New Hampshire Usability Professionals Association

Welcome to the New Hampshire UPA

The New Hampshire Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) provides networking and professional development opportunities for usability professionals, information architects, interaction designers, and other user experience professionals and students in the Seacoast and Southern NH regions. Our mission is to foster the growth of the local usability community and to provide an environment for members to exchange information on tips, tools, methodologies, and technologies related to usability.

Monthly Meetings

NH UPA meets every month in various locations around the Seacoast and Southern NH regions. We work hard to rotate event locations to try and make it possible for all members to attend a meeting. Our meetings include invited speakers, group discussions, workshops, demonstrations, local studio tours, and social gatherings. NH UPA meetings and events are ALWAYS open to anyone who is interested in attending. Membership to the UPA is NOT required.




Join our Mailing List on Yahoo! Groups

Joining our mailing list ensures you will receive timely information and reminders of our events and activities. This mailing list is also the best way to communicate with other NH UPA members. We invite all group members to post their experiences, challenges, job opportunities, and other UX related conversation to the group.

Join the NH UPA Yahoo! Group

UPA Publications:

The Journal of Usability Studies (JUS)

The UPA Voice

User Experience Magazine



Our "Design Slam" Experience

In March 2009, we tried a “Design Slam” format to our meeting where attendees teamed up to help solve the design problems of a local not-for-profit.

Design Slam Lessons Learned (.pdf)

Next Meeting Details

For our June 2009 meeting, we are very excited to have Sarah Bloomer with us to lead a workshop on collaborative and co-design. Collaborative and co-design design yields new ideas by engaging different knowledge, outlooks, goals and perspectives. It can also speed up design. Collaborative design can be done with customers, stakeholders, designers and developers. The trick is how to keep a team focused and engaged. Facilitating design is a skill with some simple rules of thumb that Sarah will share with us through a hands on workshop.

Please RSVP to info@nhupa.org if you plan to attend so we can plan appropriately.

Topic:
Design Facilitation and Collaborative Design -- Mini Workshop

When:
Wednesday, June 24th
Networking and refreshments: 6:00 – 6:30pm
Workshop: 6:30 – 8:00ish

Where:
PixelMEDIA
222 International Drive, Suite 175
Portsmouth, NH
http://www.pixelmedia.com/contact/directions.aspx

Abstract
This workshop is a taster of a 3 hour workshop.  We'll cover:
- When to use collaborative design or co-design
- Different session frameworks and agendas
- Setting up a collaborative design session
- When to use pre-work?
- How to facilitate a collaborative session.
- Applying the information generated 

Sarah will demonstrate collaborative design techniques such as paper prototyping and idea generation techniques with participants--be ready to volunteer!

 

About Sarah Bloomer
Sarah Bloomer has designed user interfaces for 20 years. In 1991 she co-founded the interaction design company The Hiser Group. With Hiser, she helped establish the field of user-centered design in Australia. Upon returning to the USA in 2002, Sarah was a senior interaction designer for The MathWorks before starting Sarah Bloomer & Co, a consulting practice focusing on collaborative design facilitation. Sarah is now a UX Director at Constant Contact.

Sarah has delivered papers, tutorials and workshops at user interface design conferences in Australia and the USA. Her tutorial, Successful Strategies for Selling Usability into Organizations, became a CHI classic. Sarah also led the conceptualization and development of The Hiser Element™ toolkit, a user-centered design methodology created to help companies rapidly set up usability teams.

Sarah holds an MS from New York University in interactive software design, a BA from Smith College, and served as masters supervisor at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Learn more about Sarah at http://www.sarahbloomer.com

 

RSVP:
You must RSVP to attend, as we need a head count for food and refreshments. Send RSVPs to info@nhupa.org.

NH UPA meetings are ALWAYS open to anyone who is interested in attending. Membership to the UPA is NOT required.

 

Hope to see you there!