Paul Adams is the Global Head of Brand Design at Facebook and author of the newly released book, Grouped.

He is broadly recognized as one of the leading thinkers on the emerging social web, and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, AdWeek and many more leading publications.

His work on describing the next evolution of social networks, “The Real Life Social Network” is one of the most viewed and downloaded presentations ever published on the web.

Behzad is currently a product architect at the Communitech Apps Factory, a UX consultant, and a Human Factors/HCI researcher. In the meantime, he is completing his master's degree in Systems Design Engineering at the Advanced Interface Design Lab in University of Waterloo, focusing on HCI. His experience includes UX design for SMEs as well as large institutions, from mobile apps to workforce management and government solutions. His love of product design has earned him patents in the mobile world and the privilege to lecture on design at the University of Waterloo.

On his way to becoming a software designer, Jason tracked asteroids, briefed fighter pilots, drew webcomics, and taught programming to artists. Since finishing his MS in Information Design & Technology at Georgia Tech, he's tracked assets in JIRA, briefed preschoolers, drawn sketchnotes, and taught art to programmers. He now helps make great desktop and mobile software as a User Experience Lead at Cynergy.

Nate Archer is the Lead Content Strategy Specialist at Myplanet Digital in Toronto. Nate has a diverse background that includes experience in industrial design, digital publishing and interaction design. This diverse combination fuels Nate’s unique approach to user experience design, coming through in his work with a range of clients, from large enterprises to smaller start-ups. Nate looks at design problems holistically, artfully blending ideas and methods from service design, information architecture and interaction design, with a keen eye on the user. Nate is also an accomplished writer, contributing to a range of magazines and websites, as well as journals and small-run publications. He has also spoken on design internationally, including the State of Design Conference in Melbourne, Australia.

As one of Canada's most respected and innovative digital design talents, Haig has been designing brands, advertising, and interactive projects for 15 years. As a producer of CBC Radio 3's groundbreaking online magazine, Haig created editorial, design and marketing strategies that have earned a die-hard audience.

Haig has had the honour of winning a variety of awards throughout his career, including no less than three Webby Awards, two Prix Italia for Web Arts and Drama and a Gold Medal from the Art Director's Club of New York to name only a few.

He is also the founder and creative director of LiFT Studios and holds a position as an Assistant Professor of Design and Dynamic Media at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Alexander Baumgardt is a designer turned management consultant & educator – dedicated to explore and define applicable tactics and methodologies to master complexity and resolve uncertainty in business-, product- and service-strategy. Alexander's foremost goal and passion is helping decision-makers to see opportunities and become comfortable with innovative change. Over a decade Alexander has built up a unique portfolio and methodology of systems thinking, interaction design, organization, strategic planning and visual modeling. Alexander has been involved in designing & advising award-winning experiences and programs in a diverse set of B2B and B2C industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, financial services, transportation, media, telecommunications and information technology. Starting spring 2013, he teaches the Experience-Design-Course at the new Interaction Design Program at the California College of Arts (CCA) in San Francisco.

Fred Beecher has been working in User Experience for 14 years. In that time he's seen UX mature from a field struggling to prove its value to one that's driving an explosion of innovation and economic growth. He is currently working at the Nerdery to develop a UX design apprenticeship program to feed the ever increasing demand for UX talent that this explosion has sparked. In the past, he has led user research, information architecture, interaction design, usability testing, and business analysis efforts on projects for clients such as Medtronic, Regis Salons, UnitedHealth Group, 3M, National Marrow Donor Program, Thomson Reuters, and more. He also developed the first Axure RP Pro training courses and helped clients integrate rapid prototyping and Axure into their software development processes.

Ten years ago, John created an immersive and experimental program called Project M that is designed to inspire and educate young designers, writers, photographers and filmmakers by proving that their work can have a positive and significant impact.

In 2010, John collaborated with Alex Bogusky and Rob Schuham to form COMMON, a brand that supports, connects and celebrates those designing a new era of socially minded enterprise. Most recently, John has partnered with long-time collaborator Greg Galle to launch FUTURE, a rapid innovation firm that creates positive change by unlocking ingenuity in organizations and individuals.

In his career, John has won more than 250 design awards, is an AIGA Fellow, has been featured in the ID 50 and teaches at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Jason Brush teaches at UCLA and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and is EVP of Creative at POSSIBLE, WPP’s largest digital agency, where he oversees Creative and User Experience in the agency’s Los Angeles branch, and User Experience Design globally. His interaction design has won three Interactive Emmys (ABC.com and NBC Olympics), the Cannes Lions Gold (Google Art Project), and the IDEA Bronze (Samsung handset UI), among other awards. Recent projects he has lead include interactive installations for the BIll & Melinda Gates Foundation, dashboard interfaces for BMW, 10’ UI for Sony PlayStation, and a forthcoming tablet app Disney. He holds an MFA in Film Directing from UCLA.

Founder CEO of Traity, backed by 500Startups and Seedcamp, believes in a society where we can know what to expect from one another. Previous experience in the telecoms industry in strategy and product management. Holds an MBA from Chicago Booth with High Honors, and an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Madrid University of Technology. Speaks 4 languages and his passion is Capoeira, a brazilian martial art.

Davide Casali, better known as Folletto, is an user experience designer and startup advisor with a hybrid background in design, psychology and technology. Believing as Leonardo DaVinci reportedly said that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, he is specialised in social experience design, behaviour change and motivation applied to interactive and social systems. With Gianandrea Giacoma he developed Motivational Design, a method to work with social complex systems. His objective is to change for better the quality of life of the people through the products he’s designed, building over the complexity of any experience the simplest possible interaction. During his 11+ years of professional experience he designed consumer and enterprise services for more than 2 million users worldwide in different markets. He worked with Bank of England, Intesa Sanpaolo, Banca Sella, Unicredit, Nokia, Vodafone, Telecom Italia, Ferrari, Benetton and more. He co-founded Good 50x70, an international social communication project and Baker Framework, a platform to publish HTML5 books and magazines on the iPad. He's currently advisor of PosterForTomorrow, Pick1 and Tonight.eu and evangelist of Hunie.co.

