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Speaker Bios
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Speaker Biographies
Tamara Adlin is the founder and principal of adlin, inc., a customer experience consulting company
located in Seattle, WA, and the co-author of The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design
(with John Pruitt, Microsoft). Among adlin, inc.’s, clients are Apple Computer, Facebook, PetSmart, DietTelevision, Zillow, and
Jobster, and Adlin serves on the advisory board for WetPaint and BazaarVoice. She has more than 13 years’ experience developing
user-centered design and user interface design methods. Prior to starting her own company, she managed the customer experience
team at Amazon Services, creating e-commerce solutions for online and multichannel retailers. She moved to Amazon Services from
Amazon.com, where she was a Senior Customer Experience Specialist consulting with teams across the company to invent and improve
user experiences for buyers, sellers, partners, and support professionals. Previously, she was the Human-Centered Design Lead at
Attenex Corporation, a legal services software company in Seattle, where she designed advanced document management interfaces.
Earlier in her career, Adlin led teams and designed interfaces for Web applications at Akamai Technolobies, INTERVU, and
Netpodium Corporation. She started her user experience career as an Engineering Psychologist at the Army Research Laboratory,
evaluating human factors issues associated with military systems. Adlin holds a B.A. From Vassar College and an M.S. in
technical communication from the University of Washington, where she focused on user interface design techniques and
interdisciplinary communications. Adlin has led workshops and been invited to speak all over the world on personas and other
user-centered design methods.
Dan Brown is a principal at EightShapes, LLC, a user experience consulting firm based in Washington, DC,
that has clients in telecommunications, media, education, health, high-tech, and other sectors. Brown has been practicing
information architecture and user experience design since 1995. Drawing on his expertise in communicating complex ideas
and abstractions through high-quality visual documentation, Brown wrote Communicating Design (New Riders, 2006).
Amazon reviews call it “authoritative”, “practical, personal, comprehensive” and “a cool nerdbook.” Prior to founding
EightShapes, Brown consulted with organizations ranging from the US Postal Service, the World Bank, and the Federal
Communications Commission to USAirways, FirstUSA, and Fannie Mae. From 2002-2004, Brown led the content management program
for the US Transportation Security Administration. His portfolio includes work on public-facing Web sites, intranets,
and extranets, and addresses most aspects of the user experience, from information architecture and content strategy to
user research and interface design. Brown has participated in nearly every IA Summit since its inception in 2000,
moderating panels, leading workshops, and presenting posters. He’s written more than a dozen articles for Boxes and
Arrows on topics ranging from PowerPoint to the information architecture of home audio devices. Brown is very active
in the local Washington, DC, information architecture community, organizing regular workshops and bimonthly reading groups.
He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, in a newly renovated 1922 bungalow with his wife, son, and many, many pets.
Raluca Budiu is an Excel Data user researcher at Microsoft Corporation. She previously worked at
Xerox PARC, where she conducted human-computer interaction research on tagging, information scent, and search in
large visualizations. Budiu has written more than 20 articles and conference presentations on human-computer
interaction, psychology, and cognitive science. She has a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Jen Cardello is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Since 1996, Cardello has
specialized in user-centered and business-focused website strategy, expert reviews, competitive analysis and information
architecture. She previously led customer experience consulting practices at Gomez Advisors, Watchfire and Keynote Systems
where she advised clients in sectors including financial services, telecommunications and lodging. During this time she
also developed hundreds of user experience criteria for the Keynote Scorecards that benchmark dozens of financial services
websites including banks, brokerages, lenders, and insurance carriers. As principal of her private practice, Cardello
worked with clients in transportation, financial services, publishing, and education to define user and usage-centered
web strategies and architectures. Cardello holds a BFA in Architecture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Nathan Curtis is a founder and principal at EightShapes, LLC, a UX consulting firm based in Washington,
DC. His interests include information architecture, interaction design, and documentation systems for design and
deliverables. He has created a modular, component-based documentation system that has been adopted by many large-scale
UX teams, and conducted in-house workshops for clients including Comcast, Sun, Discovery, Sprint, Cisco, eBay, Embarq,
and Marriott. Nathan also enjoys discovering the potential of many IA software tools, including Microsoft Visio, Adobe
InDesign, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Illustrator and blogs on design and documentation at www.nathancurtis.com.
Janelle Estes is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. Estes began her career as a
research associate on the Customer Experience team at Forrester Research, where she was involved with many research
efforts related to user experience and user centered design. Additionally, Estes has worked as a user experience consultant
with companies across many industries, including retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and telecommunications.
Most recently, Estes worked at Chordiant Software as a Human Factors Engineer in an agile development environment. Estes
holds a BS in Information Design and Corporate Communication, and an MS in Human Factors in Information Design, both from Bentley College.
