It Takes a Team

Chris is the founding engineer of Reddit, he helped build it, sell it & filled the role of CEO for a period. Now he has returned as CTO with a long to-do list including redesigning the platform, internal development & overall organisational growth. This is an excellent time for Chris to join us & share his take on product redesign. UXDX Conference provides a community for teams to collaborate & implement best practice for product development & reducing conflicts that arise during project handoffs.

As the head of UX at The Financial Times, Annmarie is responsible for User experience design, across the organisation. She heads up a multi-talented team of UX designers responsible for designing the FT's digital experiences for our global audience as well as the internal systems and tools used by the business and editorial teams.

Annmarie joined The Financial Times in September 2016 after a lifetime at digital agencies such as Digitas LBi and Agency.com helping companies such as British Airways, BT, Lloyds bank, Avis, Dulux and Marks & Spencer transform digitally and innovate their services for the complex needs and behaviours of the modern customer.

Passionate as ever about user centered design and putting yourself in the users shoes at every step of the creative process, Annmarie believes empathy is at the heart of creating a great customer experience.

Passionate about disruptive innovation, technology and building great companies. Val's work has been featured in national and international publications including New York Times, Forbes & TechCrunch.

Growth = product ( design x engineering) ^ marketing

Paolo Malabuyo is a user experience designer, creative leader, and educator. He's currently a Director of User Experience for YouTube Advertising at Google, where he leads an international team of designers and researchers responsible for enabling a healthy ecosystem for YouTube and its billions of users worldwide, and an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley, where he teaches a graduate-level course on Human-Computer Interaction & User Experience.

He has a uniquely broad portfolio of experience working across: consumer to enterprise; blue sky to blue ­chip; hardware, software, and service; TV, desktop, mobile, and automotive; entertainment to productivity; platform to content. Previous highlights include the Netflix global experience on the web & TV devices, the Mercedes-Benz ''Luxury In Motion'' autonomous driving research car, the Xbox 360 game console & Xbox Live online service, and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge video game for Xbox.

Originally from the Philippines, he studied Art & Design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and now lives & works in Silicon Valley.

Kevin Lee is Vice President and Head of Design at Visa, Inc, responsible for setting the vision and the strategy of design and user experience in Europe and CEMEA. Previously he was responsible for building and leading Visa's global digital design team and brought in human-centered design and design thinking expertise to help designing the innovative digital product experiences as well as innovative design systems platform which has been recently recognized by Fast Company for 2017 Innovation by Design Awards.

Prior to Visa, Kevin led the design studio at Samsung responsible for the overall product strategy and design of wearable and IoT and launched Gear Fit, Level and Circle. Kevin also led the global design team at eBay and Paypal, where he led the design efforts on several key products such as checkout, shopping cart, and shopping showcase to name a few. Prior to eBay, Inc., Kevin led the design team at Whirlpool Corporation designing and launching the company's first digital touch screen consumer products and connected device strategy with several CES awards and industry recognitions. Before Whirlpool, Kevin led a global cross-functional team of designers and engineers at GE Healthcare driving and launching award-winning software and hardware products, one of which is called Vscan where it was named by TIME magazine as The 50 Best Inventions of 2009.

He has a M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, and graduated from Mercer University with a B.S. in Technical Communication / Ergonomics. Kevin is contributing author for several books and keynote speaker and presenter at some of the influential design conferences in the world.

Phil Keslin is the Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Niantic, Inc., creators of Pokemon GO. Started in early 2011 and Incubated within Google, Phil led the engineering team in exploring the convergence of mobile, geo and social within a range of applications leading up to the launch of Ingress and FieldTrip. Prior to Niantic, Phil was a contributor to StreetView, GMail and Lively products while at Google. Additionally Phil was a GPU Architect at NVIDIA and a key contributor to the design and development several of their GPUS. In 2000, Phil joined up with John Hanke to found Keyhole. As its CTO, Phil led the development of the Earthviewer application which would later become Google Earth following the company's acquisition by Google. Phil received his MBA from Southern Methodist University and his Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Eva Deckers is Design Director at Philips Design, leading the Data Enabled Design team and responsible for several Strategic Design activities. After finishing her master Industrial Design, focusing on system and interaction design she obtained her PhD on artificial intelligence from a design perspective. She investigated and designed the perceptual and social intelligence of a system rather than its cognitive abilities. After joining Philips in 2013 she focused on strategic design, at that moment a new competence within Philips Design. In that role she was design lead for one of four strategic domains of Philips and she is responsible for a design thinking program to support business strategy, the so called Business Value Proposition. Since 2017 she leads the Data Enabled Design competency team, building a design approach in which data is utilized as creative material as well as building strong data enabled design propositions. In her presentation she will introduce the team, capabilities, goals and achievements through inspiring showcases. This will give the audience a flavor of how Philips Design in picking up on designing for the increasingly connected world and how this asks for new ways of working for designers, developers and data scientists.