Donald is SapientNitro’s Chief Experience officer, and the global lead for SapientNitro’s Experience Design practice. Over the course of his 17 years as an experience designer, he has worked with some of the world’s leading brands, including Disney, HSBC, Target, Wall Street Journal, Bed Bath & Beyond,United Airlines, BP, Citibank, Associated Press, Hilton International, UBS,Sprint, PetSmart, JetBlue, Staples, and Unilever.

In addition to leading SapientNitro's Experience Design practice, Donald also lead's SapientNitro's Experience Innovation team, a team focused on defining strategies for future customer experiences, and the impact that emerging technology will in have in transforming businesses of all types, including retail, financial services, media, and more.

In Donald’s work, he takes customer-centered thinking and applies it to a wide-variety of business problems, from communications to commerce, and including content, community and digital service design. Donald’s work requires leading a broad range of team members, including strategists, designers, information architects, content strategists, writers, developers and user researchers in the design and development of ground-breaking customer experiences that not only win awards, but also exceed the business goals that have been defined.

James is a Senior Experience Designer at Mad*Pow, New Hampshire. He’s an advocate of user-centered design, accessibility, and low-carbon living. James blogs at jcux.co.uk, chiefly about off-the-cuff product and non-profit ideas, and prototyping techniques.

A Quad/Graphics imaging expert for 15 years, Matt has collaborated with such clients as Fitness, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Wired, The New Yorker, Time Inc., Chico's, Dell Computer and Williams-Sonoma. Trained as a digital artist/ illustrator, he fully understands today's rapidly evolving reader experience, and the challenges facing creatives and publishers. Since 2010, Matt has focused on optimizing images and pages for the online/offline marketing mix, with particular emphasis on CGI, video, Augmented Reality and iOS/Android apps.

Forthcoming…

Greetings Fellow Earthlings, I'm a fellow Information Architect & Digital Strategist with 20+ years of experience in innovative product development, brilliant analysis, creative strategy, shrewd experience architecture, and process enhancement… or at least that's what I wrote for LinkedIn. In truth, I'm a humanist, a singer, a storyteller, a frisbee player, a hiker, a husband, a Dad… but I do love “working” as a user experience designer.

Josh Cothran is a User Experience Designer at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), a Local Leader of IxDA Atlanta, and an active member of Atlanta’s chapters of CHI and UX Book Club. At GTRI, he conducts research and designs tools to inform and empower users; recent projects have included research into providers’ use of health IT, an interactive visualization of healthcare spending, and an online tool for vaccination scheduling.

When he’s not doing UX, you can find Josh taking photos, listening to and playing music, biking, and exploring the outdoors. He holds a BS in Computer Science and MS in Human-Computer Interaction from Georgia Tech.

Josh is an INTJ (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging).

As a Ziba creative director, Ryan builds innovation strategies and manages the integration of design and business for major companies from around the world. Previous to Ziba, Ryan was an Innovation Director at Nike Inc., where he worked to blend science, technology and sport. He also served as the Global Creative Director for Burton Snowboards, where he had responsibility for all creative execution of the brand. A life-long entrepreneur, Ryan has been a part of multiple start-up companies, including the first customizable iPhone case company Uncommon.

Ryan has written on design and culture for Fast Company, Core77, Adbusters, EXPN, and Frequency Magazine, and has taught design at the Art Institute Portland. He has more than 20 patents to his name. Ryan received a B.A. in Industrial Design from Purdue University, and has done course work at the Art Center College of Design and Dartmouth College. A true Renaissance man (or somebody with a serious case of OCD), Ryan is also a helicopter and airplane pilot, a Canadian back-country ski guide, and currently ranked 7th in the world in the classic video game “Spy Hunter”.

Andrew Crow designs products and services that delight people and exceed business expectation. Nearly 20 years of experience in visual, interaction and product design have given him a deep perspective on creating meaningful experiences for consumers. Experience Design Director at GE. Designer, strategist, speaker. Mentor at 500 Startups. Formerly Razorfish & Adaptive Path. He likes to poke things with sticks.

I am a designer, anthropologist and bricoleur. I practice design as Principal and Director of Design Strategy at Involution Studios, Columbus. I also founded the MidwestUX Conference, lead the local Columbus IxDA, and enjoy taking pictures of people in their side view mirrors. My work explores the principles of transparency, empowerment, and cultural connections.

I'm a Designer. I bring new products and services into the world. From ideation, vision and strategy to detailed functionality down to the last perfectly placed pixel – I dream, think, create and realize. I'm particularly drawn to using design to influence and transform peoples' attitudes, behavior and motivation. As Vice President of Experience Design at Mad*Pow, I design products and direct programs that incorporate behavior change and gameful design for clients ranging from innovative start-ups to fortune 500s. My work has been recognized by Yahoo!, Macworld, MITX, American Express and the Boston Phoenix.

I have taught advanced typography and publication design at the Chamberlayne School of Design and am an active lecturer and workshop facilitator in a number of industry communities.

 Design is more than what I do, it's who I am and I love every minute of it.

Brooks Easterling is a consultant specializing in the design of interactive systems. Previously, Brooks was responsible for designing e-Learning systems for Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation. He holds degrees in Interactive Design and Game Development from the Savannah College of Art & Design and has over fifteen years experience designing interfaces for the web.

Brooks is also an entrepeneur who co-founded Peer Loft, a company focused on providing new tools to help teams amplify their creativity. Their first product, Studio Stream, will help design organizations and education institutions expand their design studios over distances without sacrificing the key elements that make a studio a powerful tool for creativity and team learning.

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Nir founded two tech companies since 2003 and today is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Nir is also an advisor to several Bay Area start-ups and incubators. Nir’s last company received venture funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and was acquired in 2011. In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir is a contributing writer for Forbes, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. He writes to help companies create behaviors that benefit their users through persuasive design, while educating people on how to build healthful habits in their own lives. Nir attended The Stanford Graduate School of Business and Emory University.

Ben is a creative director at Morse Project in San Francisco. His thirteen years of experience span working within teams large and small, both in-house and consultancy, and from startups to corporate behemoths. Ben has worked on projects with many different areas of focus, beginning on the web but expanding to include mobile, brand, application, strategy, product and service. Prior to joining Morse, Ben has spent time at Method, Adaptive Path, IDEO, Twitter, Samsung, UK-based service design pioneers live|work, and Oyster Partners, a big British web agency you'd probably only remember if you still have the scars from the first dot bomb.