Melissa Federoff is a Senior Usability Analyst at salesforce.com, the leader in on-demand Customer
Relationship Management. At salesforce.com, Melissa leads the research efforts for the Platform which includes tools
that enable developers and administrators to customize and build new features and applications. All of the teams she
supports have been using Agile for over two years. Since the roll-out of Agile to the Research & Development
department, the salesforce.com User Experience team has been adapting both design and research approaches to be
able to maintain a user-centered process despite the tight timelines dictated by Agile development.
Armando González is the Visual Design Director with eBay’s User Experience Design team.
Armando has led the strategic design of eBay Express, the redesign of eBay Motors, and he is currently leading
the design and implementation for a new design system that will significantly simplify the eBay.com experience.
Prior to joining eBay, Armando worked for Yahoo! as a Creative Director where he led the design of the Search
and Marketplace suite of products. Before working in web design, he worked at the San Jose Mercury News
as a Lead Designer where he spearheaded the design from the ground up of the Mercury News Spanish publication
Nuevo Mundo. Armando earned a BFA in Multimedia Design from California State University Hayward.
Jhumkee Iyengar is Principal Consultant at User In Design in Pune, India, providing consulting services
to start-up organizations and those new to user experience. She has more than 16 years’ experience in both the US and
India, serving in technical, consulting, research, and project leadership roles. In the US, Iyengar worked at Pitney Bowes
and Philips Research Laboratories, designing small consumer products with embedded systems and creating software-driven user
interfaces and documentation for next-generation products and concepts. In India, she’s consulted for organizations
in offshore usability and for service providers initiating user experience services for the Indian market. Most recently,
she founded the Usability Engineering service at an outsourced product development company, where she was instrumental in
both envisioning and realizing the service, and then leading new initiatives and research for the effort’s long-term interests.
She also launched Usability in e-Governance, a community initiative for Pune city. Iyengar holds a Master's in human factors
engineering design from Tufts University; a Master's in product design from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; and a
B.S. in mechanical engineering from College of Engineering, Pune, India. She has written several articles and presentations
for national and international conferences and has delivered several invited talks. Her current research interests are
offshore usability, usability in e-Governance, and the overlap of usability and industrial design.
Tammy Liran Guy is the Creative Director at LivePerson, Inc., which humanizes the online
experience by providing a real-time chat platform for more than 6,000 companies around the world. LivePerson
also provides an online community and marketplace where individuals can chat live with experts in a broad
range of categories. Liran Guy’s group is responsible for diffusing user experience problems by applying
design theory and usability best practices in a rapidly changing Web environment. Prior to LivePerson,
Liran Guy was the Graphic Design Group Manager at the Hertz Corporation, where she art directed all aspects
of graphical application development for all of Hertz’s customer-facing websites, including hertz.com. Liran Guy holds a B.S. in art, with a concentration on computer
graphic design, from Northeastern University, and a master’s of package design from Pratt Institute. Her
master’s thesis, Internet Packaging: Rethinking Package Design for the World Wide Web, examined
current issues with package presentation on the Internet and suggested new guidelines for package design to
optimize Web display.
Hoa Loranger is a User Experience Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the San Diego office.
Loranger has consulted with many large, well-known companies in such industries as finance, customer support, intranets,
e-commerce, entertainment, and technology. She has conducted international usability research worldwide and has given
keynote presentations and tutorials on a wide range of topics, including user testing, paper prototyping, and fundamentals
of Web usability. She coauthored the book Prioritizing Web Usability
(New Riders Press) and has written reports on design for Flash-based
applications, investor relations,
“about us” pages,
B2B websites,
location finders, and
teens.
Before joining NN/g, she served as human factors lead for Intuit’s Consumer Tax and Small Business Division,
where her group was responsible for user-interaction and visual design for the TurboTax product line. At TRW
(now part of Northrop Grumman), she specialized in both hardware and software systems, including navigational
applications and computer configurations in military vehicles. Loranger earned an M.A. in human factors and applied
experimental psychology from California State University, Northridge, and a B.A. in psychology from University of California, Irvine.
Megan van Krieken is the Director of Global Content Management at eBay. Her team of 40 Content
Managers and Content Strategists is responsible for creating all of eBay’s product content for 17 sites,
in 14 languages around the world. Prior to eBay, Megan built the taxonomy and classification professional
services practice at Convera, consulting to customers such as Associated Press, National Geographic and BBC London,
and ESPN. Megan spent 16 years at Intel where as part of the Intel Content Group she led teams to develop and
implement entertainment focused web sites for V-Trainer and Capitol Records.
