Joe Hearty is a Designer and Creative Director based in London with 8+ years experience in Digital Product. He has worked across a variety of disciplines in Academia and Industry, with a focus on Digital Design and Technology.

For the last three years, I’ve been leading a global team of designers working in the area of Internet of Things.  I started my career as a designer 15 years ago designing Java applications for Nokia mobile phones. I then moved to IBM as a designer on their predictive analytics platform before being promoted to my current role.  As well as being the design lead I’m also an experienced UX designer and enjoy the opportunity to teach ‘Design Thinking’ to clients from large corporations.

Some people call me a chatterbox, maybe that’s why I am the expert when it comes to Chatbots.

Gemma heads up Mobile Cloud Enterprise (Apps, Chatbots and Customer Experience Analytics), IoT and API Platform for the UK in Business Development.  I run and present at regular events such as Chatbot Roundtables, which are aimed at LoB to introduce them to the best practises on Chatbots, demonstrating Intelligent Bots platform (IB) as well as many different use cases, helping engage the audience and get them thinking how this could align to their business and automate repetitive tasks .

I have spent over 2 years at Oracle, but previous to that spent almost 7 years at Microsoft where I was an evangelist for mobile apps.  In my spare time, I drink lots of Earl Grey tea because it keeps you young (looking) and a massive chocoholic.  I like to spend time with my amazing family  (fiancé Rob and my toddler Isabelle), spending our hard earn cash on luxury holidays and experiencing everything we can, (at 6 months she went swimming with dolphins in Bali).  Other than travelling, I am into my gigs, UFC and Cooking.

 Martin is part of Oracle’s Mobile Cloud and Bots team, responsible for customer and partner success. With more than 15 years of experience working in Enterprise Mobility and now Bots, he has practised all aspects app development from concept to design, through to implementation.

He’s just as comfortable discussing the business and commercial opportunities from going mobile or with Chatbots as he is the solution architecture. He is a certified Enterprise Architect and has always had a flair for applying the latest technologies to solve business problems. In his spare time, he’s also a passionate volunteer for Code Club (part of the Raspberry Pi foundation), helping primary school children build and develop their IT and coding skills.

Educator and technologist Savraj Matharu is a leader in digital, interactive media and creative technology with a track record of success. Ranging from developing and creating powerful apps, creating compelling user interfaces to digital online branding through innovation and contemporary workflows.

 Being widely recognised for his entrepreneurial skills with the ability to monetize creative ideas through technology, Savraj’s work relies on building on innovation protocols with consumer faced outcomes for creative industries, and has been responsible for founding and co-founding several successful technology initiatives with international recognition.

AR opens various types of doors and exciting possibilities particular within the mobile context, it presents opportunities to develop compelling, immersive  and engaging experiences for end users. It also presents many challenges and obstacles for design and development, how can we overcome this? What are the barriers to entry?

How can we facilitate UCD approaches to maximise the potential for AR and transformative mobile experience for an enhanced HCI and greater UX solutions?

An advocate of user-centered and data-driven design, Alex is a Product Designer at Novoda, with a strong background in engineering. In the never-ending quest of discovering how people use technology and how we can make it as simple as possible for everyone, he pursued a MSc in Human-Computer Interaction.

Lots of research, a bunch of experiments and a publication later, Alex is always on the lookout for new interactions and interfaces.

With a degree in Computing Science, Tsvetelina is a techie who saw the light and converted to UX. Nowadays she works for an internal consultancy in Standard Life, designing websites for clients. Previously she worked on Standard Life’s Secure Online Servicing, and before that – the mobile app. Previous employers include BT, Deutsche Bank and Citibank.

Jane is a creative problem solver, with an affinity towards great product design. No working day is the same, but the core of the approach she takes to overcome design challenges remains the same – creating a deep empathy and understanding with users to help them better communicate and interact with the world around them.
She in interested in using new and emerging technology to push the creative boundaries of UX design and problem-solving. She is also excited to see how emerging technology will start to disrupt the traditional UCD process.

Tom is a designer, thinker and problem solver, currently making it happen at Webcredible as a Senior UX Consultant. He leads projects for his clients, and helps develop products and services that drive tangible business change.

Tom has worked on service design pieces to solve the urban food waste crisis & changing perceptions of cycle safety within the Boris bike rental system. Working professionally on both client and agency side, his previous role at TomTom was spent designing sat nav systems & their surrounding digital ecosystems.

Michael is co-founder and director at W12 Studios with over a decade experience designing digital products. He oversees the overall creative output of the studio. Previously he worked for IDEO where he developed propositions in the automotive, financial, FMCG and media and entertainment sectors. After IDEO he went to the BBC where he oversaw the development and application of the Global Experience Language across the entire BBC online portfolio, launched all iPlayer mobile and TV apps and developed the digital strategy for BBC online.
He won the CHI2004 award and the Design Week award in 2010. He has been featured in Wired magazine and involved in numerous judging engagements.
Mike received his MSc from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and a double BFA from the Savannah College of Art & Design in Industrial and Furniture Design.

There has been a renaissance in conversational interfaces over the last few years. More and more businesses are using bots with interfaces that emulate human to human conversations to meet the needs of their customers, with some believing that conversations are going to eventually become the primary way of interacting with computers. It sounds simple: talking and chatting comes natural to us, so we should be moving towards communicating with machines in the same way, but is it?