He teaches, currently at the California College of Arts and previously at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, has written for Interactions magazine, Core 77 and FastCompany among others, and has spoken at a few different places like South By Southwest, Design Engaged, Webvisions and UX Week. He is also involved as a mentor with the Designer Fund, and has served as technical director on the committee of the last few Interaction conferences ('10, '11, '12 and '13) for the Interaction Design Association. Ben's work has been recognized by the IxDA's Interaction Awards, the BAFTAs, the Spark and the Pixel awards

Ben is a creative director at Morse Project in San Francisco. His thirteen years of experience span working within teams large and small, both in-house and consultancy, and from startups to corporate behemoths. Ben has worked on projects with many different areas of focus, beginning on the web but expanding to include mobile, brand, application, strategy, product and service. Prior to joining Morse, Ben has spent time at Method, Adaptive Path, IDEO, Twitter, Samsung, UK-based service design pioneers live|work, and Oyster Partners, a big British web agency you'd probably only remember if you still have the scars from the first dot bomb.

He teaches, currently at the California College of Arts and previously at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, has written for Interactions magazine, Core 77 and FastCompany among others, and has spoken at a few different places like South By Southwest, Design Engaged, Webvisions and UX Week. He is also involved as a mentor with the Designer Fund, and has served as technical director on the committee of the last few Interaction conferences ('10, '11, '12 and '13) for the Interaction Design Association. Ben's work has been recognized by the IxDA's Interaction Awards, the BAFTAs, the Spark and the Pixel awards

Michael Furdyk is a graduate student in the Master of Inclusive Design at OCAD University. He is the co-founder of TakingITGlobal (www.tigweb.org).

Tim Garrand is the author of Writing for Multimedia and the Web: A Practical Guide to Content Development for Interactive Media and a co-author of Write Your Way into Animation and Games: Create a Writing Career in Animation and Games. And apparently a fan of long book titles. He completed his first interactive media project in 1992, and since then has worked on more than a hundred Web and multimedia projects for companies across a wide range of industries, including: Citibank, Giant Eagle, Fidelity Investments, Pearson Education, Houghton Mifflin, Bloomberg, Bank of America, and Procter & Gamble. He is currently a Principal User Experience Architect at TandemSeven. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication with a minor in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and has been a frequent speaker at events for various industry and educational organizations including: ACM, STC, ISPI, and the MIT Media Lab.

Stephen Gay is a design strategist and innovation catalyst at Intuit where he leads business teams through the early phases of design thinking and identifies new opportunities for mobile and platform products. A consultant with over 15 years experience in user centered design at companies like Motorola, Sapient, and HannaHodge, he believes deep customer empathy and rapid experimentation are critical to sparking delightful products. His current focus is reimagining mobile, social, and global Intuit products.

Ron Goldin is the founding principal and creative director of Studio Akko, a design consultancy based out of New York. With over a decade of experience in user experience design, visual design and design strategy, Ron has worked with companies ranging in size from start-ups (Uber, Sonic Living, Samasource) to large organizations (LG Electronics, Dolby, Mercedes-Benz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) on the design and positioning of websites, mobile and desktop applications, embedded devices and more. Lately, Ron has focused his attention on improving the process of user-centered product design within teams and organizations. He has recently served as a design mentor for organizations such as Founders Lab NYC and Princeton's Tigerlabs, which focus on the early phase of launching startups in the mobile space, giving guidance to multidisciplinary technologists, designers and business students on how to create user-centered products. Ron is frequently engaged with the design community and has spoken at AIGA, IxDA, SXSW, Internet Week, EuroiTV, and PechaKucha and his award-winning designs have been feature in publications such as ID Magazine. He is also responsible for the ubiquitous branded Uber pedicabs of SXSW 2011.

Andy is a futurist. He’s been a digital native since 1994, when he wrote a documentary called “Secrets of the Internet.” Along with his love of digital, Andy is inspired by scientists: brilliant people who make surreal discoveries and work to transform reality. Now, as one of the early pioneers of the service design industry, Andy helps transform the world’s biggest brands through innovative design.

After spending years in the games and interactive television industries, Andy fell in love with mobile, and joined Fjord London as the director of service design. He later became the managing director ofFjord Madrid, where he has rapidly led the studio to become one of the most sought after design agencies in Spain working with clients such as BBVA and Telefónica.

Andy is an expert in mobile and a frequent speaker at global conferences and events including TED Talent Search Amsterdam 2012, TEDx Madrid 2011, Mobile 2.0 Barcelona 2011, and at M-Football Conference 2010. When Andy isn’t thinking about the future of mobile, he still tries to emulate great scientists, but Andy’s experimentation isn’t in a lab. It’s in the kitchen, where he is working on the perfect curry recipe.

Shaping our everyday lives through design is what gets me up in the morning and keeps me going. I'm co-founder and CEO of Jauntful – a marketplace for city guides, created and shared according to tastes and interests; and co-founder and volunteer chair of the IxDA Interaction Awards.

During the past decade, I've helped build things that have gone on to be used by millions of people all over the world, identifying and articulating design needs and building products and services that change the way people live and interact. From running international field research studies and ideation to managing multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural teams, I’ve worked with a diversity of clients and partners in the pursuit of world-changing design.

Prior to Jauntful, I led Method's Product Design globally working with Fortune500 and startups alike. In 2008, I founded Nokia Bay-area design studio where I lead a multidisciplinary design team that worked across Nokia to clarify and translate opportunities through design. While there, I did a lot of thinking about the future, and how design can truly change the way we connect with each other and the world around us.

I spend a lot of my time teaching and mentoring students at California College of the Arts, ENSCI – Les Ateliers, and CEDIM Master in Business Innovation, writing for design publications and speaking at international conferences on the role of design in addressing environmental and social issues; most recently at Lift Asia, UPA international conference, AIGA National Design Conference, and Kyoorius DesignYatra.

Dave is Head of Design at the Royal Ontario Museum, responsible for an in-house workgroup who design special exhibitions, communications graphics and space alterations.