John Morkes is co-founder and Principal at Expero Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the definition,
design, and usability of user experiences for complex websites and applications. Morkes’ recent clients include eBay,
Fonts.com, Freescale Semiconductor, Oracle, Sprint Nextel, TiVo, and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Previously, he was the
Director of Human-Computer Interaction at Trilogy Software, where he led efforts to improve the usability of the Nissan
and Ford websites, which Forrester Research rated as the two best consumer sites in the industry. Morkes has worked
as a usability engineer for Sun and HP and as a journalist for Wired and R&D Magazine. He received a Ph.D. from
Stanford University and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He has presented
tutorials at Nielsen Norman Group conferences for the last nine years.
Jakob Nielsen is a principal of Nielsen Norman Group. He is the founder
of the “discount usability engineering” movement, which emphasizes fast and efficient methods for improving
the quality of user interfaces. Nielsen, noted as “the world’s leading expert on Web usability” by
U.S. News and World Report and “the next best thing to a true time machine” by
USA Today, is the author of the best-selling book Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity,
which has sold more than a quarter of a million copies in 22 languages. His other books include Usability Engineering,
Usability Inspection Methods, International User Interfaces, Homepage Usability: 50 Websites
Deconstructed, and Prioritizing Web Usability. Nielsen’s
Alertbox column on Web usability has been published on the Internet since 1995
and currently has about 200,000 readers. From 1994 to 1998, Nielsen was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. His
previous affiliations include Bell Communications Research, the Technical University of Denmark, and the IBM User Interface
Institute. He holds 79 United States patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use.
Chris Nodder a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. He works with large and small
clients across Europe and the US, in industries as diverse as financial services, health care, entertainment,
e-commerce, telecommunications, government, intranets, and highly specialized B2B sectors. He coauthored the
NN/g reports on B2B usability and
wishlists and gift giving, conducting focus groups,
user studies, and field research. Before joining NN/g, Nodder worked as a usability consultant at NatWest Bank in
the UK, and then as a senior user researcher at Microsoft Corp. His experiences managing the usability group at
NatWest are captured in the book
The Politics of Usability.
During his seven years at Microsoft, Nodder was responsible for many products, including the user experience for XP Service Pack 2,
a major upgrade to Windows XP (documented in the book
Security and Usability).
He has created personas, reality TV episodes, and even whole rooms ("usertoriums") as ways of getting developers to walk
in their customers' shoes. Nodder earned an M.S. in human-computer interaction from Guildhall University, London, and a B.S. in
psychology from the Polytechnic of East London. He has presented at and spoken on panels for conferences such as UPA, CHI,
Group, CSCW, and British HCI.
Don Norman is co-founder and a Principal of Nielsen Norman group. He is perhaps best known for his
many books on design theory, including the Design of Everyday Things, Emotional Design,
and the Design of Future Things. He is the Breed Professor of Design at Northwestern University, where
he co-directs MMM, the joint MBA-Engineering program in design and operations. He has received many awards, including
the CHI Lifetime Achievement Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Cognitive and Computer Science, and two honorary
degrees, one in design from Delft (Holland), and one in psychology from Padua (Italy). He has been a VP of Apple
Computer and an executive at HP.
Lynn Pausic is Founder and President of Expero Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the definition,
design, and usability of user experiences for websites and applications. Pausic has an extensive background in user
experience design, ranging from graphical and voice-driven user interfaces for wearable devices to enterprise software
used to streamline the business processes of Fortune 500 companies. Her recent clients include Curbside.MD, Charles
Schwab, Freescale, Lincoln-Mercury, Oracle, and Motorola. Prior to founding Expero, Pausic was the Director of Product
Management for 2Vox, a wireless security company. She has also managed human-computer Interaction teams and served as
a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University’s Engineering and Design Research Center. Pausic holds a B.S. in
communication design from Carnegie Mellon.
Kara Pernice is the Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group and heads the company’s East
Coast operations. She has led many of NN/g’s major intercontinental research studies, generated the resulting design
guidelines, and coauthored several reports, including
designing corporate intranets,
designing for accessibility,
designing for people over the age of 65, and
designing websites to maximize press relations.
She is a leading authority on intranet usability and eyetracking usability ( The Wall Street Journal
called her “an intranet guru”). She judged the submissions for and coauthored NN/g’s
government intranets report and its Intranet Design
Annuals in 2001,
2002,
2003,
2005,
2006,
2007, and
2008.
