Meeting the Needs of “User
Experience” Professionals
Richard Anderson, Annie Archbold, Michelle Berryman,
Nigel Bevan, Nick Finck, Pabini Gabriel-Petit, Jonathan
Grudin, Dennis Galletta, Barbara Helfer, David Heller, Keith
Instone, Peter Jones, Dirk Knemeyer, Joe Konstan, Arnie
Lund, Ian MaClelland, Nico Macdonald, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah,
Whitney Quesenbery, Fred Sampson, Lynn Strother,John Zapolski, Ping Zhang

We have to collaborate “on thejob” as UX professionals – whyis it so hard to “collaborate asprofessionals” outside of our
jobs?

1

1905

Human
Factors &Ergonomics

1915

1945

1955

Taylor WWI
WWII
training humanfactors

1965

1975

Shackel

HFS
CSTG

Human
Factors

HCI inInformation
Systems

IJMMS

1995

2005

Smith
HFES
& Mosier CEDM

HUSATOperation & data entry

HFES
HPM

Psych. of HCI
BITBusinessgraphics
Cognitive
GDSSs
style
TAM

Ackoff

Managerial use
Computer-Human
Interaction & antecedents

Discretionary hands-on use

BushLicklider
Sutherland
Engelbart
Hopper
Nelson
Kay
PARC

1905

1985

1915

Generalpurpose
computers

Transistor Mainframes
computers

1945

1955

Focus on non-discretionary use

1965

TOCHI

HCI

POET DISDUX

Emotional
designSIGCHI

Softwarepsychology
Smith &
Green
PCs

1975

SIGHCI

1985

Ecommerce

1995

2005

Focus on discretionary use

2How we got here
 Three years ago, Lou Rosenfeld kicked off a
discussion– Face to face meetings– Email discussions on several lists
 A small group met to try to– Articulate the points of pain
– Explore models for solutions– Define principles for moving forward

Things we heard
 “I’m interested in many different things.”
 “I wish I could find out what’s going on in my area moreeasily.” “I don’t have anyone to talk to about this stuff”
 “How do I connect with people across town or aroundthe world?”
 “What should I be learning to keep up in thisprofession?” “I don’t feel like I have a ‘home’ – an organization orconference I can keep coming back to.”3

Overarching principles
 UX is multidisciplinary; no one covers it all Many rich options for UX professionals tochoose from Facilitating connections is key to increasedvalue We can all benefit from supporting those in UX

Getting started…
Local UX Ambassadors

Forming a network of representatives
responsible for facilitating collaboration in
local areas.

Events Calendar & Group Directory
Developing a searchable listing of UX-relatedorganizations and events.

Organization Collaboration

Facilitating collaboration among UX-related
professional organizations.

4

Goals for the DevCon Develop a deeper understanding of the problem andbarriers to its solution
 Examine a mix of potential or partial solutions that havebeen or are being attempted, or are being considered Examine a mix of (partial) solutions developed forsimilar problems in other domains
 Generate new ideas for solving the problem
 Establish relationships and a roadmap to facilitate
problem solution

DevCon Participants
SIGCHIACM SIGGRAPH
AIGA
AIS-SIGHCICHI’ATLANTA
HFES
IAI
IDSA
IIID
IxDG
STC
UPA

5

A broad canvas
HFES - Human factors &ergonomics
STC - Technical communication
SIGCHI - HCIAIS SIGHCI - HCI in a business
context
UPA - Usability and user-centered
designAIGA - Graphic design
IDSA - Industrial design
SIGGRAPH - Computer graphics
IxDG - Interaction design
IAI - Information architecture
IIID - Information design

So….what happened?
 We compared notes on how we thought aboutpublications, conferences, and… and…
 We reviewed some history – and discoveredthat the change is a constant We did a bit of brainstorming…and had a few
sparks We shared ideas about what’s working–new
technologies, DUX, campfires And we worried about reinventing the wheel

6

At the end of the day…

WWW meets the UN
What’s the right model?
 The web: a loosely coupled network
 The mall: a shared infrastructure The UN: banding together for collective action

7

Rightsizing
 Each of these models
are useful Some ideas canscale through themodels We don’t have tochoose just one

Tactical plan8

Ideas for first projects
 Consolidated event calendar
 Local Ambassadors Organizational profiles
 Overview information about the field:
FAQ’s, glossaries, good starting points
 “Campfires” – small, multi-disciplinaryinterchanges
 Conference collaborations
 The syndicated data pool (and UX Core)

And some other ideas
 The database of experts
 Blog aggregator – bringing all the content
together Curriculum development
 Joint publications
 Certification and professional accreditation Volunteer leadership resources9

Engage!

www.uxnet.org

10

CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

AIS SIGHCI Position Paper
Dennis F. Galletta
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
galletta@katz.pitt.edu(412) 648-1699

Ping Zhang
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY 13244
pzhang@syr.edu(315) 443-5617

ABSTRACT

Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588
fnah@unlnotes.unl.edu(402) 472-6060

Before solutions are suggested, it is important to identify as
many problems as possible and take a closer look at them.
Later in this position paper, a summary of the problems andtheir potential solutions is presented.

The upcoming ACM SIGCHI Development Consortium is
aimed at meeting the needs of multidisciplinary professionals
that must choose among a variety of professional associations
and their events. The position of AIS’ (Association for
Information Systems) SIGHCI is that the main problem liesin the deep chasms that separate the literatures of the related
disciplines, and the solution is to provide an umbrellaorganization that enables a more organized federation of
disciplines, groups, and associations. Problems identified
include differences in terminology, competition for scarce
resources, differences in how publications in various outlets
are valued, and confusion about where should be the “home”
for HCI/CHI majors. Suggestions include developing aframework for a federation, negotiating sharedunderstandings about publication outlets, and coordinating
information about meetings and other events.

THE PROBLEMS & POTENTIAL SOLUTIONSEach of the potential problem areas identified will now be
described in more detail, and potential solutions offered.
Differences in Terminology

Terminology has caused some confusion and problems.
Grudin (2005, 1993) reveals that even basic terms such as“users” and “implementation” differ among disciplines. To aperson in MIS, the home discipline of AIS’ SIGHCI, users
could include managers who may never touch a keyboard but
use the results from printed or screen output. In contrast, theclassic CHI perspective would limit the term to apply only tothe person who has direct interaction with a computer.
Likewise, for MIS researchers, implementation is a stage of
deployment of code that is either packaged or custom-coded.
In contrast, Grudin reports that CHI researchers would
consider implementation to be the process of coding (as in“implementing” an algorithm). Grudin offers a long list ofother major terms as further examples: task, application,system, and evaluation. Such differences in major terms
present difficulties in communication among disciplines.

Author Keywords

HCI, multidisciplinary, professional associations, special
interest groups, publications.
ACM Classification Keywords

Ergonomics (H.5.2), Human Factors (H.1.2)
INTRODUCTION

Human-Computer Interaction research, practice, and teachingare performed by a variety of academics and practitioners
who represent a variety of disciplines. Some of theadvantages of the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, andapproaches include the potential for triangulation in researchand practice; integration of a variety of ideas and expertise in
the process of systems design, development, deployment, andutilization; and the chance to build a very large communityand set of resources from those developed by each discipline,
organization, and association.

The terminology problem is not to be taken lightly.
Publications will either be inconsistent with the treatment in
the home discipline of the researcher, or with other papers inthe same publication. Practitioners will encounter confusionas they try to describe or coordinate their activities. In
general, the terminology problem may prevent crossfertilization of research ideas and results, and widen thedisciplinary gaps.
We suggest that such differences in terminology be
acknowledged by authors in publications, and an inventory oftroublesome terms be documented, defined and madeavailable to all parties. Perhaps some notation such as asymbol can be used to flag which version of a term is in use,such as “user1” or “implementation*” with an accompanying
glossary.

Unfortunately, the variety also presents problems that, if not
resolved, can hinder the advancement of knowledge. These
problems include differences in terminology, competition for
scarce resources (such as membership dues, researchcontributions, and/or conference attendance), differences in
how publications in various outlets are valued, and confusion
about the best “home” for students.

Competition for Scarce Resources

These days we are faced with more new journals andconferences than ever, and we face a staggering array of
resources for researchers. While increased communication by
itself would not be expected to have any ill effects, there is a

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

1080

CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

natural limitation in the amount of resources that members
can devote on a continuous basis.

approaches, but also to implement them (in both the coding
and deployment sense of the word).

Examples help to illustrate the problem. Multiple special
interest groups in multiple associations demand dues
payments and stretch our limited attention. Multiple journals
in each discipline present difficulties in making a final choice
for an outlet. The large number of tracks in contemporary
conferences and trade shows make it difficult to decide
which sessions to attend. Multiply this problem with a large
number of such events, and again by several disciplines, andthe problem can grow exponentially.