Prior to the ROM, Dave worked for twenty years at Sears & Russell Architects, specialists in museum planning and design for clients throughout Canada and the USA.

A licensed architect, Dave worked within the Renaissance ROM project team to advise on access and use requirements from the client’s perspective. Presently the main focus of Dave’s team at the ROM is the development of major exhibitions designed to engage and inform diverse audiences.

Daniel is dedicated to creating and improving designs to provide an exceptional interaction among users, their environment and their tools. To achieve this goal Daniel utilizes knowledge from the fields of engineering, computer science, psychology and anthropology learned while completing a Bachelor of Applied Science and Doctorate in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo with a focus on human factors, cognitive ergonomics and user-centered design. For his Doctorate, Daniel partnered with Defence Research and Development Canada to create tools to support training in virtual environments, with an emphasis on navigating and wayfinding. Prior to joining Akendi Daniel was the user experience designer for Brock Solutions, and was instrumental in the design of software used by airports and airlines around the world. In addition, Daniel has provided independent human factors consulting services for several large and medium enterprises.

Jon Kolko is Vice President of Design at MyEdu, and the Founder and Director of Austin Center for Design. His work focuses on bringing the power of design to social enterprises, with an emphasis on entrepreneurship and large-scale industry disruption. He has worked extensively with both startups and Fortune 500 clients, and he has a breadth of experience in consumer electronics, mobility, web services, supply chain management, demand planning, and customer-relationship management. He has worked with big-brand clients such as AT&T, HP, Nielsen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ford, IBM, Palm and other leaders of the Global 2000, as well as with startups like Socialware, Spredfast, Vast, Attivio, and more.

Jon has held positions of Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas, and both Principal Designer and Associate Creative Director roles at frog design, a global innovation firm. He was also a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he was instrumental in building both the Interaction and Industrial Design undergraduate and graduate programs. Jon has also held the role of Director for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine, published by the ACM.

Jon is the author of the book Thoughts on Interaction Design, published by Morgan Kaufmann, Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis, published by Oxford University Press, and the text Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, published by Austin Center for Design.

Cliff Kuang is design editor at Fast Company magazine, overseeing its design coverage in print and online. He is also the founder of Co.Design (www.fastcodesign.com), a spin-off of FastCompany.com which covers design, innovation, and business. In 2011, Co.Design won the National Magazine Award for best online department. Recently, his work was collected in The Best Business Writing of 2012. Prior to Fast Company, Cliff has been an editor at I.D. magazine and The Economist. His writing has also appeared The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Wired, Popular Science, and many other places. He began his career working as a management consultant at Bain & Company.

John is a Experience Design Lead at Intel. He’s a native New Yorker who got his start in 1998 and last year relocated to in Cordoba, Argentina. His meandering path has allowed him to work worked on array of projects ranging from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups to small businesses to non-profits.

Brandon Laird is a graduate student in the Master of Inclusive Design at OCAD University, he holds diplomas in Graphic Design from St. Lawrence College and a New Media from Sheridan College. He has a 17-year career in communication and digital design.

Xu Lin (Jo Lam) is currently a MFA student of Visual Communication Design at Indiana University. He is focusing on utilizing design research skills and methods to facilitate User Experience design. Before joining this program, Jo worked as a senior visual designer at Taobao.com(Alibaba Group), Asia's largest e-commerce company in China for three years. He was responsible for Taobao’s online branding through various artistic forms including interactive festival logos, mascot toys, mini online games, and product promotions. Jo also owns a MA degree in Art of Design and a BA degree in graphic design from China.

Lou Lenzi is the Director of Industrial Design Operations for GE Appliances in Louisville, Ky. Lou leads a team of industrial designers, user interaction designers and human factors engineers responsible for the design of GE’s line of major appliances, marketed under the GE, Profile, Café, Monogram and Hotpoint brands. Lou is a Fellow of the Industrial Design Society of America (FIDSA) and is a 1980 graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a B.S. in Industrial Design. Prior to joining GE Appliances, Lou held design management positions with IBM, Thomson/RCA, GE Healthcare, and Audiovox Consumer Electronics.

GE made headlines recently for its billion-dollar investment in bringing back manufacturing to the U.S. and is influencing a ripple effect of related supplier production facilities. In 2012, GE opened new assembly lines to make innovative appliances in Kentucky at its legendary Appliance Park.

Adam Little is a Senior Interaction Designer at Method, an international experience design firm based in San Francisco, CA, where he collaborates with multidisciplinary project teams to create people friendly products, services and software. His expertise is in qualitative user research, concept development, user scenarios & storytelling, and functional interface design. Adam has contributed to product strategies, concept visions and tactical UI designs for a range of clients including Google, Microsoft, Whole Foods and Marimekko. Prior to Method, Adam was amongst the first group of students to graduate from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID), a Master's level education being co-created by an international group of students, faculty and design professionals.

Dave Malouf is an observer and pattern recognizer who is passionate about how technology can be a force for positive impact on human beings. With a background in anthropology, design, technology, education and management he is a consultant who helps organizations amplify the impact of their design teams through organizational strategy, recruitment planning, and team mentorship.

Dave is also an entrepreneur who has co-founded Peer Loft. The mission of Peer Loft is to create products and services that help teams amplify their creativity. Their first product, Studio Stream, will help design organizations and education institutions expand their design studios over distances without sacrificing the key elements that make a studio a powerful tool for creativity and team learning.

As a founding member of Ziba’s UX team, Greg guides UX projects and mentors junior designers, and has worked for Ziba for more than 7 years. Greg finds inspiration in the process of bringing designs "off the page" through prototyping, and enjoys the excitement consumers show when interacting with something new (even on a rough level) that addresses an unsolved problem in their lives. His goal is not just to design well-crafted experiences, but also to make them real (which is often the biggest challenge).

Holding an MFA in Film, Rob has established a foundation for his interactive producing with ten years experience in television. With a background in the wide-ranging media of animation, television news, current affairs, and documentary film, he has built on a keen belief that the ubiquitous and interactive potential of digital communication holds the key for cultural institutions in reinvigorating engagement with their public. This has lead to Rob’s most recent role as Producer, Major Exhibits in New Media at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. It is here at the largest museum in Canada, where he has been able to most fully develop his work as an interactive producer, by experimenting with, and implementing a wide array of interactive installations in a series of major exhibitions (ranging from The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army, to Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World, Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World, and most recently, Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants from Gondwana).