She has also done extensive research in evaluating emotion and design, has given presentations on a wide range of topics,
and has worked with clients in various industries, including publishing, entertainment, technology, finance, pharmaceuticals,
and government. She has more than 15 years of experience in evaluating usability, and has established successful usability
programs at Lotus Development, Iris Associates (an IBM subsidiary), and Interleaf. She chaired the Usability Professionals’
Association 2000 and 2001 conferences, and served as 2002 conference advisor. She holds an M.B.A. from Northeastern
University and a B.A. from Simmons College.
John Pruitt is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, currently working on the next version
of SharePoint. Since joining Microsoft in 1998, he has conducted user research and designed UI for several
Windows versions, including Windows 98SE, 2000, XP, and Vista, as well as Microsoft’s integrated Internet client,
MSN Explorer (versions 6, 7, and 8); Tablet; and Ultra-Mobile PCs. Prior to Microsoft, he was an invited
researcher in the Human Information Processing Division of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Laboratory in
Kyoto, Japan, and also worked as a civilian scientist doing simulation and training research for the U.S. Navy.
Pruitt holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of South Florida and has published a variety
of journal articles and book chapters on usability methods, skill training, naturalistic decision-making, speech
perception, and second-language learning. He has been creating and using personas for more than eight years,
continually developing the method and mentoring numerous product teams around Microsoft and other companies
worldwide. Pruitt co-authored the book, The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design,
with Tamara Adlin, and has presented broadly on the topic at both academic and industry events.
Dorelle Rabinowitz leads the Pattern Engine team at eBay, creating and maintaining a design system
(patterns, guidelines & processes) that ensures a holistic customer experience. Previously, she directed user
experience design teams at Google and Yahoo!, was an experience lead at SBI.Razorfish and produced Oxygen.com’s
"Our Stories" site. She is on the advisory board of the IAI, and is a former editor of Boxes and Arrows. A graduate
of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, Dorelle also holds a BFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Christian Rohrer is a 10+ year veteran of Web user experience research and design, having participated
directly in the development of some of the world’s most popular web destinations, including Yahoo!, eBay, and Realtor.com.
In his current role as Sr. Director of User Experience Design at Move, Inc., he leads a team of designers and researchers
in the development of some of the top real estate sites on the web. Prior to this, he served as Director of Customer Intelligence
for Products at eBay, where he was a founding member of the eBay Research Council, an executive-sponsored body that advises the
company on best research practices and synthesized insights from market research, community outreach, international research,
web analytics and user experience research. He was previously Director of User Experience Research at Yahoo!, where he was
also a founding member of the Yahoo! Research Council there. Prior to Yahoo!, he conducted ethnographic research for NCI
(now Liberate), focusing on the strategies employed by people learning to use interfaces on TV-based Internet appliances.
Earlier in his career, he spent five years working as an independent UNIX consultant and two years as a support engineer
at SCO. Dr. Rohrer received his PhD in symbolic systems in education (cognitive science) from Stanford University and a
B.A. in computer and information sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
 Amy Schade is a User Experience Specialist based in Nielsen Norman Group’s East Coast office.
Schade has worked with clients internationally in music, insurance, travel, banking, education, and e-commerce industries, and has conducted
user testing and performed reviews on a wide variety of websites and intranets in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She presents tutorials
and workshops on user testing, intranet usability, writing for the Web, and email newsletter usability. She co-authored the NN/g reports on
intranet usability,
intranet information architecture,
email newsletters, and
site map usability, and has conducted many of the user test sessions for reports on
accessibility and
usability for senior citizens.
Before joining NN/g, Schade was an information architect at Arc eConsultancy, where she created and revised architectures for sites ranging
from a family-related content site to a transaction-based sponsorship marketplace. Schade has also held various positions in Web production and
advertising. She has a Master's from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Jim Sterne is an international speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction.
A consultant to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurs, Sterne focuses his twenty five years in sales and
marketing on measuring the value of the Internet as a medium for creating and strengthening customer
relationships. Sterne has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing and customer service including,
Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success. Sterne is the producer of the international
eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits www.emetrics.org and is the
Founding President and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association
www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org. Sterne was named one
of the 50 most influential people in digital marketing by Revolution, the United Kingdom's premier interactive
marketing magazine.
Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini is a recognized leader in human-computer interaction design.
As chief designer at Healtheon/WebMD, he helped establish WebMD as the premiere healthcare website. Before that, he was distinguished
engineer for Strategic Technology at Sun, where he led the Starfire project that predicted the rise of the World Wide Web. During his
14 years at Apple Computer, he founded the Apple Human Interface Group and acted as Apple’s Human Interface Evangelist.
In 2000, he rejoined his long-time colleagues as a principal at the Nielsen Norman Group. A sought-after public speaker and consultant,
he has published two books, Tog On Interface and Tog On Software Design, both from Addison-Wesley, as well
as the webzine AskTog.
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