Jury Alumni

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  Jess Greco

  Director, Product Experience Design, Mastercard

  2024 Interaction Jury Member

  Jess Greco is an experience design and research leader with deep experience in tying customer insights into business priorities that drive design-led organizational change. She has a proven track record in creating an environment that fosters team collaboration and builds design maturity. Her experience is a mix of consumer and enterprise work across industries including financial services, payments, insurance, consulting, healthcare, education and media.

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  August Heffner

  Creative Director, Instrument

  2021 Interaction Jury Captain

  August is a designer and creative director. He works to bridge the divide between the functionality of digital products and the emotion of brand marketing. He began by leading internal design teams at MoMA, J. Crew, Kate Spade, & Casper. He’s been a regular contributor of editorial illustrations to The New York Times and an instructor at Parsons and SVA. August transitioned to digital product design and began leading project teams for Huge, and Work&Co. Today, August leads a team at Instrument where he creates digital first brands, marketing, and products for organizations including Twitter, PATH and the WNBA.

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  Hanah Ho

  Senior Art Director, The New York Times

  2021 Interaction Jury Member

  Hanah is a designer residing in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a senior art director at The New York Times, developing campaigns and visual identity for podcasts and audio. Previously she was at the branding and design agency Champions Design, and Hillary for America where she worked to elect the first female president. She is currently serving on the board of AIGA NY and is passionate about connecting designers with new opportunities and engaging in the design community. She holds a BFA in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

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  Matt Jones

  Interaction Design Director, Google Creative Lab

  2015 Interaction Jury Member

  Matt Jones is an interaction design director at Google Creative Lab in New York. He has been designing digital products and services since 1995.Creative director for the launch of BBC News Online, he co-founded and designed Dopplr.com in 2007, a service for frequent travelers since bought by Nokia. Between 2003 and 2005, he worked at Nokia on areas as diverse as tangible and physical interfaces and the human experience of play.Between 2009 and 2012 he was a principal at BERG, a design and invention company in London that has had projects exhibited in MoMA and products featured in Financial Times, Fast Company, Wired and Marvel Comics.He studied architecture and wrote for ten years about interaction design here:http://www.magicalnihilism.com, and now teaches a design interactions course at the Royal College of Art.

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  Joana Kelly

  COO, Small Planet

  2018 Interaction Jury Captain

  Joana Kelly is the COO at Small Planet, where she helps teams create award-winning mobile products for clients like Disney, NPD Group, and Planned Parenthood.
  
  Her work has earned the Communication Arts Magazine​ Award of Excellence and the Fast​ Company Innovation By Design Award, been featured on the App Store and Google Play, and ​ been downloaded millions of times.
  
  Joana has guest lectured at the School of Visual Arts and taught at Parsons The New School for Design. She received her undergraduate degree from New York University and holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School for Design.

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  Brian Kelly

  Director of Experience Design, Verizon

  2018 Interaction Jury Member

  I'm a digital product designer specializing in high-touch mobile applications.

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  Ye-Jeong Kim

  Head of Gmail UX, Google

  2023 Interaction Jury Member

  Ye-Jeong Kim is a Korean-born, US-based principal designer and UX leader who has continuously navigated IC and management paths across her career. Currently, Ye is leading Gmail UX at Google. In her time at Google, Ye led teams and efforts building products in the areas of Search, Assistant, Android, Geo, Payments, Social, and Ads. As a founding member of Google Now, Google Assistant, and Search’s innovation and strategy UX team, Ye has extensive experience building assistive experiences and molding innovative technologies to help people in their everyday lives. Prior to Google, her focus was on information visualization and building tools for people to collaborate and make sense of data through shared visualization of information and understanding. Ye appreciates her name to be pronounced Yay!, pronounced with a ghost of joy!

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  Scott Lederer

  UX Designer

  2023 Interaction Jury Member

  Scott is someone who throws around words like design, product, and strategy, but ultimately just likes working with interesting colleagues on exciting software products for people who need them. In recent years, he has led design at Capitol AI, a startup aiming to modernize and simplify data storytelling, and Azavea, a geospatial software shop committed to civic, social, and environmental good. Some time ago, he designed & stewarded the local search experience on Google Maps for about 4 years. And threaded throughout his career are sundry adventures in design & strategy for startups known & unknown. He lives in Philadelphia and is desperate to tell fewer dad jokes.

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  Margaret Lee

  Leadership Coach, Design Dept.

  2023 Interaction Jury Captain

  Margaret Lee is a Leadership Coach helping Design and Product executives and practitioners to lead with authenticity and confidence. Prior to coaching with Design Dept., Margaret was a User Experience leader at Google, where she built and led teams in Chrome, Search, and Maps. She led Google Maps UX from its early days as a groundbreaking desktop experience, to an indispensable tool for navigation and local exploration. Margaret also served as Director of UX Community + Culture at Google, a program she founded to serve and empower the company’s global User Experience organization. Decades in the tech industry has shaped her current commitment: to create conditions for teams to flourish and individuals can uncover their unique potential and leadership style. Margaret speaks and writes about her personal journey as a leader, the importance of a healthy culture in the workplace, and our collective responsibility to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

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  Woojin Lee

  Senior Art Director, SapientRazorfish

  2017 Interaction Jury Member

  If Woojin Lee were not a designer she would be a private detective.
  
  She currently works as a Senior Art Director at SapientRazorfish, in New York. She has worked on some great projects, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Dove, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and other fast pace pitches, that have utilized new technological trends such as apps, responsive platforms, touch screen, and social media. The sophisticated nature of these experiences along with her previous experience founding her own design boutique in Seoul have drawn her toward projects that focus on an entire and integrated brand experience.
  