Information scientists have as their core concern theinformation content of a system. Their value system dictatesthat the goal is to provide information that meets a variety ofcriteria needed for a human consumer. Cognitive elements
are of paramount concern, as user understanding is a largepart of any usability formula.
Psychologists bring to the table theoretical and practicalmodels to explain behavior that has roots in both cognition
and affect. The age of the field itself, along with richresources from many sub-fields provides perhaps the richest
literature resource.

One way to solve this problem would be to provide a singular“filter” to evaluate the opportunities. It would serve as aquality and content signal, and would require an organized“federation” composed of the various disciplines. Such afederation could simultaneously seek to solve terminology
difficulties and prioritize the opportunities based on the goalsof the attendee or contributor. Its role would be evaluative
rather than controlling.

Researchers in Business Administration provide anorganizational context that enriches our understanding of theuser’s task. Without this understanding, an enormous amountof resources can be spent on projects that are unnecessary orotherwise unimportant. The business sub-field called“Management Information Systems” provides an importantorganizational context for housing the central concepts ofproject management, requirements determination, andsystems analysis.

Disparities in the Value of Research Outlets

Widely varying evaluations of journal outlets seem to reveal
alarmingly different value systems in universities and firms.
Disciplinary differences compound the problem.

Which is the proper home? It is our belief that there is not
one singular home for the field, as it is too large to be
captured in its entirety. We believe that the solution is foreach program to clarify its own particular focus, and to be
subjected to a market test as students filter into the various
programs. The important adjustment here is to provide
transparency in the bias of each program, in accordance withthe resources offered by each. This approach also allows
programs to be multidisciplinary in nature, providing newopportunities to study, for example, psychological issues
along with business context, as has been done by Davis andcolleagues (Davis, 1989; Venkatash, 2003).

Such variation grows beyond journal and conference titles.
Some researchers in HCI consider an entire category—journals—“largely irrelevant” (Grudin, 2005) while
conferences are valued. In contrast, MIS researchers revere
journal publications and discount conference proceedings
even with rigorous acceptance rates.
Disparities in valuing outlets will lead to confusion about
what to read and where to contribute original work. It will
ultimately limit our ability to provide a consistent andcoherent theme throughout our work.
The solution, again, is to organize the variety of disciplines
into a more cohesive whole, expanding the notion of a filter
presented above. The relative value of conferences versus
journals should be discussed and negotiated explicitly.

Synthesis

Table 1 summarizes our tentative list of problems andsolutions.
Problem
Differences in
Terminology
Competition for
Scarce Resources
Confusion in
Publication
Outlets

Where Should be the “Home” for HCI Majors

As an additional concern, academic institutions have the needto choose among several alternatives to locate the “home” formajors in the new federated structure.
Current obvious candidates for housing HCI majors include
computer science, information science, psychology, andbusiness administration. A persuasive argument can be madefor each alternative.

Unclear “home”
for the field

Computer science researchers have a long tradition ofworking in HCI. Their capabilities include being able to build
systems and analyze their efficacy. Their powerful technicalcontext allows them not only to imagine a host of possible

Proposed Solution
Inventory of terms and symbolism
for identification of meaning
Federation of HCI to provide
filtration and prioritization
Federation of HCI to provide
filtration and prioritization
Rather than try to move programs,
provide greater transparency(reveal biases)

Table 1. Tentative List of Problems and Solutions

1081

CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

REFERENCES

3. Davis, F. D. (1989) “Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Easeof Use and User Acceptance of Information Technology.”
MIS Quarterly 13, 3, 319-340.

1. Grudin, J. (forthcoming in 2005) “Human Factors, CHI
and MIS,” in P. Zhang & D. Galletta (Eds.) HumanComputer Interaction in Management Information Systems:
Foundations (Volume I), M. E. Sharpe Inc.

4. Venkatesh, R., Morris, M.G., Davis, G.B., and Davis, F.D.
(2003), “User Acceptance of Information Technology:
Toward A Unified View,” MIS Quarterly, 27, 3, 425-478.

2. Grudin, J. (1993) Interface: An evolving concept.
Communications of the ACM, 36, 4, 110-119.

1082

Special Interest Group on
Human-Computer Interaction
http://melody.syr.edu/hci

AN INTRODUCTION
7/2001- 12/2004

SIGHCI Officers

INTRODUCTION TO AIS SIGHCI(http://melody.syr.edu/hci)
SIGHCI is the Special Interest Group on HumanComputer Interaction affiliated with the Association for
Information Systems (AIS). Ping Zhang and Fiona FuiHoon Nah prepared a proposal that was approved by the
AIS council in Spring 2001. SIGHCI was one of the firstsix SIGs announced in ISWORLD in July 2001.
1. MISSION & TOPICSSIGHCI provides a forum for AIS members to discuss,develop, and promote a range of issues related to thehistory, reference disciplines, theories, practice,methodologies and techniques, new developments, andapplications of the interaction between humans,
information, technologies, and tasks, especially in thebusiness, managerial, organizational, and culturalcontexts.
SIGHCI’s mission is twofold:• To facilitate the exchange, development,
communication, and dissemination of information
among AIS members;• To promote research related to human-computerinteraction within business, managerial, andorganizational contexts among AIS members and to
the larger community of practitioners and scholars.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to, thefollowing:• The behavioral, cognitive, motivational, andaffective aspects of human/technology interaction• User task analysis and modeling• Digital documents/genres and human information
seeking behavior• User interface design and evaluation for B2B, B2C,C2C commerce, mobile commerce, e-marketplaceand supply chain management, group collaboration,negotiation and auction, enterprise systems,
intranets, and extranets• Integrated and/or innovative approaches, guidelines,
and standards for analysis, design, and developmentof interactive devices and systems• Design of computer interfaces for single-user orcollaborative decision support, including design ofstandard computer interfaces, as well as design forsmall-screen mobile devices and pervasive
computing• Development and applications of multi-dimensional
information visualizations

AIS SIGHCI Introduction: 7/2001 – 12/2004• Usability engineering metrics and methods for userinterface assessment and evaluation• Usability studies for end-user computing in work or
non-work environment, especially in the Internet era• Information technology acceptance and diffusion
issues from cognitive, affective, motivational,
cultural, and user interface design perspectives• The impact of interfaces/information technology on
attitudes, behavior, performance, perception, andproductivity• Issues in software learning and training, including
perceptual, cognitive, and motivational aspects oflearning• Gender and technology• Issues (such as accessibility) related to the elderly,
young, and special needs populations• Issues in teaching HCI courses
2. GOVERNANCE & OFFICERS
During the initial stage of establishment (July 2001 to
December 2003), the chair and executive vice chair
governed SIGHCI with the assistance of the otherofficers and under the guidance of the advisory board.
The bylaws, approved by AIS council in December
2003, guide the operation of SIGHCI starting January
2004. The following is the first SIGHCI office and theappointment duration. The second (new) office follows
and is in place since July 2004.
First SIGHCI Office (July 2001-June 2004)
Advisory Board (formed 10/02)
Izak Benbasat, UBC (10/02-6/04)
Jane Carey, ASU, West (10/02-6/04)
Fred Davis, U. Arkansas (10/02-6/04)
Dennis Galletta, U. Pittsburgh (10/02-6/04)
Sirkka Jarvenpaa, U. Texas, Austin (6/03-6/04)
Diane Strong, WPI (10/02-6/04)
Chair
Ping Zhang, Syracuse U. (7/01-6/04)
Executive Vice Chair & Secretary
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Nebraska-Lincoln (7/01-6/04)
Treasurer
Diana Gant, Syracuse U. (1/03-1/04)
Vice Chair for Conference Planning
Scott McCoy, College. William & Mary (7/03-6/04)
Vice Chair for Membership
Tom Roberts, Kansas U. (8/03-6/04)
Vice Chair for Research Resources
Richard Downing, Rockhurst U. (6/03-6/04)
Vice Chair for Teaching Resources
Jinwoo Kim, Yonsei U. (6/03-6/04)
Newsletter Editor
Na (Lina) Li, Syracuse U. (5/03-6/04)

