UPA Minnesota

December 12, 2002

Meeting Topic: 2003 Planning Meeting

Held at Evantage Consulting, Minneapolis

Attendees

• Dee Dee Demulling
• Caryn Zange Josephson
• Lyle Kantrovich
• Debbie McConnell
• Kristi Olson
• Ben Walter

Topic Ideas Brainstormed

• Globalization / Localization
• Personalization
• Error page usability
• Turning usability results into actionable items - how do you deal with a big, long testing results report?
• Language issues
  • Automatically obtaining user language
  • Selecting / Retaining user preferences
• Best sites / examples & why?
• Registration / forms usability
• Survey usability
• Popup usability
• Keeping usability results scientific. Getting respect from IT colleagues. Usability results as fact, not opinion / soft-science.
• Accessible home builder (speaking at UPA 2003) - local to Mpls, may be able to get him to come "practice" at a chapter meeting.
• UCD Methodology
• Remote usability & collaboration tools
• Tour: Mayo Lab

We should put together a list of potential topics and have members vote on which they'd like to see or recommend / volunteer speakers.

Maybe do 2-4 "tour" kinds of events in a calendar year.

Hosting Ideas

• 3M
• CJ Olson (Lab tour) - Maybe for Jan 9.
  • Contact: Gayle Belkengren - 612-378-5040 ext. 104 gbelkengren@cjolson.com
  • Located downtown Mpls on Hennepin.
• Should ask people to volunteer to host - that worked well last year.

Meeting format

Need to have a standard 'intro' to the meeting where we state what the chapter is, our goals, history, when we meet, etc. Lyle has a format already for this that can be a starting point.

Volunteer opportunities

• Would like to create more opportunities for people to help out the chapter with a small amount of involvement (e.g., ~2 hours max, once a year). Need ample opportunities that allow people to 'get their feet wet' - something between just attending and being a board member.
• Hosting a meeting
• "Host helper" - would arrive to meeting early, help setup, greet people at door, and/or hand out nametags. (Good networking opportunity as well)
• Design co-op to help with web site design (see web site notes below)
• Design co-op mentor to help with web site design (see web site notes below)
• Need to get information on web site about expectations/roles/benefits of board member volunteering.
• Need to remind people that part of supporting a volunteer organization is volunteering to help it operate. Membership dues don't make things happen - as we have no paid staff.
• "Approachability" - (can't recall what this meant)

Networking

Member survey indicated that people like networking aspects of attending. We thought that a "networking meeting" isn't likely to draw many people, but we could incorporate a more purposeful networking activity into the agenda for some meetings. Examples:

• Go introduce yourself to 3 people you don't know
• Dedicated time for networking
• Introductions / Roles of attendees
• Name tags for attendees

Marketing

President gets a list of all National members.

• We should think about contacting new members of National and let them know about UPA-MN and invite them to our next meeting (for free).
• We should think about a yearly mailing to all current and past members in the area to let them know what activities we have planned for the year and invite them to attend/join.
• Need to clearly communicate benefits of joining/membership
  • Web site
  • Meeting intros

Web site notes

Add calendar of events

• Meeting notices
• CFP's and other national events/deadlines for submissions

Need regular updates to the member list

• People don't know they can have their own member page and process isn't clear for updating or creating.
• Treasurer will maintain membership info - needs to give adds/changes to the webmaster.
• Might be nice to have some indication on the list of which members are consultants. Would help market consultants and help members and business community locate local usability consultants who are members
• Goal is to keep webmaster level of commitment to about 2hrs per month if possible to avoid burnout.
• Redesign / Development assistance will be needed to make major updates to the site this year.
  • Offer a "co-op" position for a more junior designer/developer to have them help with redesign project efforts.
  • Benefits of "co-op" would be that the more junior person would have the opportunity to work on the project with a more senior usability professional who would mentor them throughout the project.
• Need to have a good process for redesign efforts.
• Gathering business requirements / goals / constraints is key and something we haven't done formally in the past.
  • Facilitate easy publishing/update process
  • Want to avoid webmaster burn-out
  • Provide good transition to next webmasters who may not have as much technical expertise
• Maybe add a "thanks" or "credits" page to thank/recognize those who contribute time to the web site efforts.