UXCON26 · The Speaker Lineup Is Here
Netflix. The New York Times. Amazon. Verizon. Target. And the father of UX himself -- all on one stage. October 8, 2026.
UXCON26 is here.
After two years of bringing the UX community together for conversations that actually matter, we’re back with our biggest, most inspiring lineup yet. If you were at UXCON24 or UXCON25, you already know what this day feels like. If this is your first time hearing about us: welcome. You picked a good year to show up.
This is the event where practitioners, researchers, leaders, and builders come to think harder, connect deeper, and leave genuinely changed by the conversations they had. We don’t do surface-level. We go into the work.
And this year, the work starts with someone who invented the field.
The Speakers
#01 · Don Norman
Co-Founder, Nielsen Norman Group · Former VP of Advanced Technology, Apple · Founder, Design Lab at UC San Diego Headlining Keynote
Don Norman is famous for doors that are confusing to open. They are called Norman Doors. If you have ever pushed a door that should be pulled, you have lived inside one of his ideas.
That is what Don Norman does. He makes you see the world differently.
He coined the term “user experience.” He wrote The Design of Everyday Things, the book on virtually every designer’s shelf, now in its revised edition and still as essential as the day it was published. He helped found the world’s first Department of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego. He became Vice President of Advanced Technology at Apple. He co-founded the Nielsen Norman Group, the firm that shaped how the entire industry thinks about human-centered design. He has published 21 books translated into over 20 languages. He holds three honorary degrees and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
One of his postdoctoral fellows at UCSD once told him he was wrong. That postdoc was Geoff Hinton, who went on to help invent the modern neural network and win the Nobel Prize. Don likes it when people tell him he is wrong.
At 88, he is still going. His latest book, Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered, pushed him beyond writing into action. He now runs the Don Norman Design Award, a global charity recognizing early career practitioners doing humanity-centered design, with applications from 26 countries.
He does not just think about where design needs to go. He is doing something about it.
Hearing Don Norman speak in 2026 is not a checkbox on a conference list. It is a genuine once-in-a-career opportunity.
Today, we are celebrating our speaker announcement with a special Unveiling Discount, available for the next 3 days only. This offer expires Friday at midnight.
#02 · Calvin Robertson
Enterprise Design Leader Keynote Speaker
Calvin Robertson is a designer, leader, and educator with over two decades of experience in human-centered innovation. He has built and led design teams at the Federal Reserve Bank, Lowe’s, and Best Buy, delivering enterprise solutions across retail, finance, education, and manufacturing. He currently leads Employee Experience within Global IT at Corning, overseeing UX, communications, and learning and development with a focus on building a design culture rooted in creativity, transparency, and meaningful connection.
Beyond enterprise design, Calvin is expanding into the gaming industry through Jubileague, where he founded a youth mentorship program called Playmaker to guide aspiring game designers in creating original, resonant experiences.
His session, Overflowing Leadership, brings all of that together: what it looks like when design thinking, strategic planning, and genuine care for people drive outcomes at every level of an organization.
#03 · Amanda Gelb
Founder · Aha Studio Keynote Speaker
Amanda’s official title is Professional Question Asker. She is not joking, and once you see her work, you will understand why that is exactly the right description.
Through Aha Studio, Amanda designs high-impact workshops and learning experiences that spark genuine insight and move people toward real action. She specializes in translating complex challenges into clear frameworks that help teams move forward with confidence. Her keynote at UXCON26 will be sharp, practical, and the kind of thing you find yourself quoting in meetings for months afterward.
before we continue……
JOIN OUR TEAM
We are looking for a Community Engagement and Service Design Lead to support a community-funded initiative focused on strengthening relationships with local businesses and improving participation across a commercial corridor in Maryland.
If you are a strong communicator, a relationship builder, and available for some in-person work in the Maryland area, this one is for you.
#04 · Niyati Gupta
Product Design Lead · Netflix Speaker and Panelist
People ask Niyati what she does at Netflix. She tells them she designs. What she does not say is that half her job never shows up in a design file.
Niyati shapes global commerce and partnership experiences at Netflix. Over the past decade she has led design at Google and WhatsApp, building products used by hundreds of millions of people. Her superpower is the messy middle: the space where user needs, business goals, and engineering constraints do not naturally agree. She has spent her career helping cross-functional teams find clarity there and making sure design has a real voice when it matters most.
Her talk, The Invisible Work of UX, pulls back the curtain on the facilitation, the framing, and the organizational influence that separates good designers from indispensable ones. You will leave with a new lens on the hidden work that makes design matter at every level, and concrete ways to practice it whether you are growing into leadership or already there.
#05 · Raven Adaramola
Senior Product Designer · The New York Times Panelist
Millions of people open the New York Times Games app every single day to play Wordle, Connections, or The Crossword. Raven Adaramola helps design that experience.
As a Senior Product Designer and published artist on the NYT Discovery team, Raven has built a career at the intersection of creativity and strategy, crafting designs that resonate with diverse audiences. Her career spans edtech, social good agencies, streaming, and media, giving her a cross-industry depth that very few designers have and a perspective on designing for genuine daily habit that is hard to find anywhere else.
#06 · Leo Hoar, PhD
Founder · UXR Institute Panelist and Workshop Leader
Leo Hoar saw a gap in the industry. UX researchers needed advanced, career-focused education and it simply did not exist. So he built the UXR Institute to fill it.
A former academic who began his UX research career at Samsung, Leo has spent years helping start-ups find product-market fit through great research and now helps UX leaders build meaningful learning programs for their communities. His talk at UXCON26 will give you the kind of advanced, practical research education that most conferences simply do not offer.
#07 · Twisha Shah Brandenburg
Design Leader, UX Enterprise · Target Panelist
AI is already on your team. The question is whether your collaboration design has caught up.
Twisha is a design and product leader at Target whose work sits at the intersection of UX, product strategy, engineering constraints, and organizational systems, where experience quality gets decided long before anything ships. Over the last decade she has led cross-functional initiatives helping teams move beyond siloed execution toward shared understanding and coordinated decision-making. She writes the Substack Making an Impact, speaks internationally including at UXPA, and brings practical, experience-driven frameworks that cut through the noise.
#08 · Zach Thomas
Design Lead · Skylight Panelist
DHS. The U.S. Air Force. The CDC.
Zach Thomas leads cross-functional teams at Skylight modernizing mission-critical federal systems through human-centered design, the kind of work where getting it wrong has real consequences. Previously Global Product Design Lead at General Assembly and co-founder of the District Innovation Lab, collaborating with institutions including MIT and the International Monetary Fund. His work has been recognized by Fast Company and he serves as a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador.
#9 · Basel Fakhoury
SVP · UserTesting · Co-founder, User Interviews Panelist
If you have ever recruited research participants through User Interviews, you have used something Basel Fakhoury built.
Basel co-founded User Interviews, one of the most widely-used research recruitment platforms in the industry, which was acquired by UserTesting where he now serves as SVP. He brings a founder’s perspective on what it takes to build infrastructure that makes great UX research actually possible at scale, and where the tools and the industry are heading next.
Get Your Ticket
Heads up: this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nine speakers, with more unveiling soon. Three keynotes. Two panels. Workshops. One day.
UXCON24 sold out. UXCON25 sold out. UXCON26 will too.
We are celebrating today’s speaker announcement with a special Unveiling Discount, available for the next 3 days only. This offer expires Friday at midnight.
If you have been on the fence, this is your sign. Get in the room with Don Norman, Calvin Robertson, Amanda Gelb, and ten other incredible voices in UX, all on October 8.