1

Second SIGHCI Office (July 2004-June 2005)
Advisory Board
Izak Benbasat, UBC
Jane Carey, ASU, WestFred Davis, U. Arkansas
Dennis Galletta, U. Pittsburgh
Sirkka Jarvenpaa, U. Texas, Austin
Diane Strong, WPI
Jane Webster, Queen’s U.
Chair
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Nebraska-Lincoln
Past Chair
Ping Zhang, Syracuse U.
Chair-Elect
Scott McCoy, College of William & Mary
Conference Planning Chair
Mun Yi, U. South Carolina
Conference Planning Chair-Elect
Andrea Houston, Louisiana State U.
Secretary and Treasurer
Matt Germonprez, Case Western Reserve U.
Vice Chair for Membership
Tom Roberts, Kansas U.
Vice Chair for Research Resources
Richard Downing, Rockhurst U.
Vice Chair for Teaching Resources
Jinwoo Kim, Yonsei U.
Newsletter Editor
Na (Lina) Li, Syracuse U.
WebmasterGilbert Karuga, Kansas U.
Listserv Manager
Ping Zhang, Syracuse U.
3. ACTIVITIES & ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Since its inception in July 2001, SIGHCI has undergone
significant and steady development, which is madepossible by the collaborative efforts of many individuals– specifically, the guidance and support from a numberof senior MIS scholars, the high level of interest andsupport from enthusiastic SIG members, and the hard
work of the organizing team. In this limited space, wereport a condensed version of some activities andaccomplishments (up to December 2004).
3.1. Identity and Community Building
In the proposal for establishing SIGHCI, we stated that
one of the motivations for establishing the SIG on HCI
within AIS was to build a community of scholars who
can share common interests and appreciate each other’swork. Our membership has grown rapidly over a periodof two years (AIS opened the SIG memberships in2002). Here is a series of snapshots of the membershipdata over the years: 64 by Nov. 2002, 73 by Feb. 2003,
186 by June 2003, 292 by May 2004, and 352 by Nov.
2004. Members represent academic (faculty and doctoral
AIS SIGHCI Introduction: 7/2001 – 12/2004

students) and a variety of industry and service sectors.
The membership has a global impact representing over
30 countries and six continents. Our discussion listserv is
open to non-members as well and has 430+ subscribers(as of Dec. 2004) from all over the world.
3.2. Communications and OutreachIn order to promote the awareness of SIGHCI, to extend
the identity and reputation of SIGHCI, and to promotedialogs with the MIS community and other related
external parties, four levels of communications havebeen rigorously designed and implemented: SIG-widecommunication, promotion of HCI in the MIS
community, dialog with other HCI associations, andconnections with industry.
(i) Establish SIG-wide communication on areas ofmutual interests including research, teaching, community
building, and other related discussions. This includes
providing specific services such as website, listserv,
newsletters, member directory, and conference meetings.
The rest of the report provides more details on these
services.
(ii) Promote HCI as an important sub-discipline within
the MIS discipline. Specific methods are conference
minitracks, tracks, panels, tutorials, and workshops at all
major AIS regional and international conferences such as
AMCIS, PACIS, ECIS, and ICIS, and theme articles andjournal special issues in top ranked IS journals. Detailsof these events are presented later.
(iii) Dialog with other global HCI associations andcommunities. Efforts include (1) sending information
about SIGHCI to related listservs, organizations,
websites, magazines, etc., (2) helping disseminate
information about other related associations to ourmembers via SIGHCI newsletters, website, and listserv,(3) publishing special issues in journals that have highvisibility to these associations (such as IJHCS –International Journal of Human Computer Studies, BIT –Behaviour & Information Technology, IJHCI –International Journal of Human Computer Interaction,
whose readership includes the ACM SIGCHI communityand Human Factors and Ergonomics community), and(4) organizing panels that involve people from closely
related disciplines (e.g., the panel on “Finding Common
Ground on HCI Research in Multiple Disciplines” at the
2nd pre-ICIS workshop in 2003). One of the goals of theCommon Ground panel at the 2nd workshop was toestablish a greater level of communication with otherassociations and disciplines to develop greater synergy.
Panelists represented a variety of views from different
disciplines and associations including Psychology,
Information Science, Computer Science, SIGCHI,
Information Systems in an Engineering school, and MIS
in B-Schools.

1(iv) Establish connection with people in the industry. A
number of measures have been set to achieve this goal.
(1) The “Industry Voice” section in our newsletter has
published several voices in the past newsletter issues. (2)The second panel at the 2nd annual workshop in 2003
strived to bridge academia and industry research interests
in HCI where academia and industry people share theirviews and perspectives, and explore collaboration
opportunities. (3) The workshops and minitrack/tracks
have benefited from the industry’s perspectives by
having reviewers from the industry.
3.3. SIGHCI Sponsored Conferences/Meetings
SIGHCI has been participating in two main conferences
on a regular basis, AMCIS (Americas Conferences on
Information Systems) and ICIS (International
Conferences on Information Systems), both of which areorganized and sponsored by AIS. The characteristics ofthese SIGHCI-organized meetings are consistent withthose of AMCIS and ICIS. At AMCIS, the HCI trackfacilitates broad participation, and strive s to be
encouraging and inclusive ; thus it has a relatively lenient
acceptance rate around 67%. At pre-ICIS workshops, we
solicit rigorous research studies that are theoreticallysound and methodologically solid, thus the acceptance
rate is much lower. So far, these meetings included peer
reviewed research papers, panel debates/discussions,tutorials, and invited speakers. Starting from 2003, thepre-ICIS HCI workshops award one best paper and one
best reviewer at each meeting. Starting from 2005,
SIGHCI organizes a HCI track at the Pacific Asia
Conferences on Information Systems (PACIS), andstarting from 2006, a HCI track at European Conferenceon Information Systems (ECIS). Thus SIGHCI covers all
the three regional conferences of AIS: AMCIS, PACIS,
and ECIS. Besides the pre-ICIS workshops, a number of
HCI track at ICIS is being planned. Table 1 summarizes
the conferences/meetings that have happened so far.
Table 1. Summary of Meeti ngs
AMCIS 2002, Dallas, TX
FormatMinitrack (2nd largest at
AMCIS)
ChairsZhang, Nah, S. Davis# Submissions27# Accepted
18
Acceptance Rate67%
# of Final Sessions
6
Special event
1 Panel
AMCIS 2003, Tampa, FL.
FormatMinitrack (largest)
ChairsNah, Zhang# Submissions40# Accepted
24 regulars, 3 round tables
Acceptance Rate68%
AIS SIGHCI Introduction: 7/2001 – 12/2004

Table 1. Summary of Meeti ngs# of Final Sessions
10
Special event(s)1 panel, 1 round table
AMCIS 2004, New York City, NY
FormatTrack with 7 minitracks
Chairs
McCoy, Nah, Zhang
Acceptance Rate
~67% as required by
AMCIS# of Final Sessions
16
Special events
1 tutorial, businessmeeting
Pre-ICIS 2002, Barcelona, Spain
FormatWorkshop (1 day)
Chair
Zhang
Program Chairs
Nah, S. Davis
Local Committee
Juristo, Ferre
Advisors
Benbasat, Carey, F. Davis,
Galletta, Strong, Whinston# Program
25
Committee (PC)# Submissions16# Accepted8
Acceptance Rate
50%
# Participants
42
Special event
4 invited presentations
Pre-ICIS 2003, Seattle, WA
FormatWorkshop (2 days)
ChairsZhang, Lazar, McCoy
Program Chair
Nah
Local CommitteeHess, Jeff Kim
Advisors
Benbasat, F. Davis,
Galletta, Jarvenpaa,
Webster, Zwass# PC/reviewers
60# Submissions42# Accepted
17
Acceptance Rate
40%
# Participants
80
Special events
1 best paper award, 1 best
reviewer award, 2 panels,
1 reception, SIG executive
meeting
Pre-ICIS 2004, Washington, DC
FormatWorkshop (2 days)
Chairs
McCoy, Hess
Program Chairs
Nah, Yi, Houston
Local Committee
Everard, Jones
Advisors
Benbasat, Carey, Galletta,
Jarvenpaa, Zhang, Zwass# PC/reviewers
88# Submissions28# Accepted172Table 1. Summary of Meeti ngs
Acceptance Rate
61%
# Participants
85
Special events
1 best paper award, 1 best
reviewer award, 1 panel
on publishing HCI
research in top MIS
journals, 1 reception
3.4. Special Issues of Refereed Academic Journals
To date, SIGHCI has sponsored six special issues of top
MIS and HCI academic journals based on expansions of
the best complete research papers from six SIGHCI
sponsored meetings. We hope to make this a tradition for
all SIGHCI meetings. Table 2 is a list of the journals andspecial issues generated since the first SIGHCI meetingin 2002.
Table 2. Summary of Journal Special Issues
JournalBased on
Editors
StatusIJHCS
AMCIS 2002
Zhang,
Oct. 2003
DillonMay-June,
BIT
AMCIS 2003
Zhang,
2004
Nah,
PreeceIn progress
IJHCI
AMCIS 2004
Nah,
Zhang,McCoy
JAIS
Pre-ICIS 2002 Benbasat, Jan. &Jarvenpaa, March,
Zhang
2004
JMIS
Pre-ICIS 2003 Benbasat, In progress
Zhang,Nah
JAIS
Pre-ICIS 2004
Planning

Table 3. Panels, Round Tables, Tutorial
Event
Key ParticipantsMethodology” ***Panel: “HCI Research
PreCzerwinski,
Transfer to Practice:
ICIS
Ratner, Benbasat,
Better Together”
2003
Santhanam, Todd
PreGalletta, Lazar,
Panel: “Finding
ICIS
Common Ground
Olson, Te’eni,
Among HCI Reference 2003
Tremaine, Webster
Disciplines”
Panel: “Publishing
PreGalletta,
HCI Research in IS
ICIS
Kemerer (ISR),
Journals”
2004
Weber (MISQ),
Zwass (JMIS)* Published in CAIS 02; ** Published in CAIS 04;*** Under review at CAIS
3.6. Establishment of the Bylaws
The Bylaws of AIS SIGHCI were developed during Fall
2003. They were approved by the SIGHCI advisoryboard and the SIGHCI officers on December 12, 2003,
and approved by the AIS council on December 17, 2003.
They became effective January 2004.
3.7. First El ection of SIGHCI
Dennis Galletta and Jane Carey were appointed as thenominating/election committee by SIGHCI Chair Ping
Zhang to help administer the first SIGHCI election forthe positions of SIG Chair-Elect, Conference Planning
Chair, and Conference Planning Chair-Elect. The
election was completed in time for the new SIGHCI
office to take effect on July 1, 2004. Vice-Chair Fiona
Nah becomes the Chair for the new term. The ChairElect this year will be Chair for the next term. The new
office (July 1, 2004–June 30, 2005) is listed in Section 2.

