The stars of the show

Alexia Buclet

Alexia became a Cognitive Psychologist and UX Designer 10 years ago. She’s specialized in Emerging Technologies and built her experience through video games at Ubisoft, marketing software at Adobe, and humanoid robots at Aldebaran (now Softbank Robotics).

She’s currently Head of Design on Minsar: a code-free platform that allows creative professionals to build, distribute, and collaborate on AR & VR experiences directly through their 3D headset, tablet, or smartphone.

She loves the different challenges coming from Emerging Technologies. That’s why she soon specialized in this field, where everything is still to imagine to provide experiences adapted to Human beings.

Angela Obias-Tuban

Over the past 16 years, Angela has worked as a quantitative and qualitative researcher, UX lead, and digital strategist. She’s designed UX processes for a conglomerate, a fintech startup, and creative agencies – helping these companies put in place the appropriate ones for their organizational needs. 

She re-organized over 200 sub-brand sites into a usable, user-centered product architecture — with business results, was the UX manager of one of her country’s first iterative fintech start-ups, and purportedly the “only UX Research” person in the Philippines on LinkedIn in 2014.  Her talk is for those out there who may feel alone, and detached from the cool developments they read about “abroad”.

Anna Efimenko

Anna is passionate about creating experiences informed by data and driven by empathy. With 6+ years of UX research experience working in the agile environment at Booking.com, she has supported multi-disciplinary teams by using qualitative and quantitative data to inform product design, strategy, metrics and data models. Anna is excited about mixed-methods research and collaborations with other insights disciplines (e.g. data science, analytics).

Before Booking.com, Anna had experience working at startups. She studied Communication and Media at Erasmus University, where she focused on new media technologies and business model innovation. And at the National University of Singapore, she learnt user-centered design, which made her pursue the career of UX Researcher.

Beant Kaur Dhillon

Beant is a Senior User Researcher and Usability Consultant with 10+ years experience. She is also an artist for the last 9 years. Having worked with the likes of Philips, Adidas and Ultimaker, as well as many medical start-up companies, Beant has led end-to end-user research projects on a broad range of products, systems and apps, across the globe.

Beant also trains and assists companies to set-up user research and user-centered design processes. She conducts workshops on Creative thinking, listening skills, etc. and writes altUXR – a bi-monthly email on how to grow as a user researcher.

Bindu Upadhyay

Bindu is passionate about people, their behaviour, and the ecosystems in which they interact. She breaks siloes, drives collaboration, and structures processes at Mendix. Her specialisations in engineering and UX enable her to facilitate meaningful interactions between designers and developers.

Having moved from India to the Netherlands, working in multicultural (and multidisciplinary) teams, deeply influenced Bindu’s world view and made her realise that diversity alone doesn’t lead to inclusion. This sets the stage for her interactive session at UXinsight.

She believes in contributing to the design and research community by speaking at events, sharing knowledge and mentoring juniors. Bindu’s talk on “Understanding cultural differences and their impact on design” was voted as audience favourite at UXCamp Nordic and UXCamp Amsterdam.

Gunjan Singh

Gunjan loves talking to people and discovering what makes them tick and what turns them off. As a strategic designer who believes in life-long learning, she draws from diverse fields of practice: futures and system thinking, business strategy, organizational change and learning.

At present, she works at International Baccalaureate as a product owner/manager and contributes to product discovery and development along with user research. In order to fuel her other curiosities and growth, she co-organises Ethnoborrel, a meetup that brings together people who are interested or work with ethnographic methods and dabbles in writing climate fiction.

Jerram White

Before becoming a user researcher, Jerram worked as a psychotherapist and organisational consultant in the UK public health system. Jerram now brings his passion and expertise to helping Babylon design digital health solutions which enable users to make positive changes in their lives.  

Josh LaMar

Josh LaMar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Authentique UX, a strategic thought partner that helps tech companies save millions while fast-tracking domestic and international product growth. Authentique UX is committed to promoting cross-cultural understanding and deepening human connections through ethical product design.

Prior to founding Authentique UX, Josh was a Principal Design Research Manager at Microsoft, where he worked for 12 years in tablet applications, content consumption, productivity, communication, and time management research. Josh is a lover of travel, learning languages, and celebrating the cultures of the world through food and wine. Connect with Josh on LinkedIn and follow his blog on Medium.

Kathleen Asjes

Kathleen leads the Insights team at Dreams, a Fintech company built on behavioural science that boosts financial wellbeing. In her team, they combine the power of user research and data science to uncover insights with high impact.

She is a Dutch national currently based in Stockholm and has worked with UX research for over a decade. Her main interests are innovation and technology with social impact, always trying to connect the dots between people off- and online. Besides working at Dreams she also provides user research training and coaching.

While teaching, mentoring & breathing research she does not try to learn about users and their behaviour, but mostly makes sure that the product teams themselves gain this knowledge first hand.

