You asked for it, you got it - an event focused on USER RESEARCH. We will have a panel of 4 user research industry experts to educate and enlighten.

You can arrive at 5:30, do some networking, then we'll start the panel discussion around 6:00. We should be done before 8:00 p.m.

Our panel will consist of:

Carrie Sawyer
Carrie Sawyer is User Research Manager for Cars.com, based in Chicago, Illinois. She has been working in the field of User Experience since 2004 and in that time has conducted exciting research both nationally and internationally. Carrie earned her master’s in Human Computer Interaction from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and her bachelor’s in New Media Arts and Science from Indiana University.

Carrie enjoys many parts of the User Experience field, but her passion lies in user research and understanding what makes her users tick. (Work doesn’t get much better than an successful research study!) She has a wide toolkit of IA and research methods, and is always looking for new ways to expand her knowledge about research and UX overall. Carrie’s most recent success includes leading iPhone research that informed the development of the Cars.com app. (350K downloads since the February 2010 launch!) She looks forward to a year packed with research studies and user mysteries revealed.

Polly Greathouse
Polly Greathouse is a Senior Behavioral Researcher at HSBC, the World’s Local (and largest) Bank. As a member of the Strategic arm of the HSBC Global enterprise, Customer Experience, Technology researchers define, create and execute multichannel user research such as field observation, contextual interviewing, stakeholder interviews, analysis of tasks, journeys, industry trends, social trends, competitive analysis, usability and validation testing. She holds a Master of Design Methods graduate from the IIT Institute of Design (2008) and a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois. Polly has designed and performed research for pharmaceutical, MacArthur Foundation ThinkeringSpaces, telecommunications, housewares, financial, interactive spaces, and commercial mobile mapping and navigation products. Making a difference in the emergent fields of digital services and strategic design planning are her focus for the near future.

Gabby Hon
Gabby Hon is an independent Senior User Experience Consultant in Chicago. With more than 10 years experience in UX, she's worked on a wide variety of clients including Allstate, American Express, Nissan, Fifth Third Bank, Home Depot, KitchenAid and Hyatt Hotels. Her agency experience includes Tribal DDB, Digitas, Royal Order of Experience Design, Arc Worldwide, Critical Mass and OgilvyOne.

Gabby is active in the User Experience community as the host of UX Book Club Chicago (uxbookclubchicago.org) and volunteer for IA Summit 2011. She recently conducted a workshop on Consensus Facilitation at IA Summit 2010 in Phoenix.

Gabby can be found on Twitter (@gabbyhon) and her personal site/portfolio, staywiththegroup.com.

Carrie Trieglaff
Carrie has over 15 years of User Experience and Integrated Marketing experience and is currently Sr. User Researcher and Insight Analyst at CDW.com. Her specialties are results-driven hybrid research plans for cross channel experiences; evangelizing User Insights; and making research fun, interesting and valuable. Her clients have included Swiss Bank Corporation, JP Morgan, BT Alex Brown, UBS Warburg Dillon Read, Brinson Partners, Gramaphone Records, Allstate, American Paper Corporation, Hilton Guest, Paine Webber and many others. In 2002 she shifted gears to specialize strictly in User Research. She is now the Lead Senior User Insights Analyst at CDW.com, initiating and managing the Ecommerce User Experience Research Program, which drives strategy, design and content decisions for CDW's $2bil+ web properties. She holds a Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction from DePaul University in Chicago (2005) and a Bachelor in English Literature with a Minor in Travel Writing from the University of Illinois in Champaign/ Urbana. She recently hosted a series of workshops on integrating User Research into a digital project planning and she has a NEW blog - www.iheartusers.com - which will be all about User Research approaches, methods, deliverables, challenges, programs and insights. You can follow Carrie on Twitter @iheartusers

Think about what questions you would want answered by this panel and EMAIL THEM TO ME ([masked]) BEFORE MONDAY MAY 10TH. We will try to get to as many questions as possible.

Seating is limited to about 95 people but there is standing room/floor sitting room for more.