Panel of Judges
Bess Ho
Bess Ho is an established executive in the Internet industry. She is leading the product strategy, design, and development at Phorena, a design manufacturer of lighting controls and light fixtures for hospitality and commercial properties. Bess is an active product designer from software, web, mobile, and TV to hardware and fine fashion jewelry. Her mobile app design landed her the prestige of Adobe & Nokia’s Open Screen Awards. Her product design is the finalist winner of the Design X Tech Startup Challenge at Hong Kong Design Association (HKDA).
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Buddy Burke
Buddy Burke takes what he’s learned from public speaking and applies it to helping entrepreneurs all around the globe. Once the world’s worst speaker, he learned from wonderful people, then made some discoveries that will help you become a compelling speaker almost immediately. Lately, he’s mentored scores of startups using his background in aviation and technology, and taught presentation skills for Apple and institutions in Europe, South and Latin America, Asia, United States, and Africa. You may sign up for a free, university-level companion course at buddyburke.net.
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Mason Friedberg
Mason is an engineer and designer working at the crossroads of functionality and aesthetic. With a background in mechanical engineering and product design, his experience in prototyping research and development, automotive, food robotics, and client product design gives him an eclectic portfolio of many different aspects of industry. Designing for emotional connection to create a user experience that draws the user in is something he strives for in all his work. Now working at the forefront of exhibit engineering and design at San Francisco's well known interactive science museum, the Exploratorium, he is leveraging his experience to create user experiences in different ways.
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Miles Ceralde
Miles is the head of product design SetSail, a technology startup that is leveraging data automation and behavioral psychology to align sales teams towards success, where he leads a small-but-mighty team of designers that tackle the gamut of technology architecture, data structure, experience, interaction, and visual design problems. Before SetSail, he led the redesign of a first-of-its-kind map-based geospatial analytics query builder for a dataset of anonymized historical location-based-services data at StreetLight Data. Some other career highlights include designing a new interface for the iOS adaptation of Scott Snibbe’s groundbreaking interactive art application, Gravilux, and working on the design of Mattel’s Barbie Collector website.
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Guest Critics
Zahin Ali
Zahin is an interaction designer at IDEO Chicago where he leads design on interdisciplinary teams to solve ambiguous problems with human-centered design thinking practices, working with a portfolio of clients in a range of industries such as automotive, healthcare, education, and financial services. In a prior career, he leveraged his Berkeley IEOR degree to play a role in Tesla achieving high volume manufacturing during the early days of the Model S program. He then made his way to design in an unconventional path via startups, a stint with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and with graduate work from Art Center College of Design and the Carnegie Mellon University School of Design where he earned a Masters in Interaction Design.
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Design is Resilience: A Personal Journey to a Career in Design