Mikkel is leading the UX design of eBay's products in Scandinavia, where he works on eBay Classifieds Group brands with designers, developers and product managers designing a complex ecosystem of both horisontal and vertical e-commerce products across mobile, tablets and web. Mikkel has a 1997 masters degree in HCI and Information Science from the University of Aarhus, Denmark and a degree in Business Administration.

Prior to joining eBay, Mikkel has worked with mission critical interaction design for military and healthcare, and business critical transaction management systems for trading environments. He has pioneered the design of a mobile touchscreen battle management system used by NATO forces in Afghanistan and worked on UX design for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter.

In his daily work, Mikkel is an outspoken UX evangelist and interaction design specialist who enjoys both strategy and working hands-on in all design fidelities leading to the end experience.

Mikkel is an IxDA conference veteran (all 6!), former IxDA local leader and IxD09 speaker on mission critical design.

I'm a designer, entrepreneur, runner and unschooler living in the amazing city of Toronto, Canada. I have an academic background in environmental planning and impact assessment. I spent most of my time in graduate school trying to figure out whether soft systems theory was the coolest thing ever or the craziest thing ever. It's both. I spent years focused on getting millions of Americans to apply for "just one more" credit card. It was a dirty job, but the lessons were invaluable. I started a design firm with an economist. We're making it all up as we go along, which is makes us really good at what we do. I love my job and I get to work with incredible people. I run 60 miles a week. This means I get to spend a ton of time in deep flow states. I do most of my serious thinking work on my feet. My wife and I have two daughters. We're unschooling geeks. We believe that the greatest gift you can give a child is the passion and confidence to be a life-long learner. I'm a student of John Boyd. I design strategic planning tools for fun. I thrive on ambiguity and respect chaos. I believe that life has no stopping rule.

With a BFA in Graphic Design from WVU and a Masters in Interaction Design from CMU, Jack has been designing web, desktop, and mobile applications for over a decade. He has worked in both research and industry environments, and he currently teaches design part-time. Jack is one of those designers that must cover the gamut from initial user research through to implementation and testing. As such, his skill set includes visual design, information design, and front-end implementation. He has a history of tightly integrating with the development team to ensure optimal design through the entire project lifecycle.

Trip is a User Experience Designer at Audible.com (an Amazon Subsidiary). He listens to a lot of Audiobooks.

From an early age, Trip developed an irritating habit of asking “why?” and never stopped. He has traveled the world in search of adventures, collecting stories (most of which are true), and finding interesting problems to solve.

He is fascinated by the weird and wonderful ways human beings process, perceive, and interact with stories, places, and one another. One time, he even convinced Indiana University to grant him a Masters of Science in Immersive Mediated Environments.

Trip’s professional experience includes serving as a volunteer teacher on a Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, selling meat door-to-door in rural Ohio, and designing digital consumer products at Adobe, Microsoft and Amazon.

His current work at Audible includes working on the next generation of storytelling experiences for The Cloud, Kindle, iOS, Android, Windows 8 as well as some amazing platforms/services coming soon. 

He lives in Montclair, NJ with his wife, three children, and an emotionally distant Labrador named Duke.  Among his myriad of skills and interests, Trip can make balloon animals on request.

David Panarelli is Manager, UX at LivingSocial in Washington, DC. Since coming to LivingSocial in Novermber of 2011, he led the effort to rearchitect their consumer facing web site. He has experience working in product teams, client services, and as an independent consultant for a wide range of companies. He also has a wife and two kids.

I work as Service Design Expert at the Web Foundation, where I am responsible for the creation of a series of Mobile Innovation Labs in Africa. Currently active in Kenya, Ghana, Senegal – the labs aspire to be community catalysts, training centres and incubation hot-spots for transforming ideas into start-ups able to generate useful, sustainable services to local communities. Also, I am one of the co-founders of the Design Jams initiative: one-or-two-day design sessions, during which people team up and collaborate to tackle engaging User Experience (UX) challenges. Prior to joining the Web Foundation, I worked as User Experience manager in Vodafone Group, taking a human-centered approach to envision innovative and meaningful services.

Kunal Patel is an Associate Experience Lead at Huge, a full-service digital agency responsible for core digital strategy, marketing and implementation for some of the largest companies and brands in the world. He has worked with clients such as the Four Seasons, American Express, and Pizza Hut to create user-centered digital platforms and products. Recently, he served as a panelist alongside Jeff Goethelf and Peter Bell at Huge’s ‘Agile Development in an Agency Setting’ event, discussing his experience implementing “creative agile” strategies within an agency environment. Kunal joined Huge in 2010 after earning his MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design. His studies in interaction design, game design, programming, and media art have given him a diverse foundation for design thinking. Simultaneously studying Interaction and Game Design has given Kunal has a unique perspective on the parallels between the disciplines. Prior to receiving his MFA, Kunal earned a B. Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and was employed as a Junior Architect in New York City.

With a passion for exceptional design and emerging technologies, Chris is constantly challenging himself to understand and translate ideas into real products. Chris’s goal is to understand people and to tell their stories. He enjoys solving problems through design solutions. His favorite part of the process are the initial stages of a project. He believes this is when ideas are flowing and everything is possible.

Dane started flying in small planes before he was born, and grew up cruising all over Minnesota in his father's Cessna 172. He is an experience designer at Adaptive Path's San Francisco studio, where he has helped craft great digital experiences for organizations like Nike, SK Telecom, AOL, Duke Energy, PG&E, U.N. Global Pulse, Topsy Labs, and Smart.fm.

With more than ten years of experience as a digital professional, including a previous life as a front-end developer, Dane considers himself a specialized generalist. He's passionate about using sketching to rapidly explore design concepts, and then gettin' dirty in code to make those ideas a reality. He's obsessed with the intersection of design and engineering, and wonders why we all can't just get along.

When Dane's not sketching, writing or coding, you can usually find him hiking in the redwoods, brewing a batch of beer, or planning his first trip into space.

