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Events

Upcoming events

UPA Europe 2008: December 04-06 2008

The first European regional conference of the UPA will take place on December 4th - 6th 2008 in Turin. Details can be found on the UPA Europe website.

Past events

UPA Careers Event: Thursday 3rd July 2008

This year's UK UPA Careers Event will be held on Thursday 3rd July at LBi's new offices on Brick Lane.

Event Sponsors: LBi, Aquent, Avenue A | Razorfish, Conchango, CX Partners, Flow Interactive, Foolproof, Fortune Cookie, Webcredible.

The event aims to bring together User Experience companies, practitioners and students. It is suited to anyone looking for good people or a good role, or anyone just looking for the opportunity to network with peers.

The evening will begin with a short panel discussion which will be followed by a couple of hours of networking. Each Sponsor will have a dedicated area where they will display some of their work and be available to chat. Drinks will be provided.

If you are interested in your company being a sponsor of the event please let us know by emailing Claire: president [at] ukupa.org.uk

UPA Conference: June 16-20 2008

UPA Conference is being held this year in Baltimore on June 16th-20th. The theme is 'The Many Faces of User Experience: Usability through holistic practice'. Details can be found on the main UPA site.

May Event

There is no event planned for May.

Designing for the social: Avoiding anti-social networks: Miles Rochford - Thursday 24th April 2008

Designing for the social: Avoiding anti-social networks

This presentation considers the role of traditional social networks and the role of IAs in addressing the challenges that arise when designing and using online social networks.

The presentation discusses philosophical approaches to sharing the self, how this relates to offline social networks and human interactions in different contexts, and provides guidance on how online social networking tools can be designed to support these relationships.

It also covers ethical issues, including privacy, and how these can conflict with business needs. A range of examples illustrate the impact of these drivers and how design decisions can lead to the creation of anti-social networks.

Finally, it considers the design role which IAs play, and how recognising the impact of business needs, philosophy and ethics can help deliver better social networks. It also considers how the IA community generally could influence and improve social network design.

The presentation is aimed at IAs who are designing, building or using social networks, who also recognise that their design choices, philosophy and ethical background have a fundamental impact on user experience.

Participants will learn about different approaches to social network design, and how online social networks relate to traditional ways of viewing human interactions. They will also gain some practical advice on the different issues which should be considered when designing and using social networks.

This is a version of the presentation that will be made at IA Summit

Miles Rochford is a Design Specialist at Nokia Design, based in London, England.

He has been an information architect and user experience specialist for more than six years, working on a range of projects for government, non-profit, corporate and startup clients based in the United States, Europe and Australia.

He has experience in a range of different areas, including interaction design, spatial data, health informatics, social networking, media sharing, mobile devices, and service delivery.

William Hudson: Advanced Topics in Card Sorting - Thursday 20th March 2008

Sub-groups, Deviants and Navigational Alignment: Advanced topics in card sorting

Have you ever wondered

• When and why to use sub-groups in a card sort?


• How to maximize the quality of sorting analysis?


• Where to find the main differences between sorting results and current information architecture?

Register for the event here

Personas: Archetype not Stereoype: Martina Schell & Simon Johnson - Thursday 21st February 2008

Personas: Archetype not Stereotype

There are some common misconceptions about what personas are and what role they play in the User Centred Design process. Martina Schell and Simon Johnson from Flow Interactive will be covering the basics of what personas are, where they originated, how to develop them and what their benefits are. They will be giving practical advice as well as providing examples of successful persona-based projects, anecdotes, as well as tips on how to embed them in your clients’ design and development processes.

Event: Beyond ‘Usable Security’ - M. Angela Sasse

Beyond "usable security": how to manage the human element in security – M. Angela Sasse, Professor of Human-Centred Technology, University College London

Research in usable security commenced 10 years ago, when it was found that many users make mistakes using security tools, or shortcut difficult and cumbersome security procedures. But is "making it easy for users to do the right thing" sufficient to ensure that users comply with security policies? I will argue that it is not. To design effective security design and operation, we must look at a bigger picture of managing human behaviour in organisations. The loss of 7 million UK citizens' data has reminded us that human error needs to be seen in the context of latent failures in the systems and procedures. Traditional security models do not fit the requirements of modern, global data-dependent organisations. Usability professionals will have a key role in improving this: we need better understanding of security requirements, more stakeholder involvement, better security awareness, education and training programs, and to include security goals in psychological contracts and reward schemes.

Event: Product Usability: Thursday 22nd November

Product Usability: Chris Rourke & Mark Westwater - User Vision

Chris and Mark will cover the scope of product usability and focus on the primary differences between product and web usability. They will provide case studies and examples from a variety of projects to highlight the role of the usability / human factors professional in the product development process, how this has evolved over the years, and how certain companies have used their user-centred design process and products as a marketing USP. They will also outline the key tools and methods in user-centred product design and the various factors e.g. stake holders, manufacturing costs and accessibility requirements, that have an impact on both the physical design, user interface and aesthetics.

