Expert Speakers

For Web App Summit 2008, we’ve sought out experts who have the most advanced thought on the topics designers want to hear. We’ve recruited a fabulous group of speakers, ready to help you solve your biggest design problems.

Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

Jared M. Spool

Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering, the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term "usability" was ever associated with computers.

Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual UI Conference, is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time. He is author of the book, Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide.

Andrew DeVigal, Multimedia Editor, The New York Times

Andrew DeVigal

Andrew DeVigal is the multimedia editor at the New York Times. He oversees a staff of multimedia producers and helps direct the presentation of audio, graphics and photo slide shows on the web. In the news industry since 1993 as a staff artist, graphic journalist, web designer, product developer, researcher and journalism professor, he's been in the privileged position to practice and observe multimedia journalism from its inception. DeVigal was also Visiting Professional with the Poynter Institute, teaching and collaborating in the area of New Media and Visual Journalism, where he helped lead the 2000 online eye-tracking study. DeVigal is the founder of InteractiveNarratives.org, a site that celebrates the best of Interactive Journalism on the Internet. He is also co-principal of DeVigal Design, an interactive firm.

Derek Featherstone, Founder, Further Ahead

Derek Featherstone

Derek Featherstone is an internationally-known authority on accessibility and web development, and a respected technical trainer, and author. As founder of Ottawa based Further Ahead, he has been an in-demand consultant to government agencies, educational institutions and private sector companies since 1999.

His wealth of experience and insight as both a web developer and accessibility consultant enables him to provide audiences with immediately applicable, brilliantly simple approaches to everyday challenges in web site and application design. He serves as Lead of the Accessibility Task Force of the Web Standards Project, is also a member of the DOM Scripting Task Force and comments on a variety of subjects at the popular boxofchocolates.ca. He speaks regularly around the world on the topic of accessibility and is recognized as a thought leader in this highly specialized field.

Jason Fried, Founder, 37signals

Jason Fried

Jason Fried is the founder of 37signals, an influential Chicago-based web application design firm. 37signals' Basecamp (web-based project management), Backpack (web-based personal information management), and Ta-da List (web-based to-do lists) products are used on a daily basis by tens of thousands of people and small businesses in over 50 countries.

Kim Goodwin, VP Design and General Manager, Cooper

Kim Goodwin

Kim's design expertise and teaching skill have made her a top-rated presenter at many of User Interace Engineering's events. She applies her years of experience as a creactive director to ensure excellent delivery of Cooper's design, consulting, and training services. Kim has played a major role in developing Cooper's Goal-Directed methods and has led the effort to turn those methods into the Cooper U Interaction Design curriculum. Kim has led a wide range of design projects, from e-commerce applications to information appliances, IP telephony systems, and healthcare applications.

Sean Kane, GetListed

Sean Kane

Sean Kane is recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of User Experience and Design. Prior to joining GetListed as co-founder, Kane was the Director of User Interface Engineering at Netflix, where he led the development of Netflix's award-winning web user interface which was rated #1 in customer satisfaction by independent researchers five consecutive times. Prior to joining Netflix in 2002, Sean led the UI engineering team for Bigvine, a Kleiner-Perkins e-business startup, which was recognized in Forbes 2000 "Best of the Web", Inc. Magazine, and in Newsweek's "Top 103 Web Sites." Previously, Kane developed leading-edge web interfaces at internet search pioneer AltaVista, and developed web applications for AllBusiness.com. He earned a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from California State University, Chico.

Jeremy Keith, Clearleft

Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith is a web developer living and working in Brighton, England. He is author of the best selling book, DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model, and Bulletproof AJAX, both published by New Riders.

Working with the web consultancy firm Clearleft, Jeremy enjoys building accessible, elegant websites using the troika of web standards: XHTML, CSS and the DOM. His online home Adactio.

When he's not building websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the alt.country band Salter Cane. He is also the creator and curator of one of the Web's largest online communities dedicated to Irish traditional music, The Session.

Steve Mulder, Director of Emerging Interactions, Molecular

Steve Mulder

Steve Mulder is Principal Consultant in the User Experience group at Molecular, an Internet consulting firm in Boston, and author of the book, The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. Steve is also a regular speaker at Web Design World, the IA Summit, and Digital Design World. With over ten years of experience in user research, information architecture, interaction design, and usability, Steve practices what he preaches by delivering successful user experiences that drive business results.

Leisa Reichelt, disambiguity.com

Leisa Reichelt

Leisa is a freelance User Experience Consultant based in London UK. She works with clients from large corporations to start-ups throughout the UCD process, from design research to interaction design and IA. Recent clients have included Transport for London, the BBC & Moo Print.

Leisa is particularly interested in social design and collaborative techniques, including the intersection of UCD and Agile methodologies, and works with companies to help develop processes that incorporate greater collaboration using some of the techniques she shares in her workshops.