Matt is interested in how robots and intelligent machines can solve real human problems and work with people to accomplish complex tasks. At Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center, he applies theoretically inspired solutions to real-world robotics systems. He has over 10 years' experience in robotics, machine learning and computational intelligence, is a veteran of several high-profile DARPA research programs including the LAGR and LS3 programs, and served as control lead for Georgia Tech's DARPA Urban Challenge entry. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech.

Rich is dedicated to navigating disruptive change to create shared value for business and society. He makes sense of massive social and economic shifts to develop adaptive strategies and innovative business models for both established businesses and startups. At Claro, we believe that the disruptions that are taking place today are significant opportunities for businesses that are willing to pay attention, understand and act upon them decisively.

Areas that Rich advises clients on include the shift from ownership to access; dispersed, multiple-sided models of value creation and exchange; the blurring of producer and consumer roles in commercial interactions; moving beyond social media to creating network-based businesses; unlocking the true value of personal data by giving it back to the user; and translating agile, socially negotiated practices from the informal economy to traditional business structures.

Rich delivers real innovation by developing a deep understanding of people's needs, desires, routines and hierarchies of values. This understanding leads to service design approaches that create ideal customer experiences along with the necessary internal business processes to support them across the value chain. Based on this flow, it is then possible to create multi-stakeholder business models that disrupt industries and create completely novel value propositions.

With almost 20 years of experience, Rich has been turning insights into innovative new opportunities, products, services, experiences, development guidelines and business strategies for clients such as BBVA, HP, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Nokia Skype, Sony, Samsung and Telefónica, Time-Warner and Vodafone around the world.

Ken has been a motion graphics designer and Creative Director for 15 years, with focus on design, direction and motion graphics for interactive projects.

He has been owner and CEO of MELD since April 2001, where he oversees all creative projects and heads up the MELD team. Ken is responsible for the overall quality of work produced by the creative department including: managing creative projects from concept to completion, translating marketing objectives into creative strategies, and directing the creative team in the production of advertising and marketing collateral.

Ken has been working in digital new media since the early days of CD-ROM publishing and the beginning of the world wide web. Prior to founding MELD, he was art director at ICE Integrated Communications & Entertainment, a global pioneer, where he developed, oversaw production and delivered visual solutions to ATI, IBM, Nortel, Alias, and PriceWaterHouseCoopers. His work helped to establish corporate identities through the use of 2D/3D design and animation for print, TV, interactive and live events.

Jonathan is a cross-disciplinary designer who develops engaging, user-friendly experiences and services for digital and built environments. A keen advocate for user centered design, he is interested in the interplay between design and cognitive psychology. Jonathan holds an MA in Narrative Environments Design. He is also a sessional lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Australia where he wrote the course Visual Identity in the Built Environment.

Marco gained his undergraduate degree in Media and Communication at Padua University and his Masters degree in Visual and Multimedia Design from Iuav University of Venice, specializing in Interaction Design. An enthusiastic video-maker, he has attended workshops with Mike Mills and PES, and shot a mini-documentary shown at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture 2008. In both 2009 and 2011, Marco was a semi-finalist in the Adobe Design Achievement Award (ADAA) in the mobile design category.

Marco has been working as an interaction Designer in Fjord Madrid since May 2011. He has worked on many strategy and design projects for clients such as; BBVA, Telefonica and Canal+. He recently led the first phase of a project for the EU called Light.Touch.Matters a health and wellness initiative which aims to bring product innovation around smart materials out of research labs and into the marketplace.

Chris is a lead experience designer at Adaptive Path. He started a journeyman career in information architecture and product strategy in 1997. Over the past 14 years has applied a combination of IA, graphic, and interaction design to successful products and services for both large enterprises and start-ups. Chris holds an MFA in design from the Savannah College of Art & Design and spends any extra time as an educator, teaching Adaptive Path's UX Intensive workshops and as an adjunct professor at Austin Community College, teaching interface design.

David Rondeau is the Design Chair at InContext. He has over 20 years of design experience that spans graphic, interaction, and user experience design in a variety of media. He oversees design, creates design processes, and provides design coaching and expertise to teams. He also gets his hands dirty working on client projects--doing customer research, concept design, paper prototype testing, visual design, and everything in-between. David has presented at Boston UPA several times as well as CHI 2010 and CHI 2011.

At the intersection of new technology and everyday life you'll find Dan's work, changing how people think, work, and connect. Since 1995, he's designed everything from websites to consumer electronics to robots. Dan feels that design isn't only about problem solving, but about creating a better, more humane, future. A director of Interaction Design at Smart Design, Dan leads teams to create new interaction paradigms across a wide range of products, spanning both digital and physical. His insightful, thoughtful approach to design has been captured in the three books he's written--Designing for Interaction, Designing Gestural Interfaces, and Designing Devices--which are required reading for any student of interaction design. His new book, Microinteractions, will be published by O'Reilly in 2013. Dan has worked with a wide variety of clients, from Fortune 500 giants such as Microsoft and Time Warner to startups like AnyBots. He speaks and teaches workshops on design around the world. In 2008, he coined the term "topless meeting" (for a meeting without laptops), which was a finalist for Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year and Time Magazine's #10 Buzzword of 2008. He has a Masters of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Ravi Sawhney, entrepreneur, author, lecturer and designer, leads RKS in Southern California, a firm he started in 1980 after leaving Xerox corporation where he was the design lead on the first generation of touch screen interface. Today, his team works across the globe for major players and start-ups, in all aspects of design: from environments to technology and interaction. Having won well over 140 major design awards, his work he claims is simply built on his interpretations of Abraham Maslow and Joseph Campbell. Through a systematic and pragmatic insight analysis framework, his team sets the stage for creation of aspirational experiences that motivate and rewards audiences time and time again.

Greg Schuler is an Interaction Designer at Cooper who is passionate about designing experiences that have a positive role in changing the way people interact with technology and services. Greg has over 10 years of experience advocating simple and practical solutions across a range of industries including customer relationship management, healthcare, and consumer electronics for companies such as T-Mobile, Palm, Nokia, Flip Video, and the American Cancer Society. When Greg isn’t working, he’s an avid city cyclist, a passionate foodie, and a seasoned traveler.