Chris Rourke is Managing Director of User Vision, a leading UK user experience consultancy, and president of the Scottish Chapter of the UPA. In addition to experience in many leading web and software related projects, Chris has performed and managed usability and human factors efforts on products ranging from airplane navigation systems, large format printers, thermostat controls, keyboards and cashpoint machines.

Mark Westwater is the lead User Vision consultant for product design, and has over 11 years experience applying user centred design methodologies to product developments. Mark was the lead human factors engineer worked at NCR, the world leader in Automated Teller Machines (ATM) Research and Development. His primary focus was to plan and support both hardware and software developments as well as conducting research is future technologies. This included mobile based application design and Voice Recognition system evaluation. Mark has also been a representative on various accessibility committees in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, developing standards that meet both the consumers' needs and current technology trends.

World Usability Day: Thursday 8th November 2007

World Usability Day is taking place on Thursday 8th November 2007, with a focus this year on Healthcare.

The UK UPA is supporting an all-day event at LBi in London that will showcase some case studies of healthcare user experience design and provide the opportunity to debate issues in the areas of experience and service design.

Details for the event, and how to get involved, can be found on the World Usability Day website events page

Scott Weiss: UPA Event - Thursday 25th October 2007

Slides from Scott's talk can be found here

Scott Weiss on Mobile Widgets and Mobile Search: UX Findings from New York.

Scott Weiss leads Usable Products Company, a usability agency in New York focused on two things: quantitative usability benchmarks and the design of mobile phone user interfaces. The two become delightfully intertwined in most of Usable Products' work, which includes the Vodafone Simply (available in Spain), and the Samsung YP-K5 and K3 players, sold world-wide.

Scott has been called to London this week for business and would like to share his team's latest findings at a special meeting of the UPA about mobile widgets and search, based on insights from quantitative user experience benchmarks for each.

Scott will show video excerpts from the study, as well as demonstrations of each of the six products he studied this Spring and Summer. A brief subset of the presentation will be available via the web following Scott's talk.

UPA Event - Thursday 18th October 2007

Accessibility & the challenges of Web 2.0, user generated content and the social networking revolution. Speaker: Kath Moonan, AbilityNet

Web 2.0 is the name commonly given to the latest generation of web sites where users themselves generate the content. For example MySpace, FaceBook, Flickr and YouTube allow users to upload material and create networks.

While there are technical challenges associated with the use of these websites, there are also enormous opportunities for disabled people to engage in social networking where otherwise they might have been excluded.

Web 2.0 presents many accessibility challenges such as how to encourage users to generate accessible content. How can website owners and developers to build accessible web applications rather than taking the easy option of not considering disabled users?

We’re going to look at what Web 2.0 is, how the web is evolving and what impact it is going to have on the lives of disabled users. We’ll look at examples of the good, the bad and the ugly and make suggestions on what website owners can do to help steer the web in an accessible direction.

Please note that Kath will also be giving a version of this presentation at the RNIB's Techshare event

UK UPA Salary Survey 2007

The 2007 UK UPA Salary Survey is now complete

Results will be published here shortly.

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Participate in the UK UPA Salary Survey 2007
We are currently running the UK UPA Salary Survey 2007 for those working in any area related to usability. If you would like to participate please follow this link to the survey. Results will be published on this site as well as on various discussion lists. If you have any problems accessing the survey please contact us.

[NB: The results from the 2006 Salary Survey have not yet been published but will be shortly.]

UPA Event & Summer Party - Thursday 23rd August

Web 2.0 and What It Means For User Experience Practitioners
Speaker: Gerred Blyth

What is Web 2.0 and why is everyone so excited about it? In this hour talk, Gerred will unpack this recent development and explain why "Web 2.0" doesn't really exist, but the concepts that underpin the buzzword such as social media, semantic data, and rich web applications are very real and very important.

The concept of Web 2.0 has been bandied about for around two years, but only now are we concluding how user experience practitioners have to amend their working practices, deliverables and design thinking.

With lots of real world examples and best practice, Gerred will arm you for battle in this new phase of understanding and developing user experiences.

About the speaker
Gerred has a history at the forefront of interactive experience consultancy in the UK and internationally, with a reputation as an innovative practitioner, across domains such as consumer web, mobile, worksystem software, and gaming.

Formerly a director of Amberlight Partners, Gerred defined and led new user experience approaches for clients such as Sony Playstation, AOL, Microsoft, O2, T-Mobile, Samsung, Mars, and 118118. Now, as an independent consultant, he is currently working with Sony BMG, Channel 4, Camelot and Credit Suisse to design new interactive experiences.

As our summer party this event is free of charge.

UPA CAREERS Event: 28th June 2007

The next UPA event will be a forum and exhibition to promote careers in usability and related fields. It should be of interest both to new graduates and to those wanting a change of career and move into the usability field. The event will be at LBi's Big Space on Thursday 28th June 2007.

UK UPA June event

Rob Stevens of Bunnyfoot will talk about Tobii who are releasing a new hardware and software solution and a price plan that allows smaller agencies to use Tobii eye trackers.