April 22: Expert Panel Discussion

In the final session of the semester before student project presentations, we’ll be joined by four incredibly accomplished professionals in the field of UX research. Kathy Baxter, Ame Elliott, Elizabeth Goodman, and Erika Hall will form an impressive expert panel to discuss relevant topics and answer student questions.

Kathy Baxter is a Staff User Experience Researcher at Google. Prior to 2005, she worked as a Senior UER at eBay and Oracle. She received her MS in Engineering Psychology and BS in Applied Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She co-authored a book on research methods titled, Understanding Your Users: A practical guide to user requirements methods, tools, and techniques and is currently working on the second edition due out in early 2015.

Ame Elliott is a Design Research Lead & Senior Project Leader at IDEO, helping organizations innovate by uncovering insights and identifying strategic opportunities. She leads fieldwork, designs interactions, and facilitates workshops focused on the social and organizational implications of technology. Before joining IDEO, Ame worked at PARC focused on ubiquitous computing apps, and in the Silicon Valley R&D lab at Ricoh. She is passionate about research methods and their ability to teach people to think strategically about the world around them.

Elizabeth Goodman received her PhD from UC Berkeley’s School of Information in Fall 2013. She is a designer, researcher, and writer on cities, interaction design, ubiquitous computing, and the Internet of Things. She has taught UX research and tangible interaction design at UC Berkeley, and site-specific art practice at the SF Art Institute. Elizabeth speaks widely on the design of mobile and pervasive computing systems, and has worked with R&D teams at Intel, Fuji-Xerox, and Yahoo! She earned a masters in interaction design from NYU, and a BA cum laude in art from Yale University. She is a co-author of Observing the User Experience, published by Morgan Kaufmann.

Erika Hall has been working in web design and development since the late 20th century. In 2001, she co-founded Mule Design Studio where she directs the research, interaction design, and strategy practices. Erika speaks and writes frequently about cross-disciplinary collaboration and the importance of natural language in user interfaces. In her spare time, she battles empty corporate jargon at Unsuck It. She also co-hosts Running from the Law, a weekly podcast on business law and endurance fitness, and can probably outrun you. Erika is the author of Just Enough Research from A Book Apart.