Whitney Quesenbery is a user interface designer and usability specialist with a passion for clear communication. As the principal consultant for Whitney Interactive Design (wqusability.com), she works with companies around the world to develop usable web sites and applications.

As an advocate for usability, Whitney is active in many industry projects. She is president of UPA, on the board of Design for Democracy, runs the popular STC Usability web site, and leads a project creating guidelines for usability test reports. She is deep in the “politics of usability” as the chair for Human Factors and Privacy on a US government committee on voting standards.

Whitney is a frequent contributor to industry publications. Most recently, she wrote a chapter on “Personas and Narrative” for The Personas Lifecycle (Pruitt and Adlin, Morgan Kauffmann, 2005), examining how storytelling improves our understanding of the people who use our software. Her work on “Dimensions of Usability” was published in Content and Complexity, (Albers and Mazur, eds, Erlbaum, 2003).

Robert Barlow-Busch - Interaction Design and Usability - Quarry Integrated Communications - Waterloo , Ontario , Canada As Quarry’s senior advisor in interaction design, Robert leads projects for clients who want to distinguish themselves in the marketplace by the quality of their user experience. In 2000, Robert introduced the use of personas to the design process at Quarry and has since then employed personas for projects in telecommunications, corporate real estate, logistics, and biotechnology. He has also helped to develop methods for designing products that both satisfy the goals of customers and build the organization’s brand. With over 12 years experience designing software and web applications, Robert’s work has taken him throughout North America and Europe and includes familiar names such as Sony and FedEx.

In 2005, Forrester Research recognized Quarry as a source of industry expertise in their report, “Where To Get Help With Persona Projects”. Some of this expertise is captured in Robert’s invited chapter in a new book to be published by Morgan Kaufmann later this year, titled The Persona Lifecycle.

Robert is a highly-rated speaker and teacher who has presented many times for UPA, STC, SIGCHI, and a variety of global organizations. He lectures on user experience at the University of Waterloo in Canada .

Daniel Szuc is the Principal Usability consultant with Apogee Usability Asia Ltd. - www.apogeehk.com - a Hong Kong-based usability company that assists companies in Asia like PCCW, HSBC, Cathay Pacific, Marriott, Yahoo and eBay make their products easier to use. He has also worked with Telstra Australia and IBM.

Daniel has spoken on Usability in Hong Kong , China , Singapore and Australia .

He is a founding member and President of the Usability Professionals Association chapter in Hong Kong and holds a BS in Information Management from Melbourne University Australia .

Gerry Gaffney is highly experienced in usability and related areas. As well as taking the lead in all significant projects undertaken by Information & Design, he has lectured in Usability and User Experience Design at under-graduate and post-graduate level at Swinburne University in Melbourne, as well as guest-lecturing at RMIT, Deakin and VUT. He writes and speaks frequently on usability in a variety of forums.

He has developed usability training materials for a variety of commercial and academic organizations.

He has spoken on usability topics in Australia , Hong Kong , China and Taiwan .

Several of his articles have been published in the national press. He has also spoken about user-centered design on national radio.

Jared Braiterman runs jared RESEARCH in San Francisco , a global company for product innovation and business strategy.

A Stanford and Harvard trained Anthropologist (PhD, 1996), Jared and his associates work with Silicon Valley start-ups, new media, financial services, educational toy manufacturers, telcos, and business software companies. He lectures at universities and conferences, corporate workshops and executive education.

Jared has begun an ethnographic study of the social impact of new communication technologies in China and will meet with business leaders and design educators. He will also continue his Mandarin studies in Beijing in the fall of 2005.

With eight years of experience as senior research staff in IBM and eBay, Jianming Dong has conducted and led a number of high-profile user experience research initiatives. His research interests and expertise cover a broad scope of User Centered design, from exploratory, to formative and summative research methodologies. Dr. Dong is the creator of EZSort, a popular card-sorting and cluster analysis software widely used in the HCI community worldwide. He also holds at least 4 issued US patents, 6 pending US patents and 7 published invention disclosures in the field of HCI design and evaluation. Dr. Dong presented numerous research articles, and taught tutorials at CHI, UPA and other leading conferences. He also routinely reviews journal and conference submissions. Dr. Dong is co-author of Chinese book "HCI: User-Centered Design and Evaluation". Dr. Dong received his Ph.D. from Purdue University .

Limin Paul Fu is the Lead User Experience Researcher at eBay. His work and research interest include usability, ethnography, and survey research. In the past five years, he led many key projects and initiatives at eBay. His recent work is mainly focused on user experience research for eBay China. Prior to eBay he was a senior usability engineer at online bookstore Fatbrain.com, a Barnes & Noble company. He had many publications in "Ergonomics", "Behaviour and Information Technology", and conferences. His recent paper includes "Driving the Ultimate Ecommerce User Experience in China" in HCII 2005. He is also a co-author of Chinese book "HCI: User-Centered Design and Evaluation". Dr. Fu received his Ph.D. in Human Factors and Ergonomics from Purdue University.

Director of Events, Style-Vision Style-Vision is a trend and consumer insight agency based in the South of France. They are the authors of the Mood Theory, a unique qualitative method for looking at users and consumers in our changing world. A Biomedical Science graduate, Amy and her team examine global lifestyle trends and predict how they will affect consumers in future. As Director of Events, Amy's core responsibilities are centred on organising trend seminars to discuss the key-drivers of consumers with a global client group.

Robin Zhu is a GUI designer in Microsoft Advanced Technology Center. He focuses on the next generation visual design for Windows Mobile operating system, embedded device. Included GUI, VIS , Animation design, UX, etc while keeping the goal: design with emotion. Also he participated in Windows Mobile 5.0, Office and MSN visual design.

Ricky Xu is the Design Director of CREATIVE Technology (China Design Centre). He is responsible for developing global business product’s interactive design and GUI design. Some of those products won the “Best of CES” Awards at consumer electronics show. He is focusing on portable entertainment devices UI design and Flash interactive design and research. He has been participated in Nomad Digital Music Player/Zen Series Media Player/Prodikey Series Musical Keyboard/Hansvison Series Software/WaWaYaYa Children Education Software/Foxmail Email Client / IGRS platform etc.