The UPA provides a forum for usability practitioners to share techniques and experiences. Now in its thirteenth year, the UPA attracts a variety of people: newcomers to our field and experienced practitioners, as well as the distinguished professionals who have been defining and shaping the field of usability for decades. The UPA also provides supportive information to senior executives, managers, team leads, and those who are usability advocates within their organizations.

The UPA conference committee is looking for presentations, panels, papers, advanced topic seminars, tutorials, workshops, idea market topics and posters that address all of these audiences. The following table illustrates the topics of greatest interest to these various audiences:

People New to Usability	Experienced Practitioners		Technical and Professional Leadership
Methodology and skill development
Overview of role of usability in product lifecycle
Business case studies
Presentation of a design
Overview of a concept or philosophy
	Strategic issues in usability
	Creating environments for usability solutions
	Integrating usability into business and product life cycles
	Requirements for new tools and methodologies
	Unsolved problems
	Social impact of technology
	Statistics and experimental design
	“Out of box” thinking from experts in other fields
		Research topics
		Visionary topics
		Method validation

In addition to the topics listed above, some of the following topics were requested at the 2003 conference:

•  More Case studies, success stories
•  Usability and user centered design of specific types of applications: e-Learning, Voice, Call Center, non-traditional devices, non-web, complex software applications, documentation, industrial design, physical products, web-based applications
•  Role/interaction with product development
•  Role/interaction with customers
•  Research advancements
•  Tools, Tips and Techniques for consultants
•  Usability / User Centered Design ROI
•  Starting up a usability program
•  Design patterns – including user task patterns
•  How usability relates to other disciplines
•  Usability for an aging population

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