The critical importance of supporting designer and developer creativity – Elizabeth Churchill
When we think about UX as a discipline, what often first comes to mind are everyday consumer experiences from websites to games, or perhaps enterprise and productivity tools. In recent years however, Elizabeth has focused instead on UX for designers and developers and how to enhance and support their creativity. Based in studies of designer and developer experiences, Elizabeth’s team have been improving documentation, working on task accomplishment and smoothing workflows, focusing on better communication and collaboration, and addressing tech and design debt management and team productivity.In this talk, Elizabeth will discuss case studies, and share why supporting designer and developer creative tools leads to better and more inclusive user experiences for everyone.

About Elizabeth
Dr Elizabeth Churchill is a Senior Director of UX at Google. Elizabeth has built UX and Research teams at Google, eBay, Yahoo, PARC, and FujiXerox. She Co-Chairs Google’s UX Leadership Council (UXLC), and was a co-founder of Google’s UXR Steering Committee which she co-chaired for 2 years before joining the UXLC.

Elizabeth holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and honorary doctorates from the University of Sussex and the University of Stockholm. She is a member of the Association for Computer Machinery’s (ACM) CHI Academy, is an ACM Fellow, Distinguished Scientist, and an ACM Distinguished Speaker. She served as the ACM’s Executive Vice President for 2 years, from 2018-2020, and was ACM’s Secretary Treasurer from 2016-2018. Elizabeth has published over 200 articles in peer reviewed journals, in conferences, and in magazines. She has also co-edited 5 books on various topics and has co-authored 2 books (Foundations for Designing User Centered Systems, and Designing with Data). She has over 50 patents already granted or pending.

Elizabeth is a visiting professor at Imperial College’s Dyson School of Design Engineering in London and is an advisory board member for the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California and also for the Flickr Foundation (flickr.org). She recently took up a position as Co-Editor in Chief of ACM’s Interactions magazine.

In 2016, she received a Citris-Banatao Institute Award Athena Award for Women in Technology for her Executive Leadership. She has been named one of the top women leaders in UX over the last several years. In 2023, she received ACM SIGCHI’s Lifetime Service Award.