Martin joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2016 as HMH's first-ever Chief Platform Architect and Executive Vice President of Engineering. With over 20 years of experience in design, development and delivery of industry-leading distributed applications, Martin is responsible for all of HMH's platform development, and provides engineering leadership throughout the organization. Prior to joining HMH, Martin was Vice President of Worldwide Product Engineering for software company Pegasystems, where he led the engineering and development operations aspects of the Pega platform. Previously Martin held a variety of technology leadership roles, including Senior Vice President for Fidelity Investments' Asset Management division. Martin holds a Master of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.

Adam is the Chief Product Officer for Kessel Run, a United States Air Force initiative to revolutionize the way the Air Force builds and delivers software. Adam leads over a dozen balanced product teams who build cloud-native software applications to optimize the planning and execution of air warfare at the U.S. Air Force's Air Operations Centers worldwide. He is passionate about large-scale digital transformation and enacting culture change where it seems most improbable.

Started out as an artist, but fell into tech through my love of logic.
Accidentally formed a company producing flash animations and games.
Sold out and became a front-end tech lead for an ad agency. Got bored
and wanted to go freelance but was approached by adyen. After 5+ years,
really enjoying the ride. Still making and showing paintings.

Jorge Mazal is the head of product at Duolingo. Prior to joining Duolingo, he worked in a variety of product roles at Zynga, MyFitnessPal, and Lucid Software. In a former life, he worked in the nonprofit sector, helping immigrant and minority entrepreneurs succeed in the United States. Jorge holds a Bachelors in Business from Brigham Young University, an MPA from Harvard, and an MBA from Wharton.

Rija Javed is one of the first female CTOs in the UK Fintech industry. She heads up engineering, product, data and design at MarketInvoice. Her prior stint was in Silicon Valley where she headed up the core business area for automated financial adviser Wealthfront. One of her focus is to bring more diversity to STEM by mentoring folks across different age groups and socio-economic backgrounds.

Tom Dwyer is a front end developer and helps to devise trivago's Progressive Web app. Guided by his dream of seeing web user experiences exceed those on native platforms, you can find him often talking about a collection of APIs which he believes will change the web as we know it.

Emmet is Director of Product Design at Intercom where he helps a growing, global design team to create and ship the best work they can. Before joining Intercom Emmet worked for Google in Zurich and San Francisco. There he designed Google Flight Search, and co-founded and designed Android Wear. He got an MA in Digital Art from the University of Plymouth mostly by accident. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two children on purpose.

Richard graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 1994 with a degree in Software Engineering that he didn't know what to do with. In 1999, two web-design start-ups later, he moved to the US. He's been leading design teams in large organizations ever since, first with Vanguard, then at USAA and now in New York City as Head of Design for Capital One's 450-strong design organization.

Richard is active in the design community, having spoken at conferences across the country on the topics of design leadership, measurement, and the importance of experience management systems. He chaired the 2008 IA Summit in Miami which gave him a new appreciation for conference organizers everywhere.

He has an unhealthy obsession for Mental Model diagrams. His table tennis and juggling are good, his guitar playing is not, and he gets very uncomfortable writing third-person bios of himself.

Francesca is the Head of Engineering at ustwo working with a team of talented engineers to launch products, services and companies that have a meaningful impact on the world. After spending nearly a decade working as a full stack engineer and expanding into the native world, she believes in the power of technology to have an impact in human lifes and interactions. Francesca worked as Solution Architect and Mobile Lead at The Telegraph exploring new technologies like NLP, AI and ML. She holds a master degree in Logistic Engineering from Rome University and in her spare time she loves running and mentoring young people.