Leisa is a regular speaker at conferences including Future of Web Apps, Web 2.0 Expo, the IA Summit and dConstruct, and is also a member of the Board of Advisors to the Information Architecture Institute.

Hagan Rivers, Two Rivers Consulting

Hagan Rivers

Hagan Rivers is a pioneer designer of web applications who has worked on several of the web's most sophisticated applications. Hagan’s desire to design complex and elegant applications has placed her at the cutting edge of interaction design for each of the 15 years since receiving her Computer Science degree from MIT. She was the lead designer of Netscape from version 1.0 through 4.0, simultaneously designing on Windows, Mac, and Motif and in HTML. Hagan profoundly affected both the design of the internet and design for the internet.

Hagan worked on some of the very first web based interfaces and she continues to push the envelope of web application design in her current role as a partner at Two Rivers Consulting. She has designed and improved upon software for the general population, healthcare and insurance professionals, analysts, retailers, scientists, system administrators. Her clients have included large and emerging companies, as well as nonprofit organizations and philanthropic causes.

Hagan has been a top-rated presenter at dozens of speaking engagements around the world, including her many appearances at UIE's User Interface Conference.

D. Keith Robinson, Creative Director, Blue Flavor

D. Keith Robinson

D. Keith Robinson has been a web professional for going on 13 years now. He's a founding principle and Creative Director for Blue Flavor, a Seattle-based design firm. He is an experienced designer, producer, information architect, writer, and speaker. Some of his clients include Paypal, HP, University of Washington, Capital Heath, University of Denver, and Sony.

He brings unique perspective and experience to the table as someone who's spent quite a bit of time working internally at large companies (Boeing, Microsoft and Children's Hospital Seattle) as well as owning and working for small consultancies which provide services to said larger companies.

His current projects run the gamut of web-based contexts, ranging from large scale informational web designs to web application design to design for mobile. And the obligatory everything in between.

Bill Scott, Netflix

Bill Scott

Bill Scott recently joined Netflix, the world's largest online movie rental service, as the Director of UI Engineering.

Previously, Bill led engineering for Yahoo! Teachers, a web 2.0 community allowing teachers to gather, organize & share web resources and lesson planning. In addition, as an Ajax Evangelist at Yahoo! he focused on spreading the goodness of "rich and sane" Ajax design & development. Bill is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops discussing the nuances of good design and the challenges of great engineering. At Yahoo! Bill was also the Design Pattern curator where he launched the public Yahoo! Design Pattern Library .

Before Yahoo! Bill led User Experience at Sabre Airline Solutions and co-founded Rico (an open source Ajax framework, openrico.org.) For 20 years Bill has bounced back and forth between design and engineering projects, creating products in areas as diverse as video games, widget libraries, war gaming, IDE tools, airline management and Web consumer sites. His musings can be found at http://looksgoodworkswell.com.

Luke Wroblewski, Principal Designer, Yahoo! Inc.

Luke Wroblewski

Luke Wroblewski is an experienced interface designer, strategist, and author. He is currently a Principal Designer at Yahoo! Inc. and Principal of LukeW Interface Designs, a digital product design consultancy he founded in 1996. Luke has recently finished his new book Web Form Design Best Practices, an in-depth look at designing effective and engaging Web forms that optimize key customer interactions. Luke has also authored a groundbreaking book on Web interface design principles, Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability, as well as numerous articles featured in his own online publication, Functioning Form. Luke is a member of the board of directors of the Interaction Design Association and a frequent presenter on topics related to Web Design.

Previously, Luke was the Lead User Interface Designer of eBay Inc.’s platform team. At eBay, he led the strategic design of new consumer products and internal processes including design pattern and creative asset management systems. Luke also taught interface design courses in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois and worked as a Senior Interface Designer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), birthplace of the first popular graphical Web browser, NCSA Mosaic.

Indi Young

Indi Young

Indi recently finished writing her long-awaited book, Mental Models: Aligning design strategy with human behavior, which shows other user experience professionals (and laypeople as well) how to align product design with customer behavior research. Mental models help organizations get inside their potential customers' minds, which leads to more lucid decision-making during the lifetime of the design. Indi leads a small band of re-designers and re-thinkers in a quest to bring the effectiveness of mental models to enterprises around the globe.

After graduating from Cal Poly with a degree in Computer Science in 1987, Indi lasted five years as a programmer. During this time she became acutely aware of gaping holes in software where the user interface ought to be, because that was what she was responsible for. Having few tools for understanding user motivations, Indi started out drawing state machines of user activity, and ended up just going out to talk to users about the deep roots behind what they were trying to accomplish. Thus her career as a UX designer was born.

Indi lives in Marin County, California, where she reads science fiction, watches old Star Trek episodes, has trouble remembering people's names, and is unashamed of acting like such a geek in front of her running buddies.