  This article was originally posted in the August 2004 issue (Vol 11, No. 1)
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STC Usability SIG Newsletter |
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SIG News - August 2004
SIG members receive President's Award
Janice (Ginny) Redish, Whitney Quesenbery, and Fred Sampson were given the President's Award for their outstanding work on the transformation committee. The transformation efforts are well under way, which will be a challenge to the STC as a whole and to the chapters in particular, but is very good news for most SIGs. See the article "Transformation Update...or Introduction?" for background on the Society-wide transformation effort.
By Alice Preston
In New Jersey, it has been a relatively cool summer with a few abnormally
wet weeks. But the day of our annual picnic, July 21, dawned hot and
clear. Members, including usability alumni of several Telecomm companies
in the area, gathered at a park in Central New Jersey for an evening of
potluck feasting and active conversation.
Members and their families were able to share information on the STC and UPA conferences, member Susan Fowler's new book Web Application Design Handbook, (just out from Morgan Kaufmann), new jobs, new babies, and job-hunting stories. Members enjoy good food and conversation at the second annual picnic.
UsabilityNJ is a community of people in the central New Jersey area interested in usability topics. Started by STC and UPA members in 2001, the group welcomes participation by any usability folks in the area. The community shares information through a Yahoo Group called UsabilityNJ. For more information, contact group moderator Alice Preston: aliceflute@hotmail.com.
From
left to right, front: Marilyn Tremaine, Yihsiu Chen, Barbara Burke. Back:
(partially obscured) Tom Vollaro, Susan Vollaro, Mary Mitchell, and Cindy
Lu.
GSA and HHS Launch Usability University
The General Services Administration and Health and Human Services announced, on April 22, 2004, the launch of a new, comprehensive usability training program—the Usability University. This program offers U.S. federal employees and private employees a variety of user experience training opportunities through free seminars and in-depth courses at nominal rates.
The goal is to share, promote, and demonstrate usability policies, methods, research, and best practices to improve the usability of federal websites and other communication technologies.
These seminars and courses are designed to provide current, hands-on, practical training for Web developers, editors, content managers, marketing staff, and others.
Already the Usability University has conducted four different two-day courses and six free two-hour seminars
For more information, email
usabilityuniversity@gsa.gov or call Hada Flowers at (in the U.S.) at 202-208-7282.Usability Reporting
The Institute of Standards and Technology, Industry Usability Reporting, is extending its work on usability reporting to include formative testing. The group's first project was the Common Industry Format for reporting summative usability results, now an ANSI standard (ANSI/INCITS-354).
The project will be kicked off with a workshop in Boston on October 18-19, 2004. The goal the workshop is to define and clarify types of usability testing and reporting techniques, as they are used for different goals during the requirements, design and development life cycle, and to identify best practices in communicating test results.
For more information and to register for the workshop go to
www.nist.gov/iusr.
Aging by Design
Bentley College and AARP offer a two-day conference called "Aging by Design," September 27-28, 2004.
The conference explores how the world of business and technology will be affected by the rapidly-growing aging population. Topics include current research on the impact of aging on design, methods for interacting with the aging population (requirements gathering and testing), design case studies and business opportunities.
The conference will include 21 presenters from leading organizations in academia, business, government and design, including The Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT, Fidelity Investments, Center for Aging Services Technologies, Government Services Administration (GSA), AARP, IDEO, TIAX. Several are outstanding members of the STC Usability SIG.
For more information go to
www.bentley.edu/events/agingbydesign2004.
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