Bachelor of Design – User Experience

Asma is a Design Professor and thorough Creative with a history of working in the innovation and design industry and higher education both. Her forte is Interaction Design, Experience Design, UI, Design Thinking, Visual Design, Storytelling and tinkering with other emerging design and multimedia practices. Her classroom is more like a playing field with two way communication of thoughts, ideas and design process based in empathy and creative problem solving.

Asma has worked internationally and locally for more than a decade doing advertising and design. Her portfolio includes various multinational brands and tech start ups. Besides digital media, some of her interests that add soulfulness to her work and class environment are inclusive design and culture, teaching yoga and spirituality.

Sarah English is the program co-ordinator for the Bachelor of Design program, which focuses on human-centered design approaches and design of digital products.

Sarah has been a pioneer in the user experience field in Canada, and has over 20 years of experience as a UX designer prior to becoming a full-time design educator. Sarah co-founded and managed Canada’s first UX studio, Usability Matters. Over 16 years, the studio won numerous awards, mentored dozens of new designers and introduced UX practice to many of Canada’s top brands. This experience directly benefits students in the classroom, where she practices authentic learning experiences based on real clients project.

Sarah has undergraduate degrees in biology/psychology, sociology and sducation, and a master's in Science and Technology Studies. Her recent master's thesis focused on the systemic, cultural and personal issues impacting UX designers in the context of ethical design: why and how do designers create digital products that can cause harm to people? How can we design humane technology that works for people? 

Sarah’s design interests and skills skills range across UX strategy, research and design, but particular areas of interest are design systems, usability testing and service design.

Mark-Anthony Karam is a design educator with over 15 years of experience as a graphic and interactive designer. Mark focuses on leveraging education technology that fosters accessible opportunities for social collaboration, student agency, and promotes the inclusion of wellness as a framework for teaching design in higher education. Keeping the learners' experience in mind, Mark has researched and developed strategies and pathways for teaching and learning design curriculum through social constructive collaboration and future creative technologies for both face-to-face and remote/online e-learning environments.

Kristopher's interest in digital media has driven his personal and professional life. His academic background includes BS degrees in Radio-Television-Film and Communication Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and an MA in Media Studies from Western University. Kristopher has worked as a freelancer, at various start-ups, and in an agency on projects related to web/graphic design, branding, social media management, digital strategy, digital media production, and basically producing anything that could exist online. He currently teaches courses at Humber covering writing, audio design, creative thinking, and multiplatform storytelling. Outside of teaching, you can find him subsumed listening to music while tending to his pet fish (Zimmy) and two guinea pigs (Maple and Molasses).

Leanna Palmer is a multi-disciplinary Creative Director and design educator. She has been a professor at Humber since 2016 and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design Art from Concordia University, and a Master of Arts from the Bard Graduate Center in New York City.

For the last 15 years, Leanna has been actively involved in the ever-expanding field of design in an array of environments: large established companies, start-ups, agency, in-house, and as a freelancer. She uses her deep digital expertise and extensive knowledge of the industry as a catalyst for inspiration in the classroom.

Leanna is a creative thinker who enjoys solving user-centric problems and has worked with some of Canada’s biggest companies including: Online Creative Director at Indigo head office, Digital Art Director at the CBC, and an Art Director at the Havas Agency. An innate curiosity has also led her to explore digital materiality and interaction design through some interesting collaborations with artists at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York City, and Hexagram in Montreal.

As a User Experience (UX) practitioner with over 25 years experience in the field, I’m excited to bring my passion and experience to my new role at Humber College.

My own journey in UX started at the University of Toronto, where I majored in cognitive psychology and minored in anthropology and industrial engineering. My interests led me to pursue a master's degree at the University College London in ergonomics.

Since then, I’ve worked at the Department of National Defence in human factors research, media and design agencies, consulting firms, and started my own UX consulting firm in 2013. I’ve completed hundreds of client projects. The industries I’ve worked in span real estate, food and hospitality, government, financial institutions, retail, telecommunications, education, healthcare, automotive, entertainment, non-profit, and others. I enjoy public speaking and have spoken at CanUX, The IA Summit, Euro IA, and the UPA.

My personal areas of interest include UX research, service design, design for the greater good, continuous improvement, personal growth, upstream thinking, decision making, and problem solving. My vision for my students intersects my areas of interest--exactly. My goal is to help coach the next generation of design thinkers to solve wicked, complex, and seemingly impossible problems.