David Hoang leads a team of product designers who focus on human-centered design, rapid prototyping, and continous learning. He was previously an early member of ExactTarget's global accounts team, founder of an agency, Brand and Global Digital Marketing at HTC, and Director of Design at Black Pixel. He's had the pleasure of working with great clients such as Expedia, Inspirato, Nike, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Whole Foods and several other undisclosed accounts.

He is currently the Head of Product Design at One Medical where he leads the design function and works with engineering and product leadership.

David has a BFA in Visual Arts and his work is profoundly influenced by art, narrative and popular culture. He's based in San Francisco, California but his heart is in New York City.

As the Lead Principal Software Engineer in ASOS Technology, Nik Crabtree is responsible for Software and QA Engineering, UI Engineering and Data Engineering across the organisation. His role has a simple brief: come in every day with one aim - make engineering and engineers at ASOS better. Nik joined ASOS in March 2015 after six years at Avanade where he lead the Cloud & Integration Practice. Nik worked on both Azure and on-premises solutions with customers such as Skype, Blinkbox, Barclays, Best Buy and ASOS.

Alice is Chief Product Officer at WorldRemit, a service which helps users send millions of pounds to family and friends around the world each month. Alice sets the product vision for the 90-person product and engineering team at WorldRemit, and leads the product and UX team to invent, design and deliver new products and features that meet the needs of users in over 140 countries. Alice holds a double first MA from the University of Cambridge and a Henry Fellowship from Harvard University.

Jae serves as the Head of Engineering at RingMD which is the leading telemedicine platform provider in APAC. RingMD provides a simple and secure way for patients to connect with a doctor or a wellness expert through a web and mobile environment. RingMD has made headway in various markets which includes partnering with the Federal Government of India and by entering into a regulatory sandbox with Ministry of Health in Singapore to provide telemedicine services to all of Singapore.

Prior, Jae has led the efforts for more than 15 years developing scalable e-commerce sites, ad/marketing-tech solutions, data driven tools that measure real-time consumer engagement and government funded technical projects as part of ODA (Official Development Assistance) programs for developing countries. As a serial tech entrepreneur, Jae has previously founded series of venture backed startups with exit experience.

For the past 20 years, Ronen has been successfully merging technology and design together into useful and accessible products, defining interactive experiences across various devices and platforms. Prior to co-founding eToro in 2007, Ronen has designed products ranging from medical devices, household appliances as well as numerous desktop and web applications.

Ronen holds a BA in Industrial Design from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem and an MA in Product Design from the Royal College of Art, London.

Today Ronen oversees the product and engineering departments for eToro.

Matias Pietila is a usability expert with a strong focus on mobile design. During the past 10 years he's been involved in more than 100 projects, creating services that delight several million end-users. 

Matias is the head of design at Qvik, one of the leading mobile agencies in the Nordics. He started there as the first non-developer, improving the ways designers and developers work together. For the past few years he's been working at the other intersection, figuring out how to bring designers closer to the business. Creating measurable impact is always the goal, both in terms of happy users and improved business metrics. 

Some highlights from Matias' client projects include working as a design lead in the main mobile products of companies like Yle (the Finnish national broadcasting company) and Tallink (the largest cruise ship operator in the Baltic Sea).

Matias got his M.Sc. degree in Aalto University studying cognitive technology and usability engineering. 

Thijs is VP Product Design at WeTransfer. Leading projects and teams for the company since 2011, his main objective is to build strong relationships with users through relevant, obvious, and inspiring experiences.

Dana Lawson is Vice President of Engineering responsible for leading 25+ engineers as part of our platform engineering group covering DevOps, site reliability, and data services, in addition to the core product shared services. She has nearly 20 years of experience as a systems engineer and has technical skills spanning multiple disciplines.

Throughout her career, she has led many different teams and worn many hats to complement a product's lifecycle. As an individual contributor creating mobile applications to leading multiple teams that managed large scale backend big data and infrastructure. With a true passion for people, she brings this mix of technology and fun to her leadership style.

Previously, she served as Director of Site Engineering at New Relic where during her three-year career she grew the site engineering team to over 50 engineers. During this time, she led the support and engineering teams through a successful IPO and shaped the engineering culture to be a thought-leader in its space. With a background in fine arts, she brings her creative vision to the engineering team at InVision, where technology meets design.