3.5. HCI Panels, Round Table, Tutorial and Papers
SIGHCI has organized five panels, one round table, andone tutorial at the six meetings. Table 3 summarizes theevents, chairs (underlined) and corresponding papers
generated (marked with *).
Table 3. Panels, Round Tables, Tutorial
Event
Key Participants
Panel: “The Role of
AMCIS Zhang, Benbasat,
HCI Research in the
2002
Carey, F. Davis,
MIS Discipline” *Galletta, Strong
Panel: “The Role of
AMCIS Carey, Galletta,
HCI in the IS
2003
Kim, Te’eni,
Curricula” **Wildermuth, Zhang
Round Table for
AMCIS F. Davis, Guo, Sun,doctoral papers
2003
Zhou
Tutorial: “Integrating
AMCIS Zhang, Carey,
HCI Development into 2004
Te’eni, Tremaine
SDLC: AAIS SIGHCI Introduction: 7/2001 – 12/2004

4. SERVICES TO MEMBERS & COMMUNITIES
4.1. SIGHCI Website (http://melody.syr.edu/hci)
Created on 10/15/2001 by Ping Zhang, the website is the
hub for information related to SIGHCI. It is updated
frequently to reflect timely information that may be ofinterest to SIG members, scholars and practitioners atlarge. One can find information about every aspect of
SIGHCI, including the mission, bylaws, membership,listserv, conferences, news, photo gallery, HCI related
journals, research resources, teaching resources, other
HCI associations, and SIG officers and contacts.
4.2. Listserv
Established in July 2001 at Syracuse University, the list
is used for SIGHCI members and other interested people
to exchange information and discuss interesting issues.
3An archive of past postings was set up in January 2002.
A policy of list use was established in December 2002 by
Ping Zhang and Fiona Nah, and is available from thelistserv page.

centers, funding sources, SIG sponsored journal issues
and papers, HCI journals, and other HCI associations.

4.3. Member Directory

Jinwoo Kim, VC for Teaching, announced the website ofteaching resources on 1/13/2004. It includes syllabi,cases project materials, textbooks, and other relatedteaching materials. It also has a search function tofacilitate easy retrieval of information from the website.

The AIS SIGHCI Member Directory contains members’
contact information, academic record, teaching interests,
research interests, on-going projects and publications. It
is meant for members to get to know one another,exchange common interests in teaching and research, andto find possible collaborators. Murali Mohan Katna
Munuswamy, a graduate student in Information
Management major at School of Information Studies,
Syracuse University, implemented the first directoryunder the supervision of Ping Zhang. It had been
available online since 12/4/2002. A team under thesupervision of VC for Membership, Tom Roberts, hasdeveloped the 2nd version of the member directory thathas been running since June 2004

4.7. Teaching Resources Website

5. FINANCIAL MATTERS
AIS office maintains all accounting information of
SIGHCI. The main incomes and expenses are listed inTable 4. Over the last three years and up to April 2004,
SIGHCI has made a surplus of $7,656. We are grateful toour sponsors, Syracuse University School of Information
Studies and University of Washington Information
School for the last two workshops.
Table 4. Financial Data

4.4. Newsletters
The 1st newsletter (v1n1) was published in November
2002 and was designed by Ping Zhang. Na (Lina) Li was
appointed as the newsletter editor in May 2003 andedited the 2nd newsletter (v2n1) in July 2003, the 3rd(v2n2) in November 2003, 4th (v3n1) in July 2004, and5th in November 2004. There are two newsletter issues ineach year/volume, published in July (before AMCIS in
August) and November (before ICIS in December)respectively. Starting from the July 2004 issue (v3n1), a
new section is created to publish short essays/
opinions/research studies. These papers will be editorial
reviewed. Newsletter items should be sent to thenewsletter editor by early June for the July/no.1 issue
and early October for the November/no.2 issue. All
newsletters are available online at the SIGHCI website
free of charge.
4.5. Photo Gallery
To preserve the excitement and memory of SIGHCI
activities (including meetings and other social events),
this gallery website collects and stores the true moments
captured by SIGHCI members. Ping Zhang set up thegallery on 9/28/2002 and edited photo pages for AMCIS
02, 03, and pre-ICIS 02. Traci Hess from Washington
State University contributed to the organization of thegallery pages for the pre-ICIS 03 workshop.
4.6. Research Resources Website
Rick Downing, VC for Research, launched the website
on 7/15/2003. The website provides information on
Internet resources, relevant conferences, research

AIS SIGHCI Introduction: 7/2001 – 12/2004

Yr 1
7/014/02
IncomeStartup Fund
Membership
Workshop Regis.
Sponsorship
Expenses
Newsletters
Workshop Cost
Workshop Regis. Fee
BalanceYr 2
5/024/03

Yr 3
5/034/04

1,528
3,175
4,154

1,920
9,315
2,000

4,000
3,448
12,490
6,154

591
7,071
250
945

2,246
7,964
315
2,711

2,837
15,034
565
7,656

4,000

4,000

Total

6. LOOKING FORWARD
It has been exciting and rewarding years since theinception of SIGHCI. On behalf of the entire SIGHCI
office, we want to thank everyone who contributed to
SIGHCI in various ways. SIGHCI would not be where it
is now without the advisors’ strong support andguidance, officers’ creative and diligent work, members’
enthusiastic reaction and participation, AIS office’s
cooperation and support, journal editors’ strong beliefs inus, many individuals’ candid assistance in reviewing,sponsoring, and several other capacities.
SIGHCI is well on its way to be a great intellectualforum for scholars with broad interest in humaninteraction with technologies. We firmly believe that
SIGHCI will be even better and more exciting in the
future. We enthusiastically call more people to join us
and play important roles in SIGHCI related activities andevents.

4

Annie Archbold, PhD
Lead, Web Communication Specialist
Centers for Disease Control

Position Statement

SIG-CHI 2005

The transitions in the business and government workplace over the last four years have seen agrowing need for qualified students entering the workplace. This is especially true for thosestudents coming out of human factors programs. In an effort to ensure that the flow of student
graduates (particularly those with an MS) into the marketplace, CHI-Atlanta recently designated auniversity liaison for the city’s university programs.
The need for this university liaison is due to the increasing sophistication of the workplace. Thishas often meant that current graduates are finding it difficult to find a place in the growing
demands of the job market. A fundamental problem is that former graduates are finding thatcurrent graduates often lack the skills and understanding of the current workplace. For many
professionals in CHI-Atlanta, too many jobs go begging. Why:

Applicants cannot “speak” the language common to the business world
Job seekers lack in-depth understanding of the User Centered Design Process
Graduates do not know about the diversity of job opportunities and deliverables
associated with each position

For those out in the field trying to employ junior members of their team:

It is hard to advance when junior positions are not being filled
Applicants now graduating from the same program are not being offered positions
Recent graduates are turning to CHI-Atlanta members for guidance in shaping theirresumes and/or learning the skills needed to fill positions

The change has come with the growth and shift in job requirements that require a thoroughknowledge of user centered design as well as a background in usability.
As the recent Program Chair (6 years) for CHI-Atlanta, I was hearing too many comments fromcolleagues that “we cannot find qualified graduates to hire.” So, in my capacity as the university
liaison for CHI-Atlanta, I am working with our organization to help bridge this gap. We areplanning to share with our local universities our experiences, provide input on the needs of themarketplace, and help provide insight into the job requirements for current and emerging
positions.
This cross-cutting effort begins with the recognition that usability engineers in the workplace are
not going away nor are core usability testing positions. Newly emerging positions, however,require an understanding of usability principles, but they also need practical experience with User
Center Design, work with multi-disciplinary teams, an understanding of consultative services,
environments, and core deliverables.
Why the change? Positions have and will continue to morph into themes such as User
Experience Engineers, User Interface Architects, and so forth as the complexity of projects
increase. Many technology projects are built overseas, but designed in the United States. In
addition, the initial use of the term Information Architect has shifted as Library Science programs
are graduating students concerned with the structure of information in complex content
management and knowledge management systems. Thus, the competitive landscape has grown
and the marketplace is requiring more and more skills of its job seekers.
In early February, CHI-Atlanta will host a program for graduate students at Georgia Tech in the
Human Computer Interaction and Information Design and Technology programs. This workshop
will be led by former graduates who work across industries and who often have unfilled thepositions. The focus of the program is to highlight what students will need to know for themarketplace including types of job postings, the work processes and associated deliverables, therole User Centered Design, and the way to talk about their university training for the marketplace.

