Speakers
Want to learn shiny new things about UX and design? Our friendly, knowledgeable and approachable speakers will help and inspire you. You’ll also have time to ask all your questions!
We will announce our first speakers and workshop teachers soon! Our speakers and workshop teachers are the best in their fields, and they love to share what they know, how they work and what drives them. On top of that, they are all smashingly nice, and really want to help!
Had a wonderful day @smashingconf. Thanks for putting up such a great event! And so happy that it's happening all over again in 2026. #smashingconf
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Catt Small
Catt is a Staff Product Designer at Dropbox, game maker, and developer. She has worked with companies of all sizes including Asana, Etsy, SoundCloud, and Nasdaq. She started coding around the age of 10 and designing at the age of 15. She graduated from SVA with a BFA in Graphic Design in 2011 and later received an MS in Integrated Digital Media from NYU in 2016. Catt also makes awkward video games, writes about professional development, and draws artwork of all kinds.
Profile photo: Lil Chen
- Talk
- Moving from Execution to Strategy as a Designer
- On the web
- https://cattsmall.com/
- On LinkedIn
- cattsmall/
- On Mastodon
- mastodon.social/@cattsmall
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Emily Anderson
Emily is the founder of a boutique design studio, Ampersand. With extensive experience across highly emotional and regulated industries, Emily has spent the majority of her career asking: “what can go wrong?” As a result, understanding risk, emotion, and unhappy paths are core to her mindset. Her mission is to help as many people as possible to bring this thinking into their processes.
Emily is incredibly passionate about speaking and writing about the impact that design can have on users (both good and bad), and the importance of systems thinking.
- Talk
- Beyond the Happy Path
- On the web
- https://www.ampersandco.studio
- On LinkedIn
- emily-and
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Marie van Driessche
Marie van Driessche is a Deaf accessibility expert and Accessibility Officer at UWV, the Dutch Employee Insurance Agency. With over a decade of experience in UX research and design across sectors including finance, public broadcasting, and digital agencies, she specializes in inclusive design that goes beyond compliance.
Marie is an internationally established speaker on web accessibility and inclusive UX. She also mentors graduation students at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Outside of her work, she loves kitesurfing, bouldering, and reading cookbooks in bed before falling asleep.
- Talk
- Accessibility for Everyone
- On LinkedIn
- /in/marie-van-driessche/
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Cassie Evans
Cassie is an international speaker and developer with a background in graphic design and motion design. She got started with coding back in the days of Myspace and Neopets and is on a mission to make the internet more whimsical again. She currently works as a creative developer and educator on GSAP at Webflow.
When learning to code she was blown away by how supportive the web community was and loves nothing more than giving back and passing this knowledge on to new developers. Her favourite motto for teaching others is "assume zero experience but infinite intelligence".
She loves creating and encouraging spaces for people to share, learn and bounce ideas off each other. When she's not tinkering on the web, she's off having adventures in the English countryside with her best pal Brody — the most wonderful dog in the world.
- Talk
- Game On.
- On the web
- https://www.cassie.codes
- On LinkedIn
- cassie-codes
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Nate Baldwin
Senior Staff Designer at Adobe
Nate is a designer driven by a passion for elevating enterprise-level design quality through systems and processes. His deep curiosity about visual perception and science fuels his work in creating flexible, adaptive, and accessible design systems.
Nate has worked on design systems for over 10 years, with a specialty in generative and accessible color. Originally starting his journey in Fine Art, Nate discovered a passion for UX design and now brings his expertise to Adobe's Spectrum as a Senior Staff Designer. He’s the creator of free online tools and resources for design such as ColorAndContrast.com, LeonardoColor.io, and Proportio.app.
- Talk
- Reading Unknown Waters
- On the web
- https://natebaldw.in/
- On Bluesky
- @natebaldwin.bsky.social
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Yiying Lu
You might not know Yiying Lu's name, but you've probably seen her work. She created the Twitter Fail Whale and designed emojis like the dumpling 🥟, chopsticks 🥢, takeout box 🥡, fortune cookie 🥠, and bubble tea 🧋 that millions of us use every day.
Born in Shanghai, educated in Sydney and London, Yiying now works from San Francisco where she helps global companies like Disney, Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft design things that make sense across different cultures. It's tricky work — how do you create something that resonates in Beijing and Berlin, Tokyo and Texas?
Yiying believes design can bring people together, even when we don't speak the same language. Through her talks at TEDx, SXSW, and Adobe MAX, she shares what she's learned about creating symbols and experiences that connect us all.
- Talk
- Twitter Fail Whale, Dumpling 🥟 & Boba 🧋 Emojis and the meaning of Life!
- On the web
- https://www.yiyinglu.com/
- On LinkedIn
- yiyinglu
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Mystery Speaker
Obviously, our Mystery Speaker is a bit of a… well, Mystery. In true smashing style, you can expect something wonderful. It’s someone worth waking up for. Something unexpected, a little magical, and very much unmissable.
So yes, set that alarm for Day Two. Grab a coffee. Be curious. You won’t want to miss this.
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Vitaly Friedman
Creative Lead and Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine
Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most probably running front-end/UX workshops and webinars. He loves solving complex UX, front-end and performance problems.
- On the web
- https://smashingmagazine.com
- On LinkedIn
- vitalyfriedman