Despite the hype, at the moment both voice and chat interactions have various usability issues that very often prevent them from providing a great user experience. In my talk, I will be drawing on my experience leading Aviva’s conversational UX projects to discuss what those usability issues are and how can designers work around them. I will also share my thoughts on how the conversational interface will evolve by incorporating elements from various types of interaction and modalities to meet user needs in a more effective way.

Shelbian has an extensive background designing mobile platforms, services and systemic design frameworks. He was responsible for crafting multiple shipped experiences from BBM at BlackBerry, Sense 6 OS at HTC, Android TV platform at Google, and recently the Google Assistant on Allo. Currently, he is defining new interaction paradigms in the context of conversational UI with artificial intelligence.

Stuart Scott is a commercially experienced Design Researcher / Interaction Designer adept at simplifying complicated experiences through the application of best practices in interaction design. He is currently managing City Interaction Lab a digital product design and innovation consultancy based in City, University of London.

Lucy is a passionate UX designer at EF Education First, delivering international UX research and design for multiple online products. Founded in 1965, EF Education First offers study abroad, language learning, cultural exchange and academic degree programmes around the world.

With a strong background in visual design, Lucy is creative and collaborative and loves to lead and deliver positive, people-centred digital experiences.

Jan is a digital product designer, researcher, and strategist. He’s now leading design of mobile apps at a transport tech company Trainline. Over the last ten years he has worked with the world’s biggest corporations and tiny start-ups. Having worked in finance, travel, energy, media, and gaming, he’s now helping progressive e-commerce brands build successful and intuitive digital products. You’ll find him in London or Paris, or in between on a Eurostar train.

Hollie focuses on helping clients create products and services that excite audiences and drive engagement. Over the last ten years, she has worked on content-rich sites in the luxury, culture, publishing and telco sectors, collaborating closely with clients to create user-centred designs for a wide range of digital products, from large-scale collections systems to small innovative app projects.

Prior to joining Fjord, she worked with various London agencies including Code & Theory, The Times and Bureau for Visual affairs where she led the UX and design teams. She mentors early-stage startups as part of the Google Launchpad program and junior UX designers through UXPA.

Vibha is a design lead at Airbnb. Her design work is focused on making sure that every guest on Airbnb has a great trip and every host feels supported in their journey. Prior to this, she worked at Wikipedia where she worked on desktop typography, mobile web, iOS and android apps while engaging with a huge community of readers and editors. She is passionate about typography and conducts workshops to increase type awareness among students. Her favourite activities are calligraphy, sketching and making tea. Vibha has lived in Bombay, London and New York. She calls and considers all three cities home.

Sukhada Jog is a Lead User Experience Researcher at Airbnb where she leads research efforts on the Host side of the business. Her research focuses on improving the experience for hosts on both mobile and the web. Prior to Airbnb, Sukhada was a Senior Manager of User Experience Research at Yahoo. She led the User Experience Research team within the Communications space.
Her expertise is in generative and evaluative research. and has worked in various industries like finance, consumer product & packaging and electronics. Sukhada strives to embed User Experience tightly with the overall product development process and use collaboration more efficiently and effectively in the current business landscape.
When not doing research, her favorite activity is to watch movies, cook and paint with her two beautiful kids.

Christophe is the co-founder of Somewhere Else, a London-based creative consultancy and production house specialised in immersive technologies (VR/AR/MR). After 8 years spent between digital strategy consultancy and music events production, Christophe started Somewhere Else to help brands, agencies and innovators harness the power of VR/AR/MR to win in the Age of Experience.

Working with the likes of Samsung, Three and ExxonMobil, Somewhere Else has enable brands in the fashion, retail and entertainment sectors to build deeper relationships with their audiences through powerful VR experiences. Christophe is a regular VR blogger and a member of the Uni-VR think tank. He has recently delivered talks at the Awwwards LDN, the AR/VR Show and the Virtual Reality Show as well as conducted VR workshops for top creatives at agencies such as Ogilvy, FCB Inferno, IDEO and OMD.

Julian is a Senior User Experience designer at Samsung. Having started as an industrial designer he found the world of experiences that hardware and software working in unison produce irresistible. He likes to be the “why and what” guy in leading and lagging organisations that need to update their product portfolio. Julian’s focus lies in strategic thinking within diverse teams, working with methodologies that foster strategic innovation, deploying them through digital experiences that can have a meaningful impact in people’s lives.

“The views and opinions that will be expressed in the keynote are exclusively Julian‘s and do not reflect the official opinions or position of Samsung Electronics.”

Stratis is a Senior User Experience Designer at Aviva’s Digital Innovation Garage. He’s currently leading the design of Aviva’s AI and Conversational UX projects, contributing to the company’s efforts to transform insurance and long term finance through customer centred design.

In his spare time, he helps Walks.VR, a startup in Brussels working on providing on-demand virtual reality travelling adventures to people with motor disabilities.

Stratis is passionate about the future of AI and Human Computer Interaction and the exciting ways in which they can help us redefine core experiences of our everyday lives.

Lara Hanlon is a Designer and Design Thinker based in Dublin, Ireland. She is passionate about delivering thoughtful user experiences and beautiful, innovative design solutions to complex problems.

Currently working as a Designer and Facilitator at IBM Studios Dublin, Lara collaborates daily with researchers, designers, engineers, and executives, to educate global teams working in the tech and enterprise industry about the value of design. Lara also lectures part-time at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design + Technology (IADT), the institute that awarded her a BA (Hons) Degree in Visual Communications Design in 2013.