Prior to Arc, Janna designed consumer websites at Giant Step, teacher & student web-based services at McDougal Littell, and travel shopping & planning tools at Orbitz. Janna has taken special interest in how our profession is placed within organizations and in the tools used to arrive at engaging product experiences. To that end, Janna took the opportunity to meet more interaction designers by starting the Chicago chapter of IxDA and continues to serve as the resident squeaky wheel.

Chief Design Officer, Devise

Liz discovered her calling as an interaction designer in 1999 while obtaining her Master's degree in design with an emphasis on graphic communication. That year, she joined the staff at Cooper, where she consulted on IxD projects for complex software systems, consumer websites; she designed their popular office telephone concept and also helped advance Cooper's methodology and practice. In 2002, Liz helped establish the Human Factors group at St. Jude Medical, a Fortune 100 company that develops implantable medical devices. For over five years at St. Jude, she led all facets of user experience design work throughout the product development process. Today, Liz is co-founder and Chief Design Officer of Devise, an interaction design and development consultancy based in Portland, Oregon. Liz also participates in IxDA Portland local group activities. Most of the rest of Liz's time is spent with her husband and daughter, or else dreaming of her next autocross race.

Senior Interaction Designer, Ziba

Bill has over fifteen years experience as a writer, information architect, product manager and now senior interaction designer with Ziba Design in Portland, Oregon. With Ziba, he is fortunate to work on a variety of challenges, from handheld satellite radios and medical devices to community websites and interactive spaces, giving him a wide view of interaction design. Bill also writes about the variety and history of interaction design in everyday experiences on his blog, History of the Button, and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He is determined to stretch how people think about interaction design, from beyond the pure digital to any interaction between humans and the artifacts they create. After that, he plays the ukulele.

Program Manager, Multiuser Environments at ACID
Senior Lecturer, Communication Design, RMIT University

Jeremy manages a program of research at ACID, the Australasian Cooperative Research Center for Interaction Design, researching IxD for remote presence and socially driven knowledge environments. As a faculty member at RMIT University's Communication Design program in Melbourne, he has over a decade of experience teaching IxD and supervising graduate students in research projects involving IxD and other related design fields.

Originally studying Architecture, Jeremy has also worked with film Directors, Artists, and mutinationals, adding IxD to projects such as online documentaries, installations, digital games, real-time performance environments, mobile UI, and medical products.

Jeremy is passionate about education, particularly interested in the role and impact IxD has in other fields of design. He is currently researching methods for facilitating collaboration and increasing learning between industry and education.

User Experience Design Lead, FactSet Research Systems, Inc.
Producer and Recording Engineer, Shoebox Sound Productions

Nasir is the User Experience Design Lead at FactSet Research Systems, Inc., a financial information software company. While there, he has designed products for the investment banking and investment management communities. He develops design processes tailor-made for the multidisciplinary teams he works with and educates teams worldwide about the practice of user eperience design.

He has served on the steering committe for the New York City Interaction Design Association since 2005, and he was the group's local leader from 2006 to 2008. With a growing team of 10 other volunteers, the group consistently organizes monthly events in venues around New York City. He leads the digital media initiatives for the organization and its annual Interaction conference. Nasir also leads a double-life as an audio engineer, producing live events and studio recordings for independent musicians around the world.

Steve Baty, UX Strategist, has over 13 years’ experience in the design and delivery of e-business products and services. Steve is a well-known practitioner in the area of experience strategy and architecture, with extensive skills in research, analysis and strategy.

Steve is a regular contributor to UXMatters.com; serves as an editor and contributor to interaction design magazine Johnny Holland, and is a founder of UX Book Club - a world-wide initiative bringing together user experience practitioners in 48 locations to read, connect and discuss books on user experience design.

Steve is the founder and principal of UX consultancy Meld Consulting, based in Sydney, Australia. And previously served as the Director of UX Strategy for Web agency Red Square.

Steve holds post-graduate degrees in electronic commerce (M.Ec) and business administration (MBA) from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management; and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics (Applied Physical Mathematics & Applied Statistics) from UTS.

He likes to fish, but doesn't get to very often.

Amyris has 27 years of work experience. Today she owns an IxD consultancy, teaches Interaction Design at two main universities and is part of the IxDA local group leadership in São Paulo, Brazil. She started her career in marketing, and in the early 90’s began to focus on the Internet. In 1996 she decided to travel to the United States to take on a Master’s degree in E-commerce from the Rochester Institute of Technology, NY - EUA. During her post-graduate studies she started to work with HCI and usability. She completed her Ph.D. by studying cell phone game playability, part of which was pursued at the Information Technology at Copenhagen, Denmark.

Kevin is an empathetic champion of the end user and has been involved in designing the behavior of digital products since 1995. He has worked on a diverse range of projects for the government, software companies and many nationally recognized brands providing strategic direction and interaction design goodness. As a passionate advocate for Interaction Design, Kevin has led the charge in forming an IxDA local group in New Mexico. Kevin is currently the Principal Interaction Designer at Tayu Design.

Associate Creative Director, frog design
Co-Editor-in-Chief, interactions magazine

Jon is an Associate Creative Director at frog design. He has worked extensively in the professional world of interaction design, working around complicated technological constraints in order to best solve the problems of Fortune 500 clients. The underlying theme of his work in both consumer and enterprise domains was the creation of a design solution that was useful, usable and desirable. His present research investigates the process of design, with a focus on various methods of synthesis used to translate research into insights. Prior to working at frog, Kolko was a professor of interaction and industrial design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was instrumental in shaping the interaction and industrial design programs. He is the author of the book Thoughts on Interaction Design, and is the editor-in-chief of interactions Magazine, published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).