What

Layers is a 3-day conference during WWDC to talk about design, celebrate our industry, and eat snacks.

Like a party, but for learning.

Presenters

presenters
presenters
Speaker
Ash
Huang
Designer,
Adobe

Ash Huang is an artist, author, and designer. She’s done interaction, product and brand work at companies like Pinterest, Twitter, and Dropbox. She currently works on Adobe XD in San Francisco. Her essays have been featured in Fast Company, Offscreen Magazine, and Thought Catalog.
Speaker
Amélie
Lamont
Product Design Lead,
New York Times

Amélie Lamont is a product designer(d) and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently employed at The New York Times and specializes in using cultural studies and design anthropology to inform her design process and to build the Customer Product Design System.
presenters
Speaker
Brad
Ellis
Founder,
Tall West

Brad Ellis is the founder of Tall West, a creative agency whose clients include Airbnb and Target. He is an Apple Design Award winner, and has received two Webbys for app design. Brad created the logo for Square, where he was the second designer on staff and first hand model for the original product packaging. He speaks on custom interface design, and specializes in unique interactions and animation prototypes. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two sons.
Speaker
Chelsea
Atwell
Former Design Lead,
Hillary for America

Chelsea Atwell is an art director and designer living in NYC. For the last year she worked on the historic presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton, serving as a lead designer. Currently, she is working at Adler Design and Nobody Studios in NYC. Chelsea received her BFA degree from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.
Speaker
Ida
Woldemichael
Former Design Lead,
Hillary for America

Ida Woldemichael is an art director living in Harlem. With over 10 years of design experience, she has worked with top-tier agencies and non-profit organizations, including the Clinton Foundation. Most recently, she joined the historic presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton, serving as a lead designer and developing the popular supporter tagline, “I’m with her.”
Speaker
Karlee
Esmailli
Accounts Director,
Cards Against Humanity

Karlee Esmailli is an Accounts Director and comedian living in Chicago, IL. She works at Cards Against Humanity where she helps pull off incredibly stupid stunts, like the time they mailed literal bull poop to customers on Black Friday. At Blackbox (Cards Against Humanity’s boring new shipping company), Karlee helps independent artists sell their games, comics, and prints all over the world. She also gets on stage to make people laugh.
Speaker
Jane
Ng
Lead Artist,
Campo Santo

Jane is currently the lead artist at Campo Santo, where she worked on their awarding winning debut game Firewatch. She has over 14 years experience creating environment art for video games. Previously Jane was a Lead Artist at Double Fine Productions (Brutal Legend, Stacking, The Cave), Senior Artist at Maxis (Spore) and Lead World Artist at EA Redwood Shores (Return of the King; The Godfather). Jane is a frequent speaker at GDC and serves on the art jury of the Independent Games Festival. This year Jane is also a curating jurist for the annual AIAS Into the Pixel art exhibition, which celebrates the art of video games from around the world.
Speaker
James
Buckhouse
Founder,
Sequoia Creative Lab

James Buckhouse is the founder of the Sequoia Creative Lab at Sequoia Capital. Buckhouse built his story-driven design skills as a cinematographer, choreographer and occasional punch-up writer on Antz, Shrek, Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek 4D, Shrek the Halls, Madagascar, and Madagascar 2 and Matrix Revolutions. He earned his product skills as Twitter's Sr. Experience Architect, designing and shipping guerrilla growth products. James also has served as a production designer for New York City Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Pennsylvania Ballet, and founded Sensorium at San Francisco Ballet. His art work has been shown at the Guggenheim Works & Process Series, the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, ICA in London, and the Dia Center. He lectures at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and dschool.
Speaker
Linda
Dong
Designer


Linda Dong is a freelance designer specializing in UI and hardware prototyping. Previously, she worked on Apple’s Prototyping Team exploring future technology and conceptual UI, and worked as a visual designer on iMovie and Final Cut Pro. She plays a lot of Zelda and was once a moderator on the official Nintendo forums.

