World Usability Day celebration in RTP — register now!

What: World Usability Day celebration

When: 6pm – 9pm – Thursday, November 13th 2008

Where: Ruvane Auditorium at GSK

Cost: Free to all! Food and drink will be served! Please sign up so we have an idea of how big the crowd will be.

How: Register now: http://triupa.org/2008WorldUsability
(if you’re a TriUPA member, be sure to click “Login to Register” once you get to the RSVP page)

About our event:
TriUPA will celebrate World Usability Day this year on Thursday, November 13th, at GSK. We have created a program that centers around UPA’s theme of transportation. We are fortunate to have three speakers who have worked in the transportation field and can enlighten us about the usablity challenges in products and services in that area. We have organized a Design Challenge, in which three teams are applying user-centered design to transportation problems. The teams will be presenting their results at WUD. You cannot afford to miss this year’s WUD, so please sign up now!

6 pm – 6:45 pm: Dinner and socializing. Make sure to check out our UX trading card game. Everyone who builds a complete set of cards will be eligible for a raffle!

6:45 pm – 7:45 pm: Transportation and Usability:

* Talk by Graham James, Professional Transportation Planner
* Talk by Beth Mcgough, Human Factors Engineer, JCI, Michigan
* Talk by Alex Hussain, Design Engineer, HumanCentric

7:45 pm – 8 pm: Break and dessert.

8 pm – 9 pm: Presentations by teams competing in the Design Challenge:

* Modular design system for bus stops
* Wayfinding and information displays for bus travel
* And one more… (topic TBD)

Presentation of prizes for UX Card game winner and Design Challenge winners.

Thanks to TriUPA’s sponsors for making our World Usability Day celebration possible:

* Lulu
* GSK
* BlueCross BlueShield
* Insight
* Lenovo
* Hesketh.com
* Capstrat
* User-View
* SAS

Recap: “Designing for Efficiency” workshop with Dr. Deborah Mayhew

Dr. Deborah Mayhew presented the second workshop in TriUPA’s professional training series, “Designing for Efficiency.”  The workshop was held at CED on October 22nd, 2008.

Dr. Mayhew helpfully sent us both slides from the workshop and an Excel spreadsheet template for conducting keystroke-level efficiency studies.

The workshop focused on helping UX professionals understand when and how to focus on efficiency as part of the user-centered design process.

Some key points:

• Efficiency requires consideration of cognitive, motor, and perceptual activities.
  
• Efficiency should be the key design goal when:
  • Users are highly trained
  • Users perform tasks repetitively with a very high frequency
  • Tasks are generally structured and linear, with low variability
  • User time is at a premium
  • Efficiency has a strong impact on customer service

 

• Designers can improve their focus on efficiency by:
  • Setting task efficiency goals (a simple, but often-neglected approach)
  • Following design guidelines and principles, addressing cognitive, motor, and perceptual aspects of human-computer interaction
  • Apply unique requirements analysis data

   

• Three primary techniques for improving design efficiency include:
  • Keystroke level modeling
  • Efficiency heuristic evaluations
  • Efficiency-focused user studies

 

Recommended reading:
Web Form Design book

Sign up for TriUPA’s 2008 World Usability Day design challenge!

TriUPA’s 2008 World Usability Day design challenge!

Here’s your chance to show off your UX and design skillz by attacking transportation design problems from a user-centered perspective.  Form a team and meet other TriUPAians from around the Triangle.  It’s gonna be a blast… but you’ve got to sign up to get involved.  Sign up before registration closes on 10/22/08!

»» Sign up for the challenge!

Summary of Challenge

Oct 22nd: Registration deadline

Volunteers from the TriUPA community register to participate in the design challenge. At this point all that is required is a commitment to participate, you don’t need a team or a specific idea.

Please sign up here.

Oct 25th: Design Challenge Kickoff (at Viget Labs in Durham)

• Registered volunteers meet to form teams and pick a design challenge.
• Each team will have 4 or 5 practitioners each.
• The design problem may be anything related to transportation. Including
  • How do humans interact with the following aspects of transportation:
    • Modes – automobiles, planes, trains and subways, boats, trucks, busses, bikes, animals, and more.
    • Infrastructure – roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, and more.
    • Technologies and resources supporting transportation – online travel advisory and ticketing, maps and more.
    • Security
    • Signage
  • How do the modes interact with each other?
  • How do transportation modes and issues impact our environment? How can being green improve usability of transportation?
  • How have accessibility issues and challenges been addressed by transportation?
  • Waiting (in traffic, for trains/buses/planes to arrive or depart, etc.) is a fundamental part of transportation.  How can we improve the user experience of waiting in the context of transportation, particularly public transportation?
• Teams will work on the design problem they pick from Oct 25th to Nov 13th. Each team must prepare a 15 minute presentation for WUD. The presentation must highlight the techniques used, artifacts generated, interesting findings, the final results.

