STC Usability SIG Newsletter
Usability Interface

Conference Report: DUX (Designing for User Interfaces)

By Fred Sampson, Silicon Valley chapter

The first DUX (Designing for User Experiences) conference covered three days in early June at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The conference was a collaboration between ACM’s SIGCHI (the Computer-Human Interaction SIG), SIGGRAPH (the computer graphics SIG), and the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Experience Design group. The DUX conference grew out of similar gatherings at previous CHI conferences, and drew practitioners from all three sponsor groups as well as UPA, STC, and others exploring the practice of designing for user experiences. The case studies presented will be available online in the ACM/SIGCHI digital library (http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm).

Attending the DUX2003 (www.dux2003.org) conference was a great experience for a technical communicator new to interaction design. There was wonderful energy and enthusiasm, good panels, presentations, and questions and answers, and clear demand for another conference in two years. The STC logo was prominently displayed in the background slide show at each session as a cooperating society.

The Silicon Valley chapter of STC co-sponsored the closing reception at DUX, along with the San Francisco chapter of AIGA. The reception was clearly successful, as STC First Vice-President Andrea Ames, Dana Chisnell, Beau Cain, and other Bay Area members attended and talked with DUX folk about STC. The Silicon Valley chapter banner and a table with brochures and Usability Interface newsletters stood out. The response to our presence was gratifying—a real interest in who and what STC is, and how our interests intersect with the user experience community. We started a promising ongoing relationship with the local chapters of SIGCHI, SIGGRAPH, and AIGA, which will continue as BayDUX.