Speaker
May-Li
Khoe
Director of Design and Long-Term Research,
Khan Academy

May-Li is the Director of Design & Co-Founder of Long-Term Research at Khan Academy. Her work spans over 20 years in a broad range of areas: from inventing interactions for new human input at Apple, to building educational games at Leapfrog, to doing design research at the MIT Media Lab. May-Li loves designing systems that cultivate creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking. She also DJs, dances, and daydreams about joyful ways to subvert the status quo.
Speaker
Mia
Blume
Design Leadership Coach



Mia Blume is a design leadership coach and consultant. She advises companies on how to build useful, well-crafted products and shape healthy design organizations. Previously, Mia led teams at Pinterest, Square, and IDEO. She has designed at scale for both Fortune 500 companies and startups, developed international products, and built teams in rapid growth environments.
Speaker
Victor
Ng
Senior Manager,
New York Times

Victor Ng is currently the Senior Manager of Digital Design at The New York Times. Previously, he led the web design team for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and spent several years as a designer at Pinterest.
Speaker
Ted
Boda
Product Design Manager,
Instagram

Ted Boda is currently a Product Design Manager at Instagram. He was formerly the Director of Design at Udacity, Lead Designer at Nest, Lead Mobile Designer at Netflix, and Lead Product Designer at Apple where he spent 5 years crafting the Keynote experience on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Ted started his design career at Duarte Design where he worked with Apple and one-on-one with Al Gore, to help create the compelling and impactful slides that were the basis for the Academy Award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth.
Deets

Layers is a 3-day design conference in San Jose from June 5-7, the same time as WWDC. Join us downtown during Apple’s biggest developer event to meet industry peers and experience meaningful, diverse, and entertaining content dedicated to design.

Right across the street from the McEnery Convention Center and smack dab in the middle of the WWDC festivities and community events.

Can't wait? Check out these awesome videos of our past talks.

Arrangements for transportation, lodging, and meals must be made separately. Passes are transferrable and non-refundable.

Location

Montgomery Theater
271 S Market St.
San Jose, CA 95113
United States

Register

View Code of Conduct
✨CODE OF CONDUCT✨

Hi, this is Jessie Char and Elaine Pow and we're the organizers of this conference. You may be asking, "Jessie and Elaine, what are you doing in the code of conduct?" and that's a great question. We're here to explain our behavior policies at Layers.

🎤👸👸Ahem:

Layers is committed to providing a harassment-free event for everyone. Harassment doesn't only take place as a result of intention; it can also happen when we don't stop to think about how our choices may make others uncomfortable. Let's go over some common forms of harassment:

🚫 Verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, etc.
🚫 Bullying of any kind
🚫 Sexual images in public spaces
🚫 Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following
🚫 Sustained disruption of talks or other events
🚫 Uninvited and/or inappropriate physical contact
🚫 Unwelcome sexual attention
🚫 Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behaviour

If any Layers attendee engages in one or more of the inappropriate behaviors listed above, we reserve the right to take any action we deem necessary. This includes, but is not limited to: issuing a warning, complete removal from the conference without refund, and contacting the appropriate authorities.

In the unfortunate case that anyone is made to feel uncomfortable at our event, notify us or one of our volunteers directly (we'll be highly visible at the conference). Whether it's a full-fledged complaint, or a "hey, that person could have handled this better" comment, we are dedicated to providing a safe space for everyone to discuss their experience. If you are uncomfortable approaching us in person, email us at info@layers.is or submit an anonymous form.

You may be thinking "This isn't as much code of conduct writing as I'm used to seeing. How are these two princess emoji really going to handle a broken conduct situation?" As working women who've experienced all sorts of behaviors directed toward us in professional situations and environments, harassment will not be taken lightly.

💗Jessie & Elaine 💗
👸OFFICIAL princesses and rulers with iron fists of LAYERS👸

Thanks to Geek Feminism for the list of what qualifies as harassment. We welcome feedback on our code of conduct; if you believe we have missed an important qualifier of harassment, please let us know at info@layers.is.