Richard Sit opened the meeting by asking each attendee to state his/her name, professional area of interest, and a favorite book, movie, or site.
The program topic was a review of the UPA 2001 conference held at Lake Las Vegas in June. The theme of the conference was A Winning Experience. The members who attended this conference provided highlights of their favorite sessions.
David Prigge described the closing session given by Dick Buchanan. Dick said that cultural interaction should be an issue for usability specialist. David applied this thought to his Cray publications department. He explained that his department often writes for programmers vs. end users because programmers are the primary source of information and also the reviewers. This may mean that the documentation is more useful to programmers than actual end users. The group provided suggestions regarding accessing and writing for actual end users.
Andrea Halverson contributed her thoughts regarding a research and design method called Contextual Design. She highly recommended this approach and the book that describes how it. The book is called, "Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs" by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt. Contextual design begins before requirements analysis. It is an approach that allows you to collect and interpret data to determine the "real problems" before you begin establishing new system requirements. Some of the research techniques are similar to ethnographic research. Andrea used this method during a project that helped her clients determine whether to purchase a software product or develop it in-house.
David said he attended a number of light bulb sessions were individuals outside the usability consulting profession talked about what they do. He particularly enjoyed these sessions.
Caryn Zange Josephson said she got more out of the presentations at this conference than she had in previous years. She did a poster for this conference. The poster described a prototype for a wireless application her sales force will use. Caryn brought artifacts from the poster. They provided a great case study description of her prototyping activity.
Caryn described four sessions she attended:
Royce Shin described a session that covered the considerations that apply to building a usability lab. He was especially interested in all the thought that goes into picking a location for the lab, such as the availability of transportation and parking. This lead to a group discussion on various aspects of usability testing. The group had lots of opinions regarding the value of usability labs and videotaping. The group also discussed the use of a "list of participant's rights" as a tool that describes the ground rules to the test participants.
DeeDee DeMulling described the keynote address given by Alan Cooper entitled, "What I Know May Surprise You." DeeDee summarized the seven things Alan said he knows.
DeeDee said that it was particularly interesting to hear Alan's keynote address and then listen to other experts disagree with him at various points throughout the conference.
DeeDee also provided a handout composed of recommended Web sites, including:
The next UPA conference will be held on July 8-12, 2002 in Orlando, Florida.
Our business meeting covered the program plans for the rest of the year.
In September, we will have a joint meeting with local chapter of the Human Factors Ergonomics Society (HFES) and ask Thomas Smith to explain the University of Minnesota degree plans and courses for individuals who want to enter into some aspect of usability consulting, cognitive engineering, etc. DeeDee will also ask Thomas to describe the continuing education opportunities for individuals in our field. HFES is planning an conference to be held in Minneapolis this October.
For our October meeting, Andrea will tell us about contextual design and her experiences using this method. In November, we will have a discussion group on topics to be determined by DeeDee and volunteers. Our December meeting will be our traditional holiday get-together.