Team USA
Jennifer Bove – Project Manager
Jennifer started her multifaceted career in tangible and interaction design at the circus—quite literally—at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. In the last 13 years, she has created multi-platform products and services for myriad clients including Nokia, Yahoo!, BBC, Gucci and American Express. Her design management background includes the Prada Epicenter store in New York, which inaugurated a new paradigm of tangible retail experiences. Jenn is fluent in French and Italian, and has lived and worked in the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. Before Kicker, Jenn was VP of User Experience at HUGE and at Schematic, and is on the faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Jennifer has a Masters in Interaction Design from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.
Liz Danzico – User Experience Advocate
Liz Danzico is equal parts designer, educator, and editor. She is chair and co-founder of the MFA in Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts. She is an independent consultant in New York and user experience consultant for Happy Cog, on the editorial board for Rosenfeld Media, columnist for Interactions Magazine, and on the board of Design Ignites Change. Liz has been adjunct faculty at the New School University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, and lectures widely.
She’s been editor-in-chief for Boxes and Arrows, editor-in-chief for A Brief Message, and an advisory board member of the Information Architecture Institute. In the past, Liz directed experience strategy for AIGA, Before that, she directed the information architecture teams at Barnes & Noble.com and Razorfish New York. She has a BA from Pennsylvania State University and an MA from Carnegie Mellon University.
Liz has written for Adobe ThinkTank, AIGA Journal of Design, A List Apart, Boxes and Arrows, Business Week, Eye Magazine, Gain: AIGA Journal of Business an Design, UX Matters, and writes ongoing for Bobulate.com.
Jason Santa Maria – Designer
Jason Santa Maria is the founder and principal of Mighty, a Brooklyn-based design studio. He is creative director of Typekit, a faculty member in the MFA Interaction Design program at SVA, an AIGA/NY board member, founder of Typedia, a shared encyclopedia of typefaces online, and creative director for A List Apart, a magazine for people who make websites. Discussion of design, film, and sock monkeys can often be observed on his award-winning website. His work has garnered him awards and pleasantries ranging from firm handshakes to forceful handshakes with a little hitting. Ever the design obsessif, Jason is known to take drunken arguments to fisticuffs over such frivolities as kerning and white space.
Karen McGrane – Content Editor/Wordsmith
If the internet is more awesome than it was in 1995, Karen would like to claim a very tiny piece of the credit. For more than 15 years Karen has helped create more usable digital products through the power of user experience design and content strategy. Today, as Senior Partner at Bond Art + Science, she works with clients to create personalized portals that dynamically update based on user behavior, develops data visualizations that make complex quantitative information easy to understand, and consults with publishers on ways to make their sites more appealing to readers and successful for advertisers.
Prior to starting Bond, Karen helped build the User Experience practice at Razorfish, hired as the very first Information Architect and leaving as the VP and National Lead for UX. Over the decade she spent there, she led projects for dozens of clients, overseeing major redesign initiatives for The New York Times, Condé Nast, Disney, and Citibank.
Karen is also on the faculty of the new MFA in Interaction Design program at SVA in New York, where she teaches Interaction Design History, focusing on the key movements and trends that have shaped the field, and Design Management, which aims to give students the skills they need to run successful projects, teams, and businesses.
Dan Mall – HTML/CSS Marker-upper
Dan Mall is an award-winning interactive art director, designer, and developer. Working for a range of clients from the biggest company in the world down to some of the smallest, he has a passion for playing matchmaker between engaging art direction and intuitive interaction design.
In addition to his work, Dan takes pride in his ability to articulate and communicate ideas. He has written for notable publications like A List Apart and .NET Magazine. Right at home in front of a number of audiences, Dan has led small client meetings, training sessions and workshops, and presentations to large groups. Most recently, he has taught web design and graphic design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Dan is a Senior Designer at Big Spaceship, the best digital agency in the history of the world. Dan was formerly the Interactive Director at Happy Cog, a web design agency in New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. When not at work, he enjoys married life, being a technical editor for A List Apart, singing/playing keyboards for contemporary-Christian band Four24, and writing about design and other issues on Twitter and his industry-recognized site, danielmall.com.
John Ford – Programmer
John Ford started programming full-time in 1998, threw in a B.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics for good measure, and in 2004 went into business for himself.
John’s emphasis on writing beautiful and usable code has garnered him client relationships around the globe, and his development savvy can be experienced on a variety of national brand websites, including the Food Network, HGTV, and DIY Network. Presently, John works for Automattic, the company behind WordPress, and he is currently focusing on VaultPress, a realtime backup service for WordPress.org users.
In addition to his programming work, John loves giving back, as well, and he co-organizes a local group that gives free web-related presentations monthly; he was a presenter at WordCamp San Francisco 2010, and is frequently asked to speak on a variety of web-related topics. Empowering others with knowledge to demystify the web motivates John to continue sharing his passion with as many as will listen.