1 of 2

Annie Archbold, PhD
Lead, Web Communication Specialist
Centers for Disease Control

Position Statement

SIG-CHI 2005

It is through this effort of CHI-A and graduates of local university programs that we hope to help
students fill the positions in the Atlanta marketplace. During the workshop, I hope to bring ourinsights from the Atlanta experience into the overall discussion.

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Creating a UX Profession
Nigel Bevan
Serco Usability Services
22 Hand Court
London, WC1V 6JF, UKnbevan@usability.serco.com
related and overlapping professions, and at the same time
reap the benefits of a strong multidisciplinary profession?

ABSTRACT

Current aspirations to coordinate the UX community should
be complemented by a coordinated series of professional
initiatives to raise the status of the UX profession so that it
can take its rightful role at the heart of the development
process.

One challenge for the Development Consortium is how
professional organizations can coordinate their activities ina way that better supports the needs of their members.
But the organizations also need to collaborate to have amore effective voice in raising the status and visibility of
the UX professions. This paper considers the challenge of
how one could move towards a strong internationallyrespected professional organization that takes the lead in
representing and championing the role of UX professions sothat they can take their rightful role at the heart of thedevelopment process.

Author Keywords

UX, usability, profession, international.
ACM Classification Keywords

K.7.2. The computer profession: organizations.
INTRODUCTION

Despite compelling evidence of the benefits of employinguser centered design methods to produce more usable
products [2] most development activity still does not use
these methods consistently, with the result that mostinteractive systems are unnecessarily difficult to use.
Surveys have shown that a staggeringly high percentage ofbig development projects fail or are only partiallysuccessful [6]. In a study of 15 large commercial sites, users
could only find information 42% of the time even though
they were taken to the correct home page before they were
given the test tasks [5].

This would increase the motivation and incentive for theconstituent professional organizations and their members tocollaborate through UXnet to achieve common goals.
A PLAN OF ACTION

A starting point would be to compile a comprehensive auditof the current status and role of UX in every form ofprofessional activity, to identify what would need to bedone to give UX the same status as established professions.
Each discrepancy could be analyzed to identify short- andlonger-term initiatives that would help close the gap andgain greater respect and influence for UX professionals.

Relatively simple user-centered techniques could provide
major benefits, but they are most often used too little andtoo late.

There are two complementary areas of activity:• to formalize user centered knowledge and techniques toprovide a firm foundation for the UX profession, andA series of specialist professions have emerged to help
meet the demand for user centered contributions todevelopment: ergonomics, human factors, usability,
information architecture, information design, interaction
design, user experience, etc. Although originating fromdifferent professional traditions, they all share a common
goal of helping produce design solutions that meet real userneeds.

• to incorporate user experience as an integral part of otherrelevant professional activities.
FORMALIZING USER EXPERIENCE KNOWLEDGE

There is currently little consensus on what constitutes
established good professional practice in UX. Educatorsand practitioners are mainly dependent on personal
experience and their selection of textbooks. One of thereasons that the initiative for professional accreditation ofusability failed [1] was because of the perception thatusability is still more an art than a science. The UPA is
now sponsoring the first steps towards a usability body ofknowledge and curriculum [8] to help fill this gap.

This presents a challenge: how can we both support theneeds of individuals who identify with multiple closelyCopyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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There has been more success in the area of international
standards in the field of usability, with a series of respected
standards (ISO 9241, ISO 13407, ISO 18529 etc.).

volunteers to work on a range of initiatives. This should
build on the initiatives of existing UX professional bodies.
It would primarily be a voluntary professional activity, but
professional initiatives are notoriously difficult to manage.
Similar initiatives in the past [e.g. 7] have failed to makeprogress for the lack of a supporting infrastructure. Key
success factors are:But ironically documenting this knowledge in the form ofexpensive international standards has limited its distribution
and influence in an age when information is expected to be
freely available over the Internet. The established basic
principles in the standards need to be extended andtranslated into more practical methods and techniques.

• Each initiative should be led by a committed enthusiast,with support from a small team of volunteers.
• A loose management framework could be recommended
to sustain progress: for example an agreed work plan withdeliverables and monthly telephone meetings to maintainprogress.

INTEGRATION WITH OTHER PROFESSIONSThe existing standards and principles together with an
emerging body of knowledge will help strengthen some ofthe existing UX professions, but are largely inaccessible tomore traditional design and development professions thathave different priorities, terminologies and professionalframeworks. This presents the biggest challenge: tointegrate UX knowledge, methods and techniques at alllevels in fields such as computer science, software and web
development, design, quality, procurement etc. This will
involve a lengthy process of revising and extending existing
textbooks, syllabuses, training courses, codes of practice,standards, etc.

• An infrastructure to monitor project progress and ensurethat another member of the team steps in if the leader isunable to devote enough time and energy.
UXnet could initially motivate and coordinate a series of
initiatives sponsored by its constituent organizations, unlessand until it has the resources to launch and manage its own
projects.
WORKING INTERNATIONALLY

There has been a start in some areas: for example the new
ISO 15288 standard for systems development now
incorporates user centered activities (unlike its predecessor
for software development). This is not an easy area to workin: it needs multi-skilled individuals who are as confident
and respected in the traditional domain as they are in the
UX field.

It is important to harness the enthusiasm of the rapidly
growing international UX community. The benefits wouldbe:

DEMAND A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE• To invigorate the work with the insights from different
national cultures.

• To significantly increase the number of available
volunteers.
• Have parallel work each addressing a different national
audience, but sharing experience.

Traditional professions need pull as well as push: bothcustomers and users need to demand easier to use systems
that provide a user experience better matched to their needs.
Fortunately ease-of-use is now widely recognized as adesirable characteristic of systems intended for use by thegeneral public. Curiously this enlightenment has notreached many of those responsible for developing big
professional systems. Despite coherent accounts of the
major economic benefits [e.g. 4] entrenched IT departments
continue to turn out systems that have had little effective
user involvement.

REFERENCES

1. Bevan, N. (2003) Accreditation of usability
professionals. HCI International 2003, p429-433.
Lawrence Erlbaum.
2. Bevan, N. (in press) Cost benefits framework. In Bias,
R. (ed): Cost-Justifying Usability, 2nd edition. Elsevier.
3. Bevan, N., Claridge, N., Maguire, M., Athousaki, M.
(2002) Specifying and evaluating usability requirements using the Common Industry Format. Proc. of IFIP
17th World Computer Congress, p133-148. Kluwer.

The UPA is in the process of organizing a World Usability
Day as one contribution to raising awareness.

4. Landauer, T.K. (1996) The trouble with computers. MIT
Press.

Another important target is to provide major commercial,military and government purchasing organizations with apractical way to include user experience requirements intheir tenders: developers will only provide what thecustomer asks for. The Common Industry Format is one
small step in this direction [3].

5. Spool, J et al (1998) Web site usability. Morgan
Kaufmann
6. Standish Group (2004) CHAOS Report.

MOBILIZING SUPPORT

7. Tscheligli, M., Giller, V., Fröhlich, P. (2003) A
European Usability Forum collaborating on strategic
initiatives. HCI International 2003. Lawrence Erlbaum.

The emerging UXnet organization could provide theinfrastructure, coordination and vision to mobilize

8. UPA (2004) Body of knowledge.
www.upassoc.org/upa_projects/body_of_knowledge/

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Why CHI Fragmented
Jonathan Grudin
Microsoft Research
Redmond, WA 98027
jgrudin@microsoft.com
ABSTRACTIn journal-centered fields, conferences represent work inprogress toward journal publication. Higher acceptance
rates enable participation by researchers from otherdisciplines, students, and practitioners who do not aim forjournal publication. In contrast, CHI researchers wantacademic review committees to consider our major
conference papers alongside journal articles. To achieve thepolished quality needed to make a case for this led to 15%25% acceptance rates. This is a barrier to participation forresearchers in other fields: If they submit work-in-progressas they do to their conferences it will be rejected, and they
may be reluctant to put effort into polishing conference
papers that earn little credit in their discipline. Highrejection rates also push people out. Because few papers in
any one specialization are accepted, only specialized
conferences can provide a broad view of current activity inan area. Many rejected submissions to CHI and other major
conferences are salvageable, so hundreds of papers areavailable for such specialized conferences, which often
have a more inclusive, warmer atmosphere. Practitioners
not inclined to achieve the polish desired by a tenurecommittee look elsewhere. Two-thirds of CHI’83 papers
were from industry. Today, 80% of CHI papers have an
academic first author, and 90% have an academic author.

