The Biggest and Most Authoritative Library of Open-Source UX Design Resources

Don Norman is widely regarded as the creator of the term “UX design.” An expert in design, usability, and cognitive science, Norman strongly advocated for user-centered design, which now underpins almost all design fields. His ideas on aesthetics, affordances, and usability profoundly impact the way we design everything, from doors to software applications.

In 1993, he joined Apple as a User Experience Architect—the first-ever use of the phrase “user experience” in a job title. Norman’s books, The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design, are regarded as essential readings for any design student. He is currently director of The Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego, and is also co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group.

Don Norman is the author of numerous books including "Emotional Design," and more recently, "Living with Complexity." He is co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, a professor at KAIST (in Korea), an IDEO fellow, and a design theorist, studying the fundamentals of modern design.

Donald A. Norman has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds an honorary degree from the University of Padua, Italy. He has been a professor of Computer Science (at Northwestern University), Psychology, and Cognitive Science (at the University of California, San Diego).

William Hudson is a User Experience Strategist who consults, writes and teaches in the fields of user-centred design, user experience and usability. He has over 40 years experience in the development of interactive systems, initially with a background in software engineering. William was the product and user interface designer for the Emmy-award-winning "boujou"; now an indispensible tool in many film studios. He has specialized in interaction design and human-computer interaction since the late 1980's. William has written and taught courses which have been presented to hundreds of software and web developers, designers and managers in the UK, North America and Europe. He has developed and presented courses for the Nielsen Norman Group. William is the founder and principal consultant of Syntagm, a consultancy specializing in the design of interactive systems established in 1985.

Recognized as a leader in the design community, Karen has pioneered transformative ideas and design approaches throughout her career. Karen is the inventor of Contextual Inquiry-the industry standard for gathering field data to understand how technology impacts the way people work. Contextual Inquiry and the design processes based on it provide a revolutionary approach for designing new products and systems based on a deep understanding of the context of use. Contextual Inquiry forms the base of Contextual Design, InContext's full customer-centered design process.

Karen co-founded InContext Enterprises in 1992 to use Contextual Design techniques to coach product teams and deliver customer-centered designs to businesses across multiple industries. The books, Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems, and Rapid Contextual Design, are used by companies and universities all over the world. Karen is a member of the CHI Academy (awarded to significant contributors in the Computer-Human Interaction Association) and received the first Life Time Award for Practice at CHI2010 for her contributions to the field. Karen's extensive experience with teams and all types of work and life practice underlies the innovation and reliable quality consistently delivered by InContext's teams.

Karen also has more than 20 years of teaching experience, professionally and in university settings. She holds a doctorate in applied psychology from the University of Toronto.

Lene Nielsen is an Associate Professor at ITU, Department of Business IT, and Head of the TIME (Technology, Innovation, Management, and Entrepreneurship) research group.

Her research focuses on personas, and she was the first in the world to write a Ph.D. about personas. Her research topics include the many aspects of the development and use of personas, such as:

• Global personas

• Personas based on quantitative data

• Persona descriptions as communication to specific and different audiences

• The relationship between persona description and data

• The use of personas in agile development

• Personas in service design.

Lene Nielsen har published two books on personas and more than 80 papers

Lene Nielsen teaches service design and different aspects of innovation.

Frank Spillers is a web and software usability expert, a distinguished speaker, author, and internationally respected Senior Usability practitioner. He is an expert in improving the design and usability of large-scale websites, web applications, desktop, and mobile apps. He is the founder of the usability consultancy firm Experience Dynamics. With an MSc in Cognitive Science and eleven years of experience in UX design, Spillers has worked with clients such as Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Microsoft. He is an experienced practitioner of user-centered and emotional design and has developed a new research technique called “cognitive archeology,” which aids experts when researching emotional product design.

Before founding Experience Dynamics in 2001, Frank managed usability consulting for WebCriteria (now Coremetrics) and worked with students of Dr. Donald Norman (the grandfather of User-Centered Design) at Intuitive Design, a San Diego-based User-Centered Design consultancy. His current clients include Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Logitech, GE, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, KeyBank, Four Seasons, Chase, Target.com, and Whitepages.com. He has trained thousands of teams and individuals in usability and User-Centered Design techniques in private as well as public settings.

Frank received his Master's in Cognitive Science (MS) from Birmingham University, the UK in the user experience of collaborative (social) virtual (3D) environments.

Dr. Dianne Cyr is a Professor in the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She is the author of 4 books and over 100 research articles, book chapters, or proceedings. Dr. Cyr has received numerous awards including Best paper for 2009 in the top-ranked MISQ journal.

Her background is varied and interdisciplinary. Both their Bachelor's and Masters's degrees are in Psychology, and she worked in clinical psychology for the better part of a decade before returning to university to embark on doctoral studies. The earlier training held her in good stead for my Ph.D. research which was focused on the linkage of strategy and human resource management in international joint ventures. She is currently at Simon Fraser University as a Full Professor with tenure in Management Information Systems.

Since 1994 her primary role has been as a university professor, coupled with activities in the business world. She joined Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 1994 as an Adjunct Professor, and carried a very full teaching load (of up to 8 courses in some years), while at the same time conducting research, publishing, and organizing a consulting practice. An opportunity arose for full-time academic employment at the start-up Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC) in 1998. As one of the founding faculty, she was involved in numerous activities to shape the mission, curriculum and structures for TechBC. More specifically, she developed the Management and Technology program until the closure of the university in 2002. At this time, TechBC was merged into SFU, and another academic chapter began.

As the President of Global Alliance Management (1993-2004), she provided consulting and training services in the area of joint ventures and strategic alliances to small and mid-sized companies. During this time she made numerous public presentations on the topic of joint ventures or alliances and developed a program in alliances for the British Columbia Trade Development Corporation. As a Director of Canada Sri Lanka Capital Corporation (1994-2003), she was involved in the development of an agro-industrial joint venture in Sri Lanka.