13th Annual Conference"Connecting Communities"

Wednesday

10:15-12:15 [Advanced Topic]
1:30-3:00
3:30-5:00

Wednesday, June 9

10:30- 12:00	Making an Enterprise Portal Useful for Employees
		Ken Becker, The Boeing Company
		Audience:	People who are experienced in usability but new to the topic
		Curricula:	Outside the Box
	Based on two usability tests, usage statistics and user surveys, this presentation will provide insight and experiences about making an enterprise portal useful to employees. Through shared experiences, test results, and case study examples, find out about recommendations for effective online community design, enterprise search and customizing personal portal pages.

10:30- 12:00	Voice Recording: Tips for the Non-Audiophile
		Timothy Keirnan, Tec-Ed, Inc.
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Methods and Skills
	Ever wonder how you might provide clients with a vivid impression of their users in action without the intrusions and hassles of producing videos? Consider using audio highlights to deliver high-quality, low-hassle user feedback. This presentation discusses the why and how of professional speech recording for usability practitioners.

10:30- 12:00	The Blind Leading the Blind: Theorizing a Web for the Visually Impaired
		Jessica D. Moore, AARP Services, Inc. Joseph Mathews, AARP Services, Inc.
		Audience:	People interested in in-depth, specialized, or research topics
		Curricula:	Accessibility and Internationalization
	Section 508 tells us what not to do, but it doesn’t present a model for doing things right. This case study shows how we approached the problem of planning a site for the visually disabled, and how the lessons we learned can work for you, regardless of your audience.

10:30- 12:00	[PANEL] HCI and Human Factors Master's Degree Programs
		Kirsten Robinson, Bentley College Amanda Nance, Georgia Institute of Technology Jessica Webster, Tufts University Rebecca Tremaglio, University of Michigan Dana Gelman, Carnegie Mellon University
		Audience:	People who are new to usability; people who are experienced in usability but new to the topic
		Curricula:	Business and Organization
	Usability jobs often require specialized degrees, and a master’s in HCI or human factors can be a differentiator in a “jobless recovery.” Many usability practitioners may be considering going back to school. Our student panel discusses our experiences in graduate school, and provides comparison information about several programs.

10:30- 12:00	[Invited Speaker] User-Centered Design for Rural India
		Sam Pitroda
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Invited Speaker
	Global entrepreneurship and a rereading of the literature surrounding FDR's New Deal, helped connect the people of rural India to each other and to the world. Where the developed world saw a resource-strained country heading toward a billion people separated by large distances, Sam Pitroda saw access via technology as a solution.

10:30- 12:00	[PANEL] Evaluating Evaluation

		Audience:	People relatively new to the field
		Curricula:	Usability Perspectives: Mapping the Usability Universe
	Usability began as testing, and testing is still an essential part of the discipline. Over the last two decades, testing has grown from a "quality assurance" role, and the choices for methodologies has grown. What are the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to testing? When is the best time to use each methodology? What do you do with all the data you collect?

1:30-3:00	[PANEL] Can Usability Save Democracy? Voting, Usability, and e-Participation
		Louise Feguson, Digital Habitats Josephine Scott, Compuware Whitney Quesenbery, Whitney Interactive Design Bill Killam, User-Centered Design, Inc.
		Audience:
		Curricula:	Outside the Box
	Around the world, governments are creating new standards and experimenting with new voting systems to improve elections and increase voter participation. Debates focus on the role of technology in voting, the value of e-participation, and the usability of new e-voting solutions. This panel will report on work in the US, the UK and elsewhere on this vital issue.

1:30-3:00	Expediting the Usability Testing Process
		Bob Bailey, Computer Psychology Kent Bailey, Mind Design Systems
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Methods and Skills
	Usability testing, where the correct number of representative participants are tested while performing typical web tasks, can be a tester-intensive process. Testers must observe participants, take timings, record errors, make notes, and then use this information to prepare a meaningful test report. Most of these tasks are now automated.

1:30-3:00	How to Predict the Future: Becoming an Agent for Change
		Susan Fowler, FAST Consulting
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Business and Organization
	The speaker will describe three strategies for predicting the future: 1) futures exchanges, in which regular people make predictions, often with better results than the experts; 2) Delphi polls, which rely on experts making multiple passes through the same questionnaire; and 3) lead-user research, in which designers look for products in advance of the market.

1:30-3:00	[Invited Speaker] The Key to Connecting Communities
		Steve Denning
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Invited Speaker
	We live an narrative. We are defined and constituted by our narratives of ourselves. We create or invent the self specifically by "writing" and "storying" it. And we connect with others through stories. This presentation will demonstrate the unexpectedly large role that storytelling plays in organizations in general and in connecting communities in particular.

1:30-3:00	[PANEL] Why Do Field Studies?

		Audience:	People relatively new to the field
		Curricula:	Usability Perspectives: Mapping the Usability Universe
	Understanding users' needs and expectations is essential for effective usability work. All too often, it's a part of the usability cycle that gets too little attention. Doing field work to talk to users may seem too expensive and time-consuming. Are there any good shortcuts? How do you justify the time and expense to management? How do you organize your field work to be most effective? How do you feed the results back into product development?

