Surya Vanka
Surya Vanka is a transdisciplinary designer who has worked at the leading edge of physical and digital experiences. He is founder of Authentic Design, president emeritus of the Seattle Design Festival and was chair of Interaction Week. Surya was director of user experience at Microsoft, a tenured professor of design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Study. Surya is creator of Design Swarms method, a lightweight design technique used in business, non-profit and education worldwide, and has been used at companies like Amazon, Amgen, Autodesk, Callison, Deutsche Bank, Lilly, T-Mobile, Microsoft, and REI.
Surya won the Microsoft Engineering Best Practice Awards twice, Ohio State University 50th Anniversary Distinguished Design Alumnus Award, Microsoft Achievement Award, Accessibility Achievement Award, World Brand Congress Leadership Award and several other industry recognitions. He is member of Word Design Organization, served on the jury of global design awards like Singapore Design Mark and on the boards of organizations like the Design Management Institute, Seattle Interactive and Design in Public. He frequently keynotes speeches at the most prestigious conferences and has won top speaker awards three times. His work has appeared in numerous publications and news programs, including TEDx, Form, I.D., Design Council, WIRED, Interactions, the BBC and National Public Radio. Surya is the author of two books on design, several publications, and has taught design on every continent but Antarctica.
Jake Knapp
Jake spent 10 years at Google and Google Ventures, where he created the Design Sprint process. He’s written two books, Sprint and Make Time, coached teams at places like Slack, LEGO, IDEO, and NASA on design strategy and time management, and has been a guest instructor at MIT and the Harvard Business School.
Previously, Jake co-founded Google Meet and helped build products like Gmail and Microsoft Encarta. He is currently among the world’s tallest designers.
Orlane Perey
Orlane is a senior designer and artistic director with a long experience in the field of visual communication.
In addition to a Bachelor’s degree from the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne and a Federal Certificate in Marketing, Orlane has a specialization in Visual Merchandising. Two SAWI Design & Code diplomas, one in web design, the other in development complete her profile to transpose her expertise in the field of digital communication.
Orlane has worked for about ten years for internationally renowned brands, both internally (Blancpain) and through communication agencies (Nestlé, Pernod Ricard, Caran d’Ache, etc). In 2017, Orlane created her own company: Serendipity Agency, an agency specialized in branding and communication.
She has been co-facilitating sprints with Steph since 2018 and is now part of the Design-Sprint Ltd. fellowship.
Always on the lookout for trends and innovative ideas, Orlane continues to train continuously, which takes up a large part of her free time.
Equally passionate about personal development and “well-being,” she devotes much of her free time to areas such as meditation, pilates, and nutrition.
Eglé Cruchon
I love creating new experiences - starting just from an early-stage idea and transforming it into something people truly value and remember.
I began my career in childhood education, working for 5 years in multicultural environments, coordinating, engaging and building trust between teams and clients.
After initially studying to become a psychologist, my passion for understanding people led me on a path where I focus on creating awareness about better ways to collaborate and empower teams. For the last years with my amazing Design Sprint Ltd. team, I have been creating world-class events and projects to empower people to connect, get inspired, to take more calculated risks, and build sustainable businesses.
If you are interested in Design Sprints, organising in-person or virtual events or just want to chat- don't hesitate.
Steph Cruchon
Steph Cruchon, CEO, Designer (UX / UI), Facilitator, Lecturer and Innovation expert. He is the founder of Design Sprint Ltd with more than 15 years of experience in product design, and services. Steph is one of the pioneers of the Design Sprint methodology in Europe and its main evangelist in Switzerland. He is author of “The Design Sprint Quarter”, a three-months strategy for transforming promising ideas into viable products.He helps startups and companies to rethink their working habits and to turn their promising ideas into products and services. Steph has personally run full-week Sprints with more than 60 companies across various industries (Swiss Re, Autodesk, Swissquote bank, l’Oréal, Climeworks, Kudelski, and others) to conceive and fast prototype their services, strategies and products.
He runs design sprints in both French and English.
Stéph teaches and coaches regularly at SAWI in Lausanne, EPFL, Innosuisse-Venturelab and SwissTech Association.
He is also a seasoned Lecturer and Speaker (Invision DesignBetter, Eracom, Blend Web Mix, Product Tank, Digital Strategy and UX Meetup…)
Julien Suard
With more than 15 years experience in product design, former head of design and ergonomics at Infomaniak Network SA. He spent 9 years rethinking the company’s ecosystem, its Design System and unifying all Infomaniak products for a better user experience. Julien now manages the design of important digital products and co-facilitates Design Sprint.