Josh Seiden is an interaction designer and design manager with deep expertise in entrepreneurial environments, both startup and enterprise. He is currently a Managing Director in the NYC office of Neo, a global product innovation studio. Previously he was program director for LUXr’s NYC practice, was responsible for design at Liquidnet, and served on the leadership team at Cooper. He is one of the founders of IxDA, and served as an original board member and past President of the organization.

James is a Senior User Experience Designer at Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education. He has spoken and written about Design, Empathy & Healthcare for FastCompany and Tomorrow (forthcoming), and at MinneWebCon. Earlier in his career he designed for Medisys – Canada's leader in preventive health – and at startups in service to large enterprises such as Air Canada, Canada Post, Exxon (Esso), IBM, 3M and Dow. After completing graduate work at Parsons the New School for Design, he moved in the social sector – lecturing on design at CUNY and Parsons and planning websites for nonprofits and healthcare institutions. James is currently working on a new user experience for MayoClinic.org, a leading online healthcare service with over 1.2 billion pageviews per year. James is a proud Canadian, and lives with Dr. Caroline Z. Krzakowski in Brooklyn, NY.

David Sherwin is a Principal Designer at frog, a global innovation firm, where he helps to guide the design of novel products and services for some of today's leading companies. At frog, he works with teams to create new ways of integrating design research, strategy, and technology as part of the innovation process. He is also a Senior Lecturer and founding faculty member in the BFA in Interaction Design program at California College of the Art, where he teaches students how to bring storytelling into the UX design process. David has authored two books on design: Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills and Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers. He has spoken and taught workshops at many design schools and conferences, such as Interaction 11, HOW Design Live, and SxSW. He also mentors designer-led startups through The Designer Fund. David lives in Oakland, California with his wife, the poet and teacher Mary Paynter Sherwin. In his free time, he loves to rock climb, do yoga, eat dark chocolate, and travel. David plans on teaching this workshop with Erin Sanders, a Senior Interaction Designer at frog in the San Francisco studio and a Lecturer at California College of the Arts.

Albert Shum directs the Windows Phone Design team at Microsoft. The team consists of interaction, visual, motion, industrial and brand designers along with user researchers & design program managers working in an open studio. Our team collaborates with engineering & business partners to create integrated mobile experiences for our consumers. Prior to Microsoft, Albert led the convergence of sports & technology efforts at Nike resulting with the digital Nike+ experience. Albert has a Master's of Product Design from the Stanford University, a Bachelor of Science Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and the General Management Program from Harvard Business School. In his spare time, Albert is usually found riding his bike, hanging with his family and trying to perfect his cooking.

Todd Silverstein is co-founder and CEO of Vizify, a Portland, Oregon-based startup that visualizes content and data you’ve already created on the web (like tweets and photos) as part of a graphical bio that shows the best of you to the people looking you up online. Use it to stand out, find the perfect job, win a new client, or simply make a great first impression.

In addition to cultivating his passion for visualization, Todd spent the last decade crafting software experiences as a product manager, including one year spent confirming that he truly was a full head shorter than all of Stockholm’s natives. In the late ’80s he sported a “rocking mullet, ” so that his awesome hair would stick out from under his hockey helmet and intimidate opposing players on the ice.

For the more visual than literal, you can see Todd’s graphical bio at: http://www.vizify.com/.

Dr. Kristian Simsarian is the Interaction Design program chair at California College of the Arts (CCA). He believes in the power of design to simplify, enrich, and transform our lives and the world and his current academic focus is on increasing the capacity to humanize technology by training the next generation of designers. Kristian's consulting focus is to bring innovative human-centered design and strategy to meaningful fruition for companies and institutions from pixels to processes. Kristian brings a deep, diverse, and international background to his work that span from healthcare to high-tech, from pixels to processes. In addition to his own publications and patents, Kristian’s work has been featured in Business Week, The New York Times, and Metropolis magazine, as well as being highlighted in numerous books on design, innovation and interaction design. Preceding his academic career to educate the future, Kristian was designing the future at IDEO where he cofounded the Software Experiences practice at IDEO and was a practice director on initiatives for many of the world’s largest brands. Before IDEO, Kristian was inventing the future while working as a senior researcher and lab director at a number of technology research labs, in Europe, Asia and the US. He lives in San Francisco.

Juhan Sonin is an emeritus of some of the finest software organizations in the world: Apple, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been a creative director for almost two decades with his work being featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, BBC International, Billboard Magazine and National Public Radio (NPR). His designs have enjoyed installations throughout Europe and the United States. Juhan is a recognized expert in design for health, process management, and security, providing consultation to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense. He is also a lecturer on design and rapid prototyping at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Peter Stahl has made technology less frustrating at Cisco, eBay, AOL, and a host of startups and clients. A veteran of Silicon Valley, he pioneered some of the first user interfaces for tablets, interactive television and Web conferencing. His designs also touch on network management, e-commerce, enterprise applications, and music. Peter made a splash at Interaction 11 with his provocative and inspiring talk, “The Rhythm of Interaction,” urging colleagues to design pacing and tempo into increasingly dynamic and cinematic user experiences. His highly-rated talks have been hits at the IA Summit, Web 2.0 Expo, Heartland Developers Conference, IxDA local chapters, and at startups and established companies. A specialist in design patterns, he currently leads application standards for Cisco Services. Earlier innovations include a methodology for Interaction Audits, including a taxonomy for characterizing the “feel” of a user interface. Recently he contributed a section, “The Feel of Searching,” to Greg Nudelman’s book, "Designing Search."

Experience Design Lead out of the Santa Monica office, Robb has amassed 14 years of successful engagements in product, marketing and communication strategy and execution.

He is a recognized innovator in crafting immersive brand experiences across multiple channels and devices including TV, Mobile, Tablet, Web, Gaming, & Kiosk.

When it's all said and done, Robb aims to be remembered as someone who cared deeply about the consumer and brand experience, a person with a keen interest in the form and function of things, and a design-mind with a penchant for creating products that are astoundingly useful, usable, engaging, and beautiful.

