Speakers
Want to learn shiny new things about UX and design? Our friendly, knowledgeable and approachable speakers will help and inspire you. You’ll also have time to ask all your questions!
We will announce our first speakers and workshop teachers soon! Our speakers and workshop teachers are the best in their fields, and they love to share what they know, how they work and what drives them. On top of that, they are all smashingly nice, and really want to help!
Had a wonderful day @smashingconf. Thanks for putting up such a great event! And so happy that it's happening all over again in 2024. #smashingconf
Christine Vallaure
Christine Vallaure is the founder of moonlearning.io, a UX, UI Design, and Figma learning platform where design meets code.
With years of experience working for leading brands, agencies, and startups across Berlin, Mexico City, and London, she is now based in sunny Madrid.
Christine is passionate about sharing her expertise in web and app design, particularly in the areas where design and technology intersect.
In addition to creating video tutorials on moonlearning and YouTube, Christine also writes about design and code on her Medium blog, and Twitter, providing insights into the latest developments in the industry.
- Talk
- Figma
- On the web
- https://www.moonlearning.io
Pablo Stanley
Pablo Stanley is a Latinx designer. He is the co-founder and CEO at Bueno, Blush & Musho, and the creator of Humankind, and Robotos. Previously, lead designer at InVision, Udemy, and Lyft. He gives talks and workshops worldwide on product design, animation, illustration systems, storytelling, accessibility, behavioral economics, and the art of comics.
He has a channel called Sketch Together, where he shares design tutorials, live streams, critiques, and other random stuff. Is also producing a kids animated show with TIME Studios, and his open-source doodles include Open Peeps, Avataaars, Humaaans, Open Doodles, Bottts, and Buttsss.
Currently, Pablo is the designer and creator at Musho, an AI design tool transforming prompts into nearly-complete, dev-ready websites with simple layouts, great copy, and stunning images.
- Talk
- UI meets AI
- On the web
- http://pablostanley.com/
Gemma O’Brien
Gemma O’Brien is an internationally renowned designer and artist known for her bold graphics, illustrative lettering and murals. Her work has been commissioned by Apple, Nike, Google, and is held in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.
Outside her commercial design work, she explores language, nature and the human experience through her art practice.
Harrison Wheeler
Harrison builds teams, inspires through storytelling, and communicates complex design ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences to ensure that products are as effective as they are beautiful.
Currently, he’s a Director of Product Design at LinkedIn, where he focuses on people management and building the vision for consumer and enterprise experiences.
Outside of work, he enjoys contributing to the UX Design community through articles, interviews, and speaking about all things design. This interest inspired him to launch Technically Speaking with Harrison Wheeler, a podcast about BIPOC designers, entrepreneurs & technologists sharing their unique challenges, triumphs, and the “why” behind their decisions.
- Talk
- Design Management
- On the web
- https://www.harrisonwheeler.com
Nick Desbarats
As an independent educator and best-selling author, Nick Desbarats has taught data visualization and information dashboard design to thousands of professionals in over a dozen countries at organizations such as NASA, Bloomberg, Visa, The United Nations, Shopify, The Internal Revenue Service, and The Central Bank of Tanzania.
Nick is the author of the Amazon #1 New Release “Practical Charts” (2023) and the upcoming “Practical Dashboards” (2024) books, and he regularly contributes articles to The Journal of the Data Visualization Society (Nightingale) that are among that publication’s most widely read and shared. He also regularly delivers main-stage talks at conferences such as Tableau Conference, TDWI World Conference, SAS Explorers, Data Innovation Summit, and others, and has lectured at Yale University, The University of Toronto, and The Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand).
- Talk
- Practical Charts
- On the web
- https://www.practicalreporting.com/
Maggie Appleton
Maggie Appleton is a designer, anthopologist and (mediocre — her words :)) developer. She's originally from London but grew up in international schools in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. After a career at various education and open source initiatives, she now leads design at Elicit.
Design, anthropology, and programming are at the core of everything she makes, and combining them into a coherent career is a weird and ongoing challenge.
Jason Mesut
Jason Mesut helps people pursue positive futures. Navigating the uncertainties of their present. For the benefit of themselves, their organisations and broader society. He does this through executive coaching, community leadership, strategic consulting, and his signature ‘Shaping’ workshops.
Jason has spent over 20 years working within UX, Design, and Innovation consulting worlds for leading organisations. Mentoring, leading, and managing designers to do the work of their lives for the benefit of others.
He now runs his own coaching, design and innovation consultancy, Resonant. Works as a Design Partner at Group of Humans, a network of global creative leaders. Coaches through the Coaching with Chemistry network. And also co-hosts events for IxDA London.
- Talk
- Shape Your Future Self
- On the web
- https://medium.com/@jasonmesut
Cameron Worboys
Cameron is a hands-on design director currently working at Cash app. Prior to Cash, Cam has led award winning work for Wise, Beats by Dre and Apple. His background primarily focuses on large-scale consumer-facing products, with an emphasis on core experience teams and global design systems. Some of his most notable work includes the recent Wise Rebrand and the redesign of Beats' digital experiences.
As a designer and leader, he is passionate about collaborating with great people to create exceptional work.
Nathan Curtis
Nathan co-founded EightShapes with Dan Brown in 2006. He’s passionate about information architecture, UX, front-end dev, and leads design systems consulting at EightShapes. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs frequently on Medium.com today, and speaks regularly at events worldwide.
- Talk
- Design Systems
- On the web
- https://eightshapes.com
Vitaly Friedman
Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most probably running front-end/UX workshops and webinars. He loves solving complex UX, front-end and performance problems.
- On the web
- https://smashingmagazine.com
Mystery Speaker
Obviously, our Mystery Speaker is a bit of a… well, Mystery. In true smashing style, you can expect something wonderful. Make sure to set your alarm on day two of the conference, because you don't want to miss this.
