Puget Sound: World Usability Day 2021

Special Guests

• 

  Vicki Haberman

  Talk Show Host

  Vicki is a multi-disciplinary design leader, driven by hard problems and working with and building teams focused on transforming users’ lives through great design. In her latest challenge as Head of Design & Research at Amazon Physical Stores, she and team are pushing the state of the art in helping customers shop in engaging, fast, and safe ways through autonomous technology and services for physical retail.
  Vicki received formal design training from Georgia Tech, starting with a bachelor’s degree in industrial design and, with a passion for discovering and learning new things, going on to earn a PhD focused on UX. Her continuous curiosity led her to roles at design agencies, consulting firms, and large corporations where she’s worked across industries, including mobile device, medical device, consumer appliances, industrial equipment, financial services, and transportation. Prior to Amazon, Vicki spent four years at Alaska Airlines leading UX design and research for guest-facing digital experiences—including website (www.alaskaair.com), mobile apps, and self-service kiosks.
  When she’s not doing UX-related things, you can find her sculling, hiking, and traveling. She can also often be found simply creating – from sewing and art projects to cooking.

• 

  Rebecca Destello

  Guest Speaker

  Rebecca is a Research Manager at Facebook where she leads teams who work on projects that improve the quality of experiences in Facebook’s community products. Since 2007, she’s led research for a wide variety of problem spaces, including healthcare, government, e-commerce, social media, and startups. She is an affiliate faculty member at the University of Washington’s Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) department where she has been teaching graduate students in user-centered design, design thinking, research, and usability testing since 2012. She has presented at UXPA, ConveyUX, World Usability Day, and given guest lectures at universities around the nation.

• 

  Upol Ehsan

  Guest Speaker

  Upol Ehsan cares about people first, technology second. He is a doctoral candidate in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and an affiliate at the Data & Society Research Institute. Combining his expertise in AI and background in Philosophy, his work in Explainable AI (XAI) aims to foster a future where anyone, regardless of their background, can use AI-powered technology with dignity. Putting the human first and focusing on how our values shape the use and abuse of technology, his work has coined the term Human-centered Explainable AI (a sub-field of XAI) and charted its visions.
  Actively publishing in top peer-reviewed venues like CHI, his work has received multiple awards and been covered in major media outlets. Bridging industry and academia, he serves in multiple program committees in HCI and AI conferences (e.g., DIS, IUI, NeurIPS) and actively connects these communities (e.g, the widely attended HCXAI workshop at CHI). By promoting equity and ethics in AI, he wants to ensure stakeholders who aren’t at the table do not end up on the menu.
  Outside research, he is also an advisor for Aalor Asha, an educational institute he started for underprivileged children subjected to child labor.
  Twitter
  LinkedIn

• 

  Josh Lovejoy

  Guest Speaker

  Josh is a UX Manager in Google’s Privacy & Data Protection Office. Previously, he was Head of Design for Microsoft’s Ethics & Society team, led UX for Google’s People + AI Research initiative, architected Amazon’s unified design system for online shopping experiences, and co-founded a startup focused on eSports journalism.

• 

  Lauren Walker

  Panelist

  Lauren is a Staff User Experience Designer at The Home Depot. She focuses on designing intuitive and frictionless experiences for in-store associates, and her aim is to help them provide a great shopping experience for customers through thoughtful design. She graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Computational Media and got her start in UX at ClickDimensions, a marketing automation platform. She is passionate about advocating for her users and is a firm believer that great design can solve any problem.

• 

  Tingting Zhang

  Panelist

  Tingting Zhang is a Senior UX Researcher at Google. Over the past ten years, Ting Ting has worked as a UX researcher across multiple tech companies in the US and China to inform product strategy and designs. She has collaborated with cross-functional teams to prioritize opportunities in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment. Prior to joining Google, Tingting was a UX researcher at Airbnb, Salesforce, and Levono.

• 

  Trinh Vo Yetzer

  Panelist

  Trinh Vo Yetzer is a Managing Partner for User Research International. She has over 25 years of experience creating usable and delightful products. At User Research International, she is responsible for day-to-day operations as well as leading employee development and strategy for the company. Trinh is also a member and board president for Disability IN: Washington. This organization vision is to help build an inclusive global economy where people with disabilities participate fully and meaningfully. Prior to User Research International, Trinh was a user experience thought-leader within Microsoft. She holds several patents and has made numerous contributions across Microsoft Exchange, Small Business Server, High Performance Computing, Windows Home Server, and Microsoft Windows Server products. During her career at Microsoft, Trinh was regularly recognized for building successful teams and strong partnerships, and was honored with the Leadership Bench Award for her contributions as a strong leader. Trinh has been a regular speaker at industry conferences including UPA, Microsoft Mentorship Program, Information Week, and was interviewed in The New York Times. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Idaho and a Master’s degree in Behavioral Psychology from Bastyr University.

• 

  Veronika Monohan

  Panelist

  Veronika is a Design Researcher at the Microsoft Azure Data Team. She is passionate about making the world smarter with the use of data. Her work is focused on improving tools which enable data professionals to achieve more.