I have been active in SIGCHI since 1983, serving on the
Executive Committee and many conference and programcommittees. After editing ACM TOCHI for six years, I
explored the history of CHI and related fields. The“conference-centered” model unique to U.S. computerscience, wherein little published research reaches journals,
and uncertainty regarding HCI’s academic niche havecreated an unusual situation. I propose some paths forward.
Categories and Subject Descriptors

H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
Keywords

conference, journal, research, practice, design, development
INTRODUCTION

By 1988, six years after SIGCHI formed and five years
after its first conference, today’s organization andconference structure were largely in place, managed bymembers many of whom are still active. By 1988 SIGCHI
had sponsored Hypertext, UIST and CSCW conferences,
beginning the dispersion of related research into what are
now dozens of conferences. Annual conferences in othermature fields focus on community maintenance, attracting
people from sub-specializations and related fields.
Examples are AAA, APA, ASA, AOM and HFES inanthropology, psychology, sociology, management andhuman factors. Major CHI-sponsored conferences haveinstead followed the norm of U.S. computer science,emphasizing quality. An inadvertent consequence is acentrifugal effect: Smaller conferences are ‘spun off’ orconditions for their establishment and success are created,and participation by people in related fields is obstructed.

Recognizing that the academic credentialing role conflicts
with community-building and practitioner inclusion, CHI
developed alternative venues, such as demos and lab
overviews. However, concern about the reputation of theconference results in these venues also being highly
selective. They are often screened by academics. And many
practitioners want to participate by presenting papers.
A SHIFTING ACADEMIC NICHE

In 1983, CHI mainly comprised experimental psychologists
hired by technology companies to address newly emerging
commercial interactive systems. A decade later, many of
the first wave returned to academia from industry. Few
joined psychology or cognitive science departments, which
never widely embraced human-computer interaction. HCI
established a foothold in computer science, but in many
traditional departments it remains marginalized. Today
many HCI researchers are moving to schools of information
science or informatics.

CONSEQUENCES OF A QUALITY ASSESSMENT ROLE

Books are the evidence of quality work in the humanities.
Journals have this role in the sciences, including European
computer science. U.S. computer science uniquely
considers conferences to be the final repository for mostresearch [1, 2]. Reasons for this are discussed below, butmore significant are the far-reaching consequences.

Throughout, CHI researchers have sought acceptance as ascience. Sciences do not publish applied papers in their top
journals. CHI could thus not accept practitioner papers in

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USAmodeling. Originally significant CHI endeavors, these are
now the focus of the largest and most recent technicalgroups of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, led
by people active in CHI two decades ago.

conferences argued to be of academic caliber. This, and theneed to establish a unique identity, has led CHI to exclude
work from related fields such as design, human factors &ergonomics, information systems, and marketing.

I no longer think CHI can open up to emulate the big-tent
conferences with a community-building role in otherdisciplines. Had CHI accepted 60% of submissions, notenough quality work would have remained to create andsustain UIST, CSCW, DIS, Hypertext, Ubicomp, Group,
CSCL, CUU, HICSS mini-tracks, HFES technical groups,
WWW sessions, UPA, DUX, and so on. Many would betracks within a large CHI. But CHI followed U.S. CS, notjournal-centered fields, and declared conferences archival.
The other conferences, many with higher acceptance rates
and more participative, warmer settings, now haveconstituencies. People submit directly to them.

ASSESSING THE CENTRIFUGAL STRESSIt is important to emphasize how strongly CHI differs fromother umbrella conferences, and how great is the force thatdrives out anything not considered part of a somewhat
elusive “science of human-computer interaction.” Major
conferences in related fields attract people with large tradeshows, timing that aligns with academic recruiting, andacceptance rates around 50%-75%. In these fields
conferences have no significant standing as quality markers.
CHI’s drive to establish scientific credentials for ourconferences has forced us to eschew a trade show, notemphasize recruiting, hold acceptance rates to 15%-20%,and largely ignore the state of our journals.

Proposals

Why is U.S. computer science different in this respect?
Factors could include these: The high number ofconferences. The limited shelf-life of many results, morecommon in engineering and other applied disciplines thanin scientific disciplines, a consequence of Moore’s Law.
The recently achieved ability to distribute proceedings at aconference. The willingness of professional societies(ACM, IEEE) to archive proceedings, initially in print form
and now digitally. (The lack of such activity in Europe andAsia prevents conferences from attaining the same status.)

In the mid-1980s, CHI became the responsibility of people
in their twenties and thirties, many in industry. A newcohort of that age is evident today. In fact, about 50% of
CHI 2004 attendees were students. Much could be said forturning the franchise over to them, but the current leaders,
now mostly in academia with grants to obtain and students
to place, will not let go any more graciously than did manyof the founders who were forced out twenty years ago.
Two thoughts: SIGCHI could propose that organizers ofrelated conferences commit to participate as an experimentin two unified mega-conferences, perhaps in 2008 and2009. Each would organize its own program and benefit
from one central conference committee. Along with ACM
conferences, try to attract co-sponsored (e.g., DUX) andnon-ACM (e.g., UPA) conferences. A must-attend megaconference would provide opportunities to sample otherdisciplines, recruit speakers from them, and organize joint
activities. Lower travel expenses would offset the drawbackof more session conflicts for those who currently attend
several conferences. Overlapped submission and reviewing
would create some stress. A commitment to trying it twice
would ensure that success would leave time to organize acontinuation. Alternatively, ACM might create a new
digital library entity, the ‘cleaned-up conference paper’
subject to further reviewing, revision, and extension, which
would over time enable the CHI conference to revert to the
traditional community-building and maintenance function
by accepting far more papers. Otherwise, fragmentation is
likely to continue, probably through online developments.

Conferences are rapid ways to disseminate information,
they are socially rewarding, deadlines can be motivating.
The principle drawbacks have been space limitations, which
may melt as the advantages of digital proceedings build,and the lack of a serious review and revision cycle. The
latter is ultimately a journal’s advantage, but it is clear that
our field is inclined to try to inject revision elements into
our major conferences rather than return to a journal
orientation. We thus need to think about other ways toovercome the centrifugal effect of selective conferences.
First consider some groups that were pushed out. CHI’83
was formally co-sponsored by the Human Factors Society,whose members chaired and populated the programcommittee and program. CHI was concerned with the lackof scientific status of human factors and within a few years,
most members of this journal-oriented field were gone.
CSCW’88 included many program committee and program
participants from the journal-oriented information systems
field. They were soon gone. Recently, an “HCI in MIS”
group formed with the explicit intent of bridging to CHI.
Their high-acceptance work-in-progress conference
sessions do not appeal to CHI researchers; their papers do
not get into CHI. Prospects for success are low. A dramaticdemonstration of centrifugal force is the migration ofresearch on cognitive engineering and human performance

REFERENCES

1. Grudin, J. (2004). Crossing the divide. ACM Trans. on
Computer-Human Interaction, 11, 1, 1-25.
2. Grudin, J. (in press). Three faces of human-computerinteraction. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

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The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Perspective
Arnold M. Lund
Microsoft Corporation

3720 159th Ave NE Rm 34/3214
Redmond, WA 98052
alund@acm.org
425-706-8891

Lynn Strother
Human Factors and Ergonomics
Society P.O. Box 1369

Wendy A. Rogers
Georgia Institute of Technology

Santa Monica, CA 90406-1369
lynn@hfes.org
310-394-1811

ABSTRACT

School of Psychology
Atlanta, GA 303320-0170
wr43@mail.gatech.edu
404-894-6775

This mission and these members illustrate the diversity of
HFES. To serve these individuals is a unique challenge that
HFES has faced since its instantiation. This is also thechallenge identified in the overview of the CHI 2005
Development Consortium. Namely, how can organizations
meet the needs of multidisciplinary professionals andmembers with different goals? And do so within theconstraints of professional organizations and the constraints
imposed by legal, liability, and regulatory requirements?

We first describe the Human Factors and Ergonomics
Society (HFES), then our challenges with respect tomeeting the needs of multidisciplinary professionals. We
discuss how HFES has tried, as a professional organization,
to meet the needs of its diverse members.
Author Keywords

Human factors, ergonomics, multidisciplinary, professionalsociety

NEEDS OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROFESSIONALSACM Classification Keywords

HFES tries to meet member needs through a variety ofmechanisms. We recognize that the annual meeting cannot
be all things to all people. We rely on our publications,cosponsorship of other meetings, and organizational
structure of student and local chapters, and technical groups
to satisfy members’ broader professional needs.

Human factors, ergonomics, design, usability, systems
INTRODUCTION

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (hfes.org) is a
professional organization that promotes the discovery andexchange of knowledge about the capabilities andlimitations of humans to improve the design of systems anddevices. HFES was established in 1957 and since then we
have held annual meetings with published proceedings. We
publish two scientific journals, and a magazine of humanfactors applications, books, and have recently started anannual review series. HFES has 22 technical groups, 35
local chapters, and 35 student chapters.