Nov 13th: WUD

Teams will be asked to present their designs at an evening event on November 13th, hosted by GSK in RTP. Prizes will be awarded for innovation, practicality, environmental impact, and creativity.

Designing for Efficiency workshop slides

Dr. Mayhew has been kind enough to provide a PDF copy of slides for her upcoming workshop.

» Designing for Efficiency workshop slides

Job: Usability Analyst

Job: Software R&D
Primary Location: US-NC-Cary
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Classification: Full-time

Description:
SAS Institute is looking for a senior-level usability designer who is passionate about creating intuitive interfaces, proficient in the use of user-centered design methodologies, and comfortable working on high-profile projects.  This position requires cross-product interactions, working with a variety of product teams, and an understanding and appreciation of excellent user interface design, and usability consistency standards.  Knowledge of rich internet and desktop application designs using Flex or .Net is preferred.

You will contribute as a senior member of the Usability community, which prides itself on a strong user-centered design philosophy.  With the support of your usability colleagues, as well as development and product management, you will translate sets of requirements for web and/or rich client applications into highly usable screen designs and flows by

• Gathering user data by employing the methodologies of task analysis and participatory design, by using data from surveys and focus groups, and by obtaining additional information about users from your usability, development, sales, and product management colleagues
• Teaming and collaborating with the UI community to generate design solutions and ensuring consistency within and across products
• Involving the development team in the design process to ensure that solutions can be implemented
• Working with product management to validate designed functionality
• Interactively testing your designs using low- and/or high-fidelity prototypes
• Analyzing quantitative and qualitative data and presenting findings and recommendations to the product team
• Generating and maintaining UI specification documents
• Performing other duties as assigned

The SAS Business Intelligence Usability group is a diverse community of 15 consisting of cognitive psychologists, industrial and graphic designers, and usability engineers.   We hail from various locations in the U.S. (NY, CT, California, Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky, to name a few) as well as various points across the globe.  We work at SAS Headquarters in Cary, NC, which is located in the Research Triangle Park area.

Qualifications

Essential:

• Bachelor’s degree in human computer interaction or cognitive, experimental, or human factors psychology
• 8 years of experience in the design of web and/or rich-client applications
• 8 years of experience with user-centered design methodologies

Additional:

• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent organizational skills
• Ability to actively and enthusiastically collaborate with team members

Equivalent Essential:

• Associate’s degree in related field plus 10 years of the stated essential experience
• High School Diploma plus 12 years of the stated essential experience

Preferences:

• Advanced degree in human computer interaction, cognitive, experimental, or human factors psychology, or a related design field such as product design or visual communications
• Experience with accessibility issues
• Experience working with the Adobe Flash Platform.
• Experience working with the Microsoft .Net Platform, especially Blend and WPF.
• Knowledge of the Business Intelligence domain

Additional Information:
To qualify, applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States, and should not require, now or in the future, sponsorship for employment visa status. The level of this position will be determined based on the applicant’s education, skills and experience. Resumes may be considered in the order they are received.
How to apply:
Applications accepted online only at: http://www.sas.com/jobs/USjobs/search.html.  All other forms of application may not be considered.  Please refer to job# 08002716 when applying online.

Job: Usability analyst

WebAssign — the leading service provider for online homework in higher education — is currently seeking a Usability Analyst to conduct user experience research and usability tests aimed at improving and innovating the user interface of our web application and info site. 
Job Responsibilities:

• Gathers, analyzes, and documents user feedback
• Performs research focused on understanding work practice and user behavior as individuals and as part of a work group (focus-groups, one-on-one usability sessions, etc.)
• Facilitates (moderates and scribes) user studies with representative users to validate designs
• Presents feedback and recommendations based on user studies
• Demonstrates awareness of market/ competitors and knowledge of users in problem solving.
• Provides assistance to colleagues in support of deliverable completion
• Deliverables: Testing Scripts, User Observation Logs, Highlight Clips, Findings and Recommendations, Presentations

Required Skills:

• Experience as a Usability Analyst, Usability Support Analyst or similar role
• A strong desire to make a product “usable”
• Strong people interaction and facilitation skills
• Detail-oriented, with the ability to multi-task
• Proven ability and desire to work effectively as a member of a team
• Good analytical and quantitative skills and the ability to make sound recommendations and decisions based on observed user behavior and prior experience

Technical Skills

• Creates screen designs using image processing tools like Photoshop, Fireworks and MS Visio.

 To apply, please email lora@webassign.net