Kevin Hawkins

Kevin Hawkins is Director of Product Design at BookClub.com and based in Amsterdam. He’s a UX designer with 10 years of experience and a seasoned instructor having taught at GrowthTribe, General Assembly, and Georgetown University. Previously, he’s done work for Booking.com, PwC, EY, Capital One, Gap Inc, Chase Bank, Uber and more.

Kevin is our host April 14-15.

Matthew Eng

Matt is a DesignOps Manager at Genesys. He has worked on projects for companies such as American Airlines, IBM, AT&T, Ogilvy and Symantec.  During these projects, he has conducted numerous design and research efforts that helped to align and focus stakeholders with diverse needs. His experience leading teams of designers and researchers has helped him to discover new techniques for bringing together multidisciplinary teams and internal stakeholders into the UX process for quicker alignment.

When he is not untangling team priorities, he shares his lessons and experiences with other communities such as UX Australia, Euro IA, ADDC Barcelona, MidWest UX, Big Design, and TEDx San Antonio.

On the side, he runs experiments with bicycles, van camping, old computers, and his dog.

Michelle Proksell

Michelle Proksell is a new Senior UX Researcher at Grover in Berlin. She describes the work she does in UXR as being part art, part science, and part intuition, allowing her to pull from her background in art, sociology & performance. She specialises in ethnography and cultural anthropology and has done research across Europe, Asia and North America.

In her work, she investigates social, cultural, and user behaviours for emerging technology, enterprise software, customer experiences, holistic business strategy, start-ups, and civic tech. She especially loves the creativity of the field and excels at innovating and experimenting with UX research methodologies.

Nidhi Jalwal

Nidhi is part of the Digital International team at FedEx to make sure that the user is an integral part of the equation. She has learned from and worked with various communities across the globe.

She is an expert in qualitative methodologies and currently developing her quantitative research skills. Lifting weights, running, planning elaborate hiking trips, cooking and bringing people together are some of her true passions.

UXInsights marries my love for research with organizing and bringing people together. This is my second year with the organization and I am looking forward to many more. 

Nidhi is our host on April 16

Nikki Anderson

Nikki is a User Research Manager and Instructor with 8 years of experience. She has worked in all different sizes of companies, ranging from a tiny start-up called ALICE to the large corporation, Zalando, and also as a freelancer. During this time, she has led a diverse range of end-to-end research projects across the world, specializing in generative user research.

Nikki also owns her own company, User Research Academy, a community and education platform designed to help people get into the field of user research, or learn more about how user research impacts their current role. User Research Academy hosts online classes, content, as well as personalized mentorship opportunities with Nikki. She also writes as a contract writer at dscout. In addition to writing about user research, she writes psychological thrillers and fantasy novels.

Rozemarijn Visser

Rozemarijn Visser is a T-shaped UX researcher with a “yes, and” mentality. To be found at technical innovative places to help out shifting the mindset from technical possible towards value by user centric design.

Remko van der Drift

Remko dreams of a society in which we deal with the imperfections of ourselves and each other in a friendly, open and understanding way. In which we utilize mistakes and failures for a better world. Where there is enough space to learn, enjoy, renew and compassion.

To make this dream come true, he trains people and teams in organizations to become more failure expert. He’s a speaker, gives failure fitness workshops and individual sessions.

Stephanie Pratt

Stephanie is a Principal UX Researcher at Blackbaud, where she is assisting in maturing the research practice and working to support customers in the non-profit and social good spaces.

Prior to Blackbaud, Stephanie led the research function at GoCanvas, where she built the foundations and processes for a research practice at the organization. She holds her Master’s in Human Factors / Applied Cognition from George Mason University.

Victor Yocco

Victor Yocco, PhD is a UX researcher who works with clients across industries, from finance and insurance to aerospace, higher education, state government, and public arts.

Victor frequently writes and speaks on topics related to the application of principles of psychology to design, UX research methods, mental health, and alcohol abuse. You can find Victor @victoryocco or send him a nice message at victoryocco@gmail.com.

Vidhika Bansal

Vidhika is convinced that the best designs address people’s unarticulated needs and that stories can change the world.

Over the last decade, she has helped shape brand, product, and design strategies for clients such as Gap Inc., NASDAQ, Hilton Worldwide, Facebook, C-SPAN, as well as a variety of startups and nonprofit organizations.

She gets really jazzed about good food (especially dessert!), perfect strings of words, the power of human connection, exploring new places and perspectives, and the little things in life.

Yael Gutman

Yael is passionate about capturing the voice of customer and identifying problem states and opportunities.

At ASCAP, Yael couples storytelling with data analysis and user research to break down complex concepts, advocate for product and achieve organizational buy-in.

Yael is also a Mentor at PowerToFly and believes in the power and responsibility we each have to support others to rise.