STC UUX Community Newsletter
Usability Interface

Let’s Get It Started!

By Karen Bachmann, UUX Manager

I’m a big hockey fan. For those of you who don’t follow the National Hockey League (NHL), the 2006-2007 season begins their second year under significantly revised rules that were intended to bring faster play, higher scores, greater excitement, and—they hoped—more fans to the game. After some doubts and concerns about changing the game, many long-time fans are starting to appreciate the changes. Coaches and players also are being quoted on how their teams better reflect the skills needed for success with the new rules and prepared to play to win under them.

What does this have to do with usability and UUX? I can’t help but draw a parallel to the changes that have been taking place in the STC over the past few years. The changes of the transformation process are still happening, but the goals of higher value, greater professional growth opportunities, and—we hope—more members continue to guide the process. As we are seeing successes with the changes, I believe that most communities have moved from trying to figure out how they will work in the new model to starting to make the kinds of fundamental changes and undertake initiatives that will build value for members. We are starting to understand how to “play” within and succeed with our new rules.

In some ways, the past year or so has been a year to hold steady on the successes as new initiatives were tried. For the Usability and User Experience community, we had a lot of great suggestions from our members during re-chartering about where the community should grow. With some of the governance and financing changes in place now, we are in a good position to act on those.

We will, however, need a lot more help to do this. The volunteers who handle the current business of the community do a fantastic job, and many have been serving the community in their current roles for a long time. However, they also have their own jobs, families, friends and other commitments outside STC. For the community to undertake new initiatives, we need more members to volunteer. Here are just a few of the new areas we need to have volunteers help with this coming year:

STC conference activity planning: This team will organize UUX activities at the 2007 conference in Minneapolis, including managing the welcome reception tables and procuring door prizes for the business meeting. The team will work with the publicity team to create promotional materials about UUX events at the conference.

Publicity: This team will create promotional materials for UUX events. Such materials may include brochures, information flyers, and press releases.

Awards: This team will manage awarding the Excellence in Usability award, including recruiting nominees, managing the nominee evaluation and selection, and coordinating presentation of the awards.

Nominations: This team will recruit nominees for next year’s UUX officers, develop a ballot, conduct elections, and announce the election results.