Surya Vanka is a designer, corporate leader, educator and author who has worked at the

leading edge of designing physical and digital experiences for over twenty-five years. He has

broad industry experience including most recently as director of user experience at Microsoft.

Surya was a tenured professor of design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a

fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Study. He is the author of two books on design,

several publications, and has taught design in more than 20 countries. He is the winner of two

Microsoft Engineering Best Practice Awards, a Microsoft Achievement Award, Accessibility

Achievement Award, World Brand Congress Leadership Award and several industry

recognitions. Surya is frequently invited to keynote speeches at the most prestigious

conferences, and has won top speaker awards three times. Surya’s work has appeared in

numerous publications and news programs, including Form, I.D., Design Council, WIRED,

Interactions, the BBC and National Public Radio. Surya chaired the hugely successful 50th

Anniversary Conference of Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) in August 2015 in

Seattle. The theme of the conference, “The Future of the Future: The Next 50 Years,” brought

800 designers from 20 countries to spark the reinvention of design for 21st century. He initiated

and was part of the core team that created the DMI Design Value Scorecard, and is the creator

of a light weight, agile and adaptable design technique called Design Swarms – both of these

practices are quickly being adopted in business, non-profit and education. Surya lives in Seattle

and leads AUTHENTIC, a consulting practice that provides interaction design, user experience,

strategic innovation and design capability development for clients around the world.