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: Bermon Painter
- 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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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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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