IxDebate IX

Somehow, we let last year slip by without holding our most popular event. We vowed that wouldn’t happen this year, and we’re excited to announce that for the first time since 2019, IxDebate will be happening in-person at Threadbare Ciderhouse! Please join us for some sourdough pizza, fantastic beverages, and your favorite UX community while we do what designers do best: argue about what the heck we actually do.

You know the format: We have four starting panelists and one empty chair. We draw pre-determined topics randomly from a hat. Only people sitting on the panel can speak, but you are welcome to grab the empty chair at any time to join in, at which point someone else on the panel must vacate theirs.

We’ll be announcing the members of our opening panel leading up to the event, and we’re taking debate topic suggestions during registration.

Opening Panel

The first guest on our opening panel is Dan Saffer, who will be lending his saffervescence to our debate. More guests will be announced soon.

Dan Saffer

Dan Saffer is a designer, author, and educator, currently an Assistant Professor of the Practice at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches classes in service design, interaction design, and designing for AI. Dan is also the author of four acclaimed design books including Microinteractions: Designing with Details (2013) and the seminal Designing for Interaction: Creating Innovative Applications and Devices (2006). His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Wired, Fast Company, and UX Magazine. He holds multiple design patents and is a frequent speaker at major design conferences worldwide.

Auldyn Matthews

Auldyn is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Her design research centers around “experience aesthetics”, a taxonomy of aesthetics to answer the question, “What makes humans connect with experiences?” based on the Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics (MDA) Framework from game design.

Previously, she worked for 10 years as a user experience designer and leader in healthcare and higher education, including companies such as Elsevier and Ellucian. Auldyn’s experience includes designing electronic health record software for nurses and patients, transforming patient experiences through mobile applications, and facilitating design thinking workshops across the globe. Most recently, Auldyn started the first UX team at Phreesia, a healthcare tech company.

About Our Sponsor

We are grateful for our event sponsor, Randstad Digital. Without their support, it would be much harder to put on events like this one.

Randstad Digital

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