  She has been named as the recipient The Red dot award, The Creativity Media & Interactive Awards, and The Creativity International Awards. Also her first responsive design project for Mercedes-Benz was selected as a 2015 Webby Awards Honoree in the Websites Best Practice category.
  
  She was a foreign correspondent the Korean design and culture publication, G colon. Her first book, 2587 days: A Record of Creative Encounters in New York, was published in 2014 in Korea and describes her experiences living, studying, and working in New York. Woojin has also taught as an adjunct faculty for FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology).
  
  Woojin received her BFA degree in Crafts from Kookmin University (Seoul) and her MS in Communications Design from Pratt Institute (New York).

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  Donna Lichaw

  Independent Digital Product Strategist

  2016 Interaction Jury Member

  Donna Lichaw brings over 15 years of experience guiding startups, non-profits, and global brands in optimizing their digital products and services by providing them with a simplified way to drive user engagement through impactful storytelling. As a consultant, speaker, writer, and educator, she utilizes a ‘story first’ approach to help teams define their value proposition, transform their thinking, and better engage with their core customers.
  
  She began her career as a designer and user experience strategist for multiple startups and design agencies in New York and London, working with brands like Casio, Capitol Records, Sony Pictures, and Seamless. Prior to her career in technology, she refined her talent for storytelling and narrative development as an award-winning documentary filmmaker.
  
  Now recognized as a thought leader in storytelling and customer engagement strategies, she has presented as a keynote speaker at design and technology conferences in the US, Canada and Europe, and taught courses at New York University, Northwestern University, The School of Visual Arts, and Parsons the New School for Design. Her upcoming book – “The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love” is out now. You can find her on Twitter @dlichaw and on the web at www.donnalichaw.com.

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  Alexis Lloyd

  Creative Director, NY Times R&D Lab

  2016 Interaction Jury Captain

  Alexis Lloyd is the Creative Director of The New York Times Research & Development Lab, where she investigates emerging technologies and prototypes future concepts for news and media. Her work is focused on creating immersive and exploratory experiences through innovative physical-to-digital interactions, data visualization and screen-based interfaces.
  
  Before joining The New York Times Company in 2007, Ms. Lloyd designed award-winning projects for Columbia University, FOX, American Express, The New York Historical Society and PBS, among others. Additionally, her media artwork has been shown at international venues such as the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, SIGGRAPH, the Chelsea Art Museum and Symphony Space.
  
  Ms. Lloyd received her Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College and holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School for Design.

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  Heather Luipold

  Creative Lead, Google Creative Lab

  2019 Interaction Jury Member

  Heather Luipold, is a Creative Lead in New York working at the Google Creative Lab -- a small group of designers, engineers, writers, filmmakers and thinkers who experiment on non-traditional product concepts and ways to help connect people with our products. Heather co-leads a team inside the Lab that focuses on product visioning and experimentation. She's also worked as an adjunct professor in the design department at the School of Visual Arts and the Masters Program at Cornell Tech. Prior to Google, Heather worked in a slew of agencies leading product work for clients like Gucci, American Express and Lexus.

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  Farai Madzima

  UX Manager, Shopify

  2023 Interaction Jury Member

  Born in Zimbabwe, Farai was going to be a doctor but didn’t get the grades. Now he’s a designer. Make of that what you will.
  Using words, scribbles, and pixels he’s spent the last 14 years helping design and build products and teams in the UK, South Africa, and Canada.
  Today, he makes a living designing interactions and leading a team as a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa.
  In South Africa, Farai designed banking apps used by many across the continent. He grappled with unique design challenges because most internet users have never used a laptop or desktop. And some buy data by the megabyte.
  Farai enjoys speaking about bridging knowledge gaps between designers. He’s appeared at events worldwide, including IXDA Interaction and IASummit.
  He organizes Pixel Up!, a series of UX and design conferences and meetups in South Africa. These events connect designers and developers in Africa with their peers around the world.
  Also, he adores verbiage, in all languages, township jazz, nerdy hip-hop, and the number 127.
  

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  Jill Nussbaum

  Executive Director of Product and Interaction Design, The Barbarian Group

  2015 Interaction Jury Captain

  Jill works with clients to develop long-term product experiences that explore emerging technologies and manages the Interaction Design team at the Barbarian Group. Previously she was an Executive Creative Director at R/GA, and a key player behind the design of the Nike+ platform. In her role, she oversaw the evolution of the platform to include Nike+ Fuelband, Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training.Jill is an active member of the New York design community and enjoys teaching, public speaking, writing, and advising young designers and tech start-ups. She currently teaches in the Interaction Design MFA program at SVA, and is a contributing writer for PSFK. She frequently guest lectures at conferences and learning institutions like Fast Company, SxSW, AIGA/NY, IxDA and General Assembly.

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  Arianna Orland

  Co-founder, Creative Director and Experience Designer, In/Visible Talks

  2021 Interaction Jury Member

  Arianna is a seasoned creative leader, community builder, and holistic thinker fluent in product, brand, and marketing with a deeply held passion for the craft of design. With over 20 years of industry experience, Arianna draws from an enormous quiver of design processes and techniques to galvanize teams and projects to success. Currently, Arianna's impressive client roster includes Twitter, Instacart, and Lyft.
  
  Arianna is the co-founder of In/Visible Talks, a conference for creative professionals that celebrates the art of design. Now in its 5th year, In/Visible Talks has hosted 50+ speakers on the topic of creativity from all over the world. She proudly serves as Board President of Creativity Explored, a San Francisco based nonprofit that gives artists with developmental disabilities the means to create and share their work. Arianna also frequently writes on the subject of creativity and her work has been featured in prestigious publications such as Co.Design, 99u, and Forbes.