Scott Sullivan is a User Experience designer at Involution Studios Ohio. He has a background in technology-based art, visual design, and User Experience design. Scott has been studying and practicing Laban Movement Analysis for over 10 years.

Calvin is a designer from Toronto. He started working with the web ten years ago (sounds impressive, but he was twelve). Since then he has amassed a large knowledge base with which he loves to share. Huge proponent of open-source software as well as nachos. Calvin currently works for 500px.com as a Front-end Developer.

Jer Thorp is an artist and educator from Vancouver, Canada, currently living in New York. Coming from a background in genetics, his digital art practice explores the many-folded boundaries between science, data, art, and culture. Thorp’s award-winning software-based work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, North America and South America. Recently he has collaborated with NASA, visualized 138 years of Popular Science, and has had work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Thorp is currently the Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times R&D Group and Adjunct Professor at New York University’s ITP program. He has over a decade of teaching experience, in Langara College’s Electronic Media Design Program, at the Vancouver Film School, and as an artist-in-residence at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Publicly, Jason is a leader in the user experience practice at Manifest Digital and serves as an adjunct faculty member in the HCI Masters program at DePaul University. For more than 15 years, he has relied on his complex problem solving capabilities, entrepreneurial spirit and business acumen to connect and establish successful client relationships. Privately, he’s a crazed evangelist for user experience design – accosting strangers with sermons on its value in solving business and social problems.

Jason is also the co-founder of UX for Good, an annual event that brings together the brightest designers around the country to assist non-profits by applying design-thinking practices to their challenges.

Likes: great beer, impossible challenges Dislikes: negativity, olives

Jeroen van Geel is interaction director at Fabrique [brands, design & interaction]. He is a respected international speaker and writer on the field of interaction design and has a great interest in the world of product personality. Jeroen has pushed forward many design projects, ranging from the next generation mobile apps for Dutch public transport to interactive projects for Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the ground breaking new automated border control systems at Schiphol. He was the founder of Johnny Holland. His goal is to return a bit of wonder into the world, even if it is just for himself. Follow him @jeroenvangeel

Derek Vaz is an interaction designer and Experience Lead at Huge in Brooklyn, New York. For over a decade he has been creating digital products, platforms and services for government, financial, non-profit, media and retail organizations with a strong focus on user goals and needs. At Huge, he is responsible for driving the user experience vision on client engagements from conception to launch.

Prior to Huge, Derek was a Partner and Interaction Design Director at Uproot, an Associate at Teehan+Lax and an Interaction Designer at Blast Radius. His work has been recognized by several organizations including Communication Arts, the Webby Awards, and Effie Awards.

Derek graduated from the University of Waterloo, just outside of his hometown of Toronto, Canada. There, he earned an Honours Bachelor of Mathematics in Computer Science.

Sander Viegers is a creative designer with 15 years of experience in shipping innovative software solutions. In his work he focusses on finding the edge of pushing original ideas while being grounded in reality and fostering a collaborative environment. Sander works currently on future versions of the Amazon shopping experience. Previously he worked on Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Windows 8 applications and Bing. He has been a speaker at IxDA in the Netherlands and guest speaker at various educational institutions.

Matt founded, built and continues to lead a team of 25 Experience Designers at CP+B as they strive to eliminate dead ends and create the greatest product journeys and experiences in the world. This journey has included launching everything from projects to entire customer engagement systems for brands that include Dominos, Old Navy, Volkswagen, Microsoft, Burger King, MetLife, Milka, Under Armour, Sprite, Kraft and Best Buy. His group has also been influentially involved with CP+B’s Product Innovation team in the launch and/or evolution of multiple startups that include but are not limited to B-Cycle, Green Garage and Angel’s Envy. Prior to joining CP+B, Matt worked at R/GA on the Nike account. While working there he helped create and redesign a number of award winning sites including NikeID.com, NikeGridiron.com and NikeRunning.com. He also served as a gaming consultant for other clients including Target, Bank of America, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and Verizon. During his career his work has been recognized by all the major award shows, including Cannes, the Clios, LIAA, the WebAwards, and the One Show. Matt holds an M.P.S. From the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, and a B.B.A. in marketing from the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame.

Dan Willis is the Director of Mobile Experience Design for Marriott.com with earlier gigs at Sapient, PBS and washingtonpost.com. He has been launching robust digital products since the mid 1990s. He has designed and coded major Web sites; designed, facilitated, and analyzed usability testing; and managed design, IA, and Web analytics resources. Willis is the creator of UX Crank (www.uxcrank.com), a highly opinionated resource for UX professionals. He has presented at past IxDA conferences, a handful of South by Southwest Interactive Festivals, and every freak show or traveling geek emporium within a hundred miles of his home in Virginia.

Brian is a design researcher and user experience consultant at Manifest Digital in Chicago, IL with over 12 years experience in user-centered design. Brian works to connect his clients with the human aspects of their customers so their solutions can have purpose beyond just making a profit. By deeply understanding their customers, organizations can begin shift their own internal perspective beyond incremental improvements and achieve leaps in innovation.

Brian is also studying the structure of communities and how they foster a collaborative environment for solving tough challenges. He believes strong communities provide everyone with a shared purpose, and changes our conversations from what we can’t do, to what’s possible.

When Brian is not sorting post-it notes from his latest research project, he’s digging in the dirt on his never-ending edible landscape project.

Michael Wolf is an interaction designer, who moved to Cape Town, South Africa from Germany in 2003. In 2007 he founded Formula D interactive, an award winning design consultancy specialising in the design of interactive learning environments for schools, museums, showrooms or corporate visitor centres, using cutting edge multimedia technology. After studying Design at Cologne International School of Design (KISD) and École Nationale Superieure de Création Industriélle [ENSCI], Paris, France, he joined MARS – Exploratory Media Lab at the Fraunhofer Institute of Technology, Germany’s equivalent of MIT in the U.S., to work on experimental human-computer interaction focusing on immersive media spaces and tangible interfaces for computer-enhanced learning. He is co-founder of Formlos design studio in Cologne, Germany, a design consultancy specialising in product design. Wolf has received several awards including the prestigious IF Design Award. He is member of the Cape Town Design Network management committee and has just initiated the launch of IxDA Cape Town, Africa's first IxDA group.