Speakers

Marty Gage

Marty is a strategic user research leader with 20+ years experience helping drive billion dollar growth for Fortune 500 companies.

His unique approach focuses on understanding the experiences people wish for as opposed to their experiences today.

The insight  produced from this understanding is used to define and measure value, and inspire and align enterprise scale teams—ultimately providing the creative fuel needed to elevate experiences and transform businesses.

Currently, he is the VP of User Experience Research at Lextant: the human experience firm, an industry acclaimed user research and strategy consultancy.

He is the author of User Experience Research: Discover what customers really want, a visual, step by step guide to getting the first step in the design thinking process right every time.

Colin Gray 

Colin M. Gray is an Associate Professor at Indiana University, where they serve as Program Director in Human-Computer Interaction Design. They hold appointments as a guest professor at Beijing Normal University and as a visiting researcher at Northumbria University. Colin’s research focuses on how the pedagogy and practice of designers shape design abilities, particularly concerning dark patterns, ethics, and design knowledge. Their work spans multiple disciplines, including human-computer interaction, instructional design and technology, policy and law, design theory and education, and engineering and technology education. In their free time, Colin loves to travel, cook, and take photographs (follow them on Instagram @colinmgray).

Brad McKinney

Brad currently practices at the “world’s biggest and best” children’s museum: The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. In his role as Lead Interactive Media Designer, he is responsible for the design of digital interactives which promote family engagement through the disciplines of UX Design, UI Design, and Motion Graphics. Additionally, Brad is Principal/Owner of ellojeo, a small firm serving mainly non-profit clients in central Indiana for over 22 years.

An educator at heart, Brad taught Visual Communication Design for sixteen years at two institutions, Anderson University and Indiana University – Herron College of Art & Design. Brad has served as Director of the Basile Center for Art, Design, and Public Life at Herron, as well as Assistant. Director of the Software Research Center at AU. Brad holds a Master of Architecture from Ball State University and a BA in Graphic Design from Anderson University. During his graduate degree, he designed and built many “temporary” structures for educational spaces around the world, some of which became “permanent.”

Outside of work, Brad enjoys woodworking in his shop constructed of wood pallets—the second structure in Indiana to receive a permit for pallet construction, the first in Madison county. Wood sculptures created in the shop have been accepted in juried exhibitions. He also writes on progressive pedagogical practices for a forthcoming book on the subject, collaborating with former colleagues and former students on the material. With what free time remains, he enjoys the theater and traveling with his wife, Jill; and watching his two kids swim competitively.

Andrew Puchle

Designing solutions that not only work from a functionality perspective, but are intuitive to use has become one of my life’s great passions alongside building accessibility into a large organization. Accessibility poses an amazing challenge because accessible solutions are really about designing usable and inclusive solutions. I was introduced to people with disability first in graduate school and then while working for various organizations in Washington DC. Any site that is affiliated with the government is required to be 508 compliant.

After I joined Eli Lilly in 2015 as a user experience lead designer, I started advocating for inclusive design and accessibility. I helped to build and champion the Lilly Design System, built on atomic design that incorporates accessibility into all components. I helped to create Access Lilly, an award winning internal program, designed to look at disability inclusion for employees. This grew into forming a digital accessibility team, which I proudly help to lead. 

Doug Scamahorn

Doug Scamahorn is a passionate workshop facilitator and designer with over two decades of experience collaborating with teams to produce digital experiences across a range of industries, including finance, healthcare, energy, and retail. As an Innovation Design Facilitator at Discover, Doug leverages Design Thinking to help product and business teams explore new opportunities and co-create future solutions. Doug is dedicated to creating collaborative environments that unlock the full potential of teams, empowering them to design and innovate with empathy.