The Annual Meeting

HFES hosts an annual meeting organized both in a top
down and bottom up way: at the highest level by theCentral Office and the Executive Council, but the technicalprogram is created by the Technical Groups within theconference framework. Part of the value of the conferenceis that it is like several conferences held simultaneously,
thus allowing a broad range of interests to be satisfied(crucial for a profession where one's interests may spandifferent areas). The HFES annual meeting is typicallyattended by 30-35% of our members, with some fluctuation
due to location. To meet the needs of our members thetechnical program consists of multiple formats such as
paper sessions, panels, and poster sessions. We offer “Birdsof a Feather” rooms where people with similar interests canhave informal discussions. We offer workshops which areintensive tutorials on specific topics such as questionnaire
design, usability testing, web site design, cognitive task
analysis, and human performance modeling.

UNDERSTANDING THE DIVERSE NEEDS OF
MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROFESSIONALS

The mission of the Society as stated in our strategic plan is
to “serve and represent the members as the premierscientific, engineering, and professional practiceorganization for the discipline of human factors.” TheSociety is the meeting place of research, teaching, andpractice; knowledge generation, and the application ofknowledge. There are both internally focused activities tosupport the members, as well as externally focused
activities (e.g., standards activities, education). HFES
members include psychologists, engineers, computerscientists, and are employed in industry, service,
government, and education.

Publications

The quarterly journal Human Factors, in its 46th volume,
publishes original scientific research and review papers. It
is highly ranked in terms of its impact factor in thisdiscipline and is a key journal for the academic tenure
process. Approximately 12 years ago we added a new
publication called Ergonomics in Design to provide an

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

1091

CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

We also rely on communication of our executive director
with executive directors of other organizations. For
example, a meeting is planned for the spring of 2005 of agroup of chief staff officers of design-related societies. The
HFES executive director is also active in the Council ofEngineering and Scientific Society Executives and theAmerican Society of Association Executives. Staff
networking
withinrelatedprofessional/scientificorganizations is essential to enhancing opportunities forstrategic partnerships and collaboration while maintaining
the healthy boundaries that are a reality of a competitivemarket for association members and their resources.

outlet for publishing human factors applications. It has astrong audience within HFES members, but its tone isintended to enable it to serve as an outreach tool to educate
those outside the discipline. This “magazine” has proved to
be a valuable addition to our publication portfolio.
This past year we approved the creation of a new journal
called the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision
Making. Although publishing is an expensive venture thatmust be carefully considered, we believe that it is importantfor organizations to adapt to changing demands of the field.
Cosponsoring Meetings

Many members of HFES are active members of otherprofessional organizations such as CHI, the American
Psychological Association (APA), and the Institute ofIndustrial Engineers, to name just a few. We have madeefforts to sponsor meetings jointly such as the Applied
Ergonomics Conference (http://www. appliedergo.org/) andthe Midyear Meeting of APA’s Division 21 (Applied
Experimental and Engineering Psychology) and the HFES
Potomac Chapter.

Table 1. HFES Technical Groups
Aerospace Systems
Aging
Cognitive Engineering &Decision Making
Communications
Computer Systems
Education
Environmental Design
Forensics Professional
Human Performance Modeling
Healthcare Systems
Individual Differences

A critical question relating to co-sponsorship of meetings isdetermining who bears the financial risk or burden of suchconferences. We are currently developing a process for cosponsoring and look forward to discussions in theDevelopment Consortium about experiences in this area.

Industrial Ergonomics
Internet
Macroergonomics
Perception and Performance
Product Design
SafetySurface Transportation
System Development
Test and Evaluation
Training
Virtual Environments

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Arnold M. Lund is Director of User Experience inMicrosoft’s mobile computing division, and has been
actively involved in HFES and CHI. He is an HFES Fellow,
has been program chair for Computer Systems TG and theCommunications TG. He was general co-chair of CHI ’98,
founded the Denver chapter of SIGCHI, and has held
various posts on the CHI program committee. Lynn
Strother is Executive Director of HFES. She is a Certified
Association Executive (CAE), a designation administeredby the American Society of Association Executives and has
served as the President of the Council of Engineering andScientific Society Executives (CESSE). Wendy A. Rogers
is the current HFES President. She has been actively
involved in HFES for many years serving as Chair ofStudent Affairs, Chair of the External Relations Subcouncil,
and Member-at-Large of the Executive Council.

Smaller Group Meetings

HFES has local and student chapters which hold regularmeetings for networking and professional development.
Some chapters host small thematic conferences.
The HFES Technical Groups (Table 1) are organizedaround domain and methodological areas. Some hostsmaller intensive meetings periodically. One example is theInterface conferences held in the 1980s as joint conferencesof the Consumer Products Technical group and local
chapters of the Industrial Design Society of America. Thesemeetings were a victim of their own success and became
too large for small groups of volunteers to organize. HFES
is pursuing ideas for supporting this type of meeting.
Another more recent example is the upcoming meeting
coordinated by members of the Macroergonomics
Technical Group (http://cqpi2.engr.wisc.edu/odam2005/)
which is their eighth such meeting in the last 20 years.

SUMMARYHFES is multidisciplinary by definition of the field of
human factors and ergonomics. Our members work in arange of settings including academia, government
laboratories, large corporations, and small businesses. As
such, they sometimes have very different individual goals,
although as a Society we have common strategic goals andobjectives. Our approach has been to be proactive indeveloping Society activities to meet members’ needs,
beyond our annual meeting. We look forward to sharing ourideas with the participants in the development consortium,
learning from them about their strategies, and exploring
opportunities for collaboration across organizations.

Informal Communications

In addition to face-to-face meetings, HFES hosts list serves
for student chapter presidents, local chapter presidents,
technical group chairs, and many of the technical groups
have also set up list serves and web sites (see hfes.org forlinks). These electronic communication methods facilitate
interactions among members for the exchange ofprofessional information and research questions.

1092

Programs and Services of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
PUBLICATIONSPERIODICALSHuman Factors, the Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Peerreviewed archival journal, published quarterly. Nancy J. Cooke, Ph.D., editor.
Ergonomics in Design, the Magazine of Human Factors Applications. Peerreviewed applications publication, published quarterly. C. Melody Carswell,
Ph.D., editor.
The Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making. A new quarterly
journal to be published beginning in 2005. Mica R. Endsley, Ph.D., editor.
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Bulletin, HFES's monthly
newsletter, available via postal mail and on line.
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Directory and Yearbook, publishedannually
Annual Review of Human Factors/Ergonomics, Ray Nickerson, editor. First
volume to be published in 2005
BOOKS
The Ergonomics of Sound: Selections from HFES Annual Meetings, 1985-2000,
Ellen Haas and Judy Edworthy, Editors
Humans and Automation: System Design and Research Issues, by Thomas B.
Sheridan (copublished with John Wiley, Inc.)
Macroergonomics: An Introduction to Work System Design, by Hal W. Hendrick
and Brian M. Kleiner
Readings in Training and Simulation: A 30-Year Perscpective, by Robert W.
Swezey and Dee H. Andrews
Designing for an Aging Population: Ten Years of Human Factors/Ergonomics
Research, Wendy A. Rogers, editor
Ergonomics and Musculoskeletal Disorders: Research on Manual Materials
Handling, 1983-1996, edited by Waldemar Karwowski, Michael S. Wogalter, andPatrick J. Dempsey

Anthropometric Methods: Designing to Fit the Human Body, by John A.
Roebuck, Jr.
HFES Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction, Gary Perlman, Georgia K.
Green, and Michael S. Wogalter, editors
Human Factors Perspectives on Warnings, Kenneth R. Laughery, Sr., Michael S.
Wogalter, and Stephen L. Young, editors
Human Factors Perspectives on Warnings, Volume 2: Selections from Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society Proceedings, 1994-2000, Michael S. Wogalter,
Stephen L. Young, and Kenneth R. Laughery, Sr., editors
New Trends in Cooperative Activities: Understanding System Dynamics inComplex Environments, Michael McNeese, Eduardo Salas, and Mica R. Endsley,
editors.
TECHNICAL STANDARDS AND GUIDELINES
Guidelines for Using Anthropometric Data In Product Design, by the HFES 300
Committee
Human Factors Engineering of Computer Workstations, BSR-HFES 100
Committee, Draft Standard for Trial Use.
ONLINE DIRECTORIES (HTTP://HFES.ORG)
Directory of Human Factors/Ergonomics Graduate Programs
Directory of Human Factors/Ergonomics Consultants
BROCHURES AND SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS
Ergonomics Design Awards http://hfes.org/News/Design_Awards.html)
Good Ergonomics Is Good Economics
http://hfes.org/publications/GoodErgoGoodEco.html
The Adolescence of Engineering Psychology
http://hfes.org/publications/GoodErgoGoodEco.html
Preparing for a Career in Human Factors/Ergonomics
http://hfes.org/careerguide/index.html
Quick Tips for Finding a Human Factors/Ergonomics Job in Industry
http://hfes.org/publications/quicktips1.html
Designing for Human Use http://hfes.org/publications/DesigningForUse.html
VIDEOS

