About the Usability and User Experience Community
Volunteer: Participate in the Community

Volunteer an hour a week, a day a month

We have so many volunteer opportunities. Many of them can be done over a period of time, allowing you to fit in a task when it is convenient for you. Some take only one or two hours; others take some hours every month. Many of them give you an opportunity to be published or try your hand at a new task and gain some skills you did not have before. Below is a list of some of the current choices and a few for projects that will not happen without volunteers. Send the UUX Manager, Alice Preston, an email - alicepreston2010@gmail.com - indicating which volunteer position appeals to you and a bit about yourself. Someone will get back to you.

Current opportunities

• Website jobs: Work with the Content coordinator to keep a specific section of the website up to date. Or join the Website Usability testing team.
• Body of Knowledge Usability testing: Work with a UUX team to provide User-Centered Design and Usability Testing activities on the STC's Body of Knowledge project.
• Article authors and book reviewers for the newsletter: Propose an article related to Usability or User Experience and Technical Communication to the newsletter editor, David Dick (davidjdick2000@yahoo.com). Write a 5-800 word book review of a recently published book focused on usability and user experience, particularly as it relates to technical communications. Book reviews are included in our quarterly newsletter.
• Blogging and Twitter opportunities: Do you blog? Twitter regularly? We're interested in bringing information about our area of interest into this website. If you'd like to be a part of that, please get in touch with Alice Preston at the address above.

Occasional opportunities

• Assist an STC chapter or community with improving the usability of their Web site. Experienced usability practitioners in UUX can perform an invaluable service to the profession by volunteering to help a chapter or community who is requesting usability help with their Web site. Requests come to the UUX Manager, who then contacts people on the list of volunteers. You work directly with the chapter or community.
• Be part of a panel for an expert evaluation: An expert evaluation panel is 2-4 usability practitioners who each review a Web site for another STC chapter or community using a common set of heuristics. The coordinator for each expert evaluation then compiles the results and manages the report writing. Requires about 5-10 hours of work over a 2-3 week period.
• Be a project coordinator for expert evaluations: An expert evaluation coordinator recruits a volunteer panel when an expert evaluation is requested, manages the review schedule, and compiles the reviews and drafts the report. The draft report is reviewed by the entire panel before a final report is written and given to the requestor. Requires about 8-12 hours of work over a 2-3 week period.