1:15-3:15	[Advanced Topic] Advanced Usability and Interaction Design Patterns: Problems, Promises, and New Potential
		Larry Constantine
		Audience:	People experienced in usability and experienced in the topic
		Curricula:	Methods and Skills
	Published usability and design patterns promise much but too often deliver little to practicing professionals. Critical review points the way to more robust models for pattern construction expressing best-practices and subtle solutions to sophisticated and non-obvious design problems. Examples of conventional and advanced patterns will be presented and explored.

3:30-4:10	Architecting Time: Designing Online Events
		Katrina Friedman, Hot Studio
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Outside the Box
	What makes a successful online event? How is it different from a run-of-the-mill web site? This presentation will explore the challenges and opportunities faced in designing an event online. We'll then look at a case study of a highly successful event to understand what worked.

3:30-4:10	Site-Level Webapp Navigation Using Breadcrumb and Sibling Menus
		James Snell, Concur Technologies
		Audience:	People who are experienced in usability and in the topic
		Curricula:	Methods and Skills
	For a complex webapp, we designed and validated a navigation model with a pair of menus on each page: breadcrumbs leading back to the root, and siblings allowing random access among related pages. We solved several design problems, including the anomaly of "conceptual page links" that represent groups of pages.

3:30-4:10	Making a Better Web Form
		Caroline Jarrett, Effortmark Ltd. Christopher Minott, LoanBright.com
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Methods and Skills
	Which usability changes make the biggest difference? We were surprised by some of the results when we tested a selection of changes to a typical on-line form. Come to this session to hear our results and compare your predictions with ours.

3:30-4:10	When Your Group Can't Do It All: Investing UCD Resources Wisely
		Lisa Battle, Lockheed Martin
		Audience:	People experienced in the field but new to the topic; leaders and mentors
		Curricula:	Business and Organization
	When an organization’s internal UCD group is too small to support all projects that request its services, management is faced with a need to prioritize and invest its limited resources wisely. This presentation describes how one UCD group defined different levels of service and implemented criteria for evaluating project requests.

3:30-5:00	[Invited Speaker] Theater in Process: The Drama of User Experience
		Kristina Halvorsen and Michael Bigelow Dixon
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Invited Speakers
	In theater, there are infinite combinations of "user experiences" to consider. To deliver a satisfying, successful product, what types of questions do the artistic collaborators - playwright, actor, director, designers - need to ask during a play's development and production? See the creative process of theater in action during this presentation by the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

3:30-5:00	Idea Market

		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	All
	The Idea Market is highly interactive and casual set of discussions about “burning questions” in usability and user-centered design, led by an “activator”. Each activator chooses a topic, posts the questions or issues to explore about the topic, and records the ideas that come up during the discussion

4:20-5:00	User Experience Issues of IP Telephony: Not your plain old telephone anymore
		Yihsiu Chen, AT&T Labs
		Audience:	Anyone
		Curricula:	Outside the Box
	The telephone is generally considered one of the most user-friendly devices. However, when integrated with a PC and IP-based communication, the User Interface of telephony applications requires careful design decisions. The software-defined interface provides great flexibility and complexity, and new technologies present new challenges and possibilities beyond just pure telephony.

4:20-5:00	An Alternative Method for Intranet Design Based on Content Analysis
		Regis Magyar, Pansonic Wireless Design Brian M. Anderson, Pansonic Wireless Design Nancy Babiarz, Pansonic Wireless Design James Marion, Pansonic Wireless Design
		Audience:	People who are experienced in usability and in the topic
		Curricula:	Methods and Skills
	This case study describes a novel, 4-phased approach that we used to design and implement our company’s intranet using pre-existing departmental “rogue” websites. Quick, alternative methods of extracting content and design were used instead of traditional methods. Advantages, disadvantages, and challenges of the method are discussed, and audience feedback will be solicited.

4:20-5:00	Accessibility at an Enterprise Software Company
		George Hackman, Oracle
		Audience:	People who are experienced in usability but new to the topic
		Curricula:	Accessibility and Internationalization
	The design and development of complex web applications involves teams ranging from UI design to development. Thus, a multidisciplinary approach is required to comply with accessibility guidelines. Beginning with an overview of relevant guidelines, this presentation will show one company's accessibility process and the role of usability in that process.

4:20-5:00	How to Ensure Usability When Doing UI Development Offshore
		Liam Friedland, Westbridge Technology
		Audience:	People who are experienced in usability but new to the topic; people who are experienced in usability and the topic
		Curricula:	Business and Organization
	Offshore software development is increasing. Software development teams can make or break usability. Despite challenges, usable products can be created when UI is built offshore and design/usability stay onshore. A set of real-world lessons highlight the key factors for ensuring usability when working across time zones, language, and culture.

Presentations

Wednesday

Wednesday, June 9