"Human Factors/Ergonomics: The Profession and the Society""Human Factors Success Stories
OTHER MEMBER SERVICESHFES Online Placement Service (at http://hfes.org)
Online Member Directory
Online Directory of Consultants
HFES INSTITUTE (Technical Standards and Best Practices/Guidelines)
HFES 100 Committee – U.S. National (ANSI) Standards Development
Committee for Human Factors of Computer Workstations
HFES 200 Committee – U.S. National (ANSI) Standards Development
Committee for Human Factors of Software
U.S. TAG to ISO/TC 159, "Ergonomics" and its subcommittees, SC1,
Ergonomics Guiding Principles; SC3, Anthropometry and Biomechanics; SC 4,
Ergonomics of Human/System Interaction; and SC5, Ergonomics of the PhysicalEnvironment.
HFES ANNUAL MEETING
In its 49th year, the HFES Annual Meeting brings together approximately 1200
researchers, academicians, students, and practitioners for a five-day meeting that
includes technical sessions, workshops, tours, social events, and technical groupbusiness meetings. The 2005 Annual Meeting will be held from September 26
through 30 at the Royal Pacific Resort, Orlando, Florida.
AWARDSHFES presents the following society-wide awards annually:
The Jerome H. Ely Human Factors Article AwardThe Distinguished International Colleague Award
The Paul M. Fitts Education Award
The A.R. Lauer Safety Award
The Alexander C. Williams, Jr., Design Award
The Alphonse Chapanis Best Student Paper Award
The Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award
The Arnold M. Small President's Distinguished Service Award
The Best Ergonomics in Design Article Award
The O. Keith Hansen Outreach Award

FELLOWSHFES Fellows are those members whose outstanding, sustained, and superiorachievements qualify and service to the Society qualify them for special
recognition. Each year, the Society elects a small number of candidates, who passthrough a rigorous selection process, to this class of membership. Honorary
Fellow status is available to those members who are outstanding in theirachievements but who may not qualify for Fellow because they do not meet thecriterion for Society Service.
TECHNICAL GROUPSHFES includes 21 technical groups, reflective of the broad and interdisciplinaryinterests of the members. Each technical group elects officers, publishes a
newsletter, hosts a web site, and contributes to the program of the Annual
Meeting. The HFES Council of Technical Groups includes representatives fromeach TG, and it advises the Society on technical and organizational issues. HFES
Technical Groups are as follows:
Aerospace Systems
Aging
Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making
Communications
Computer Systems
Education
Environmental Design
Forensics
Health Care
Human Performance ModelingIndividual Differences in Performance
Industrial Ergonomics
Internet
Macroergonomics
Perception and Performance
Product Design
SafetySurface Transportation
Systems Development
Test and Evaluation
Training
Virtual Environments

STUDENT AND LOCAL CHAPTERS
A network of local chapters that serve specific geographical regions in the U.S. andinternationally, and student chapters located in universities provides a meeting place formembers whose physical proximity enables them to hold regular meetings, engage in
special projects (including community service), and enjoy networking and social
activities.
COMMITTEES
Under the direction of six subcouncils of the HFES Executive Council, HFES has morethan 40 committees, task forces, and advisory boards categorized in the broad generalareas of Corporate Activities, Communications/Publications, External Relations, Internal
Relations/Membership Services, Professionalism, and HFES Institute (technicalstandards, guidelines, and best practices).

CHI 2005 Development Consortium
April 3-4, 2005
Portland, Oregon

IDSA + User Experience Design
Historical Overview
After almost 30 years of mergers and organizational evolution, The Industrial Designers
Society of America (IDSA) was founded in 1965 to serve 600 members in ten chapters acrossthe country. At that time, IDSA members worked in the areas of design education, crafts,
decorative arts, graphics, products, packaging, exhibit design and automobile styling. In
the last forty years, IDSA has expanded to serve more than 3,300 members in 28 chapters
across the United States and Canada. The practice of our members has expanded to morethan 75 unique specialties within the context of industrial design including interaction
design, user experience design and human factors design and research.
IDSA officially defines industrial design in the following manner:
Industrial design is the professional service of creating and developing concepts andspecifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products andsystems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer. . . The industrial
designer's unique contribution places emphasis on those aspects of the product orsystem that relate most directly to human characteristics, needs and interests. This
contribution requires specialized understanding of visual, tactile, safety andconvenience criteria, with concern for the user. Education and experience inanticipating psychological, physiological and sociological factors that influence andare perceived by the user are essential industrial design resources.
Since the early 1990s, IDSA has expanded its member offerings by creating Professional
Interest Sections devoted to specific areas of expertise and member interest. The goal ofProfessional Interest Sections is to provide in-depth information on the latest design
trends, news and commentary in different fields. Membership in Professional Interest
Sections is open to all IDSA members without additional cost. Programming efforts arevolunteer-driven with financial and organizational assistance provided by IDSA’s Board of
Directors and professional staff. There are currently 21 Professional Interest Sections
within IDSA including the Interactive Design Section and the Human Factors Section.
Mission & Vision of IDSAAs the profession of industrial design continues to evolve and the global economy continues
to expand, IDSA has begun to embrace a more holistic notion of “Big D” Design with anemphasis on the process of design and the impact it has on business value and quality oflife. IDSA’s current vision statement calls for the organization to “advance the positive
impact of design on business and society while directly benefiting members by evolving into
the world’s most effective design organization.”
IDSA’s mission statement supports that vision by directing organizational efforts toward
promoting the benefits, awareness and value of design while simultaneously facilitating
design quality through professional development and education within a vital andexpanding global design community. IDSA is actively engaged in encouraging membershipdiversity and encouraging multi-disciplinary collaboration.
Interactive Design Special Interest Section
Chaired by Bill Mak of Microsoft, the Interactive Design Section of IDSA maintains thefollowing goals and commitments:

(1) Enable educators to innovate for success, graduating effective designers for aworld of digital convergence. Help affect curriculum by providing mentors forleading design schools.
(2) Enable key IDSA chapters to embrace and extend their membership reach into
ACM SIGCHI & HFES through formation of strategic alliances.
(3) Help IDSA drive clarity of definition for professional identity in the practice ofinteractive design, leveraging IDSA's domain knowledge and leadership in
education, membership and professional governance.
IDSA recognizes that these goals represent both opportunities and challenges. In fact, thesuccessful achievement of these goals will require growth and process improvement fromwithin IDSA including the full commitment of IDSA’s Board of Directors, professional staff
and general membership.
As products and technology evolve, the user experience becomes more and more critical to
the success of the product. The software components and visual interface elements ofproducts have become as important as the form factor. Industrial designers are keenly
aware of this convergence of tactile and cognitive subjects. Interaction designers are as
crucial as ‘traditional’ industrial designers. In the product development process, thebarriers between the two are crumbling and the relationships are strengthening. IDSA
embraces this growth and evolution.
Human Factors Special Interest Section
IDSA also maintains a Special Interest Section dedicated to Human Factors. Chaired by
Steve Wilcox, PhD of Design Science, the Human Factors Section is dedicated to promotinginterest, knowledge and responsibility for the cognitive, ergonomic and perceptual aspects
of product design and use. This group spends considerable effort educating IDSA members
about best practices within Human Factors, improving applied methodologies and theappreciation for academic rigor within the practice of Human Factors.
Similar to interaction design, the inclusion of Human Factors professionals andmethodologies in the product development process has become de rigueur. Designers areembracing this specialty as fundamental to the process for both physical and virtual orsoftware-based products.
Conclusion
IDSA recognizes the growth and expansion of Design as a profession. Merely providing formand style to products is not enough. As ‘products’ become virtual or afford more extensive
interaction opportunities, the design profession will continue to evolve in breadth anddepth of expertise. IDSA welcomes opportunities to engage with other organizations andprofessionals dedicated to improving the business value of design as well as the cumulative
user experience with a product from manufacture through disposal. Collaboration willcontinue to be the key to success in the global economy.
For more information, please visit http://www.idsa.org/ or call 703.707.6000.

User Experience: An Umbrella Topic
Keith Instone
IBM > ibm.com > User Experience Design
UXnet > Executive Council
instone@user-experience.org
ABSTRACTThis position paper represents my views on how we address
the multi-disciplinary needs of the user experience industry.
While each profession struggles to deepen its core skills
and membership offerings, it also needs to branch out
beyond its traditional borders to serve its members’ needs
within a broader industry. “User experience” should be thetopic that unites all of various professional organizations
under an umbrella. Because each organization has its
special contribution to the network (some at the core, someas specialists and others as interested parties), and each
person will have different needs, a personalized portal
should be built for the UX topic to help individuals crossover existing boundaries.
Keywords: User experience (UX); UX network
ACM Classification: K 7.1 Occupations;
Organizations

K

Organization by state was not very precise – people
usually think of their metropolitan area as “home”.

2.

It took quite some time to collect the information about
each local chapter. This could not be automatedbecause each organization had completely different
technologies for their directories. It was hard tomaintain (and is why I never did the rest of the world).

3.

It was hard to categorize some local chapters. One
example: the Cleveland AIGA chapter had members
who lived 2 hours away in Toledo, Ohio – yet every
meeting took place in Cleveland. There was also an
AIGA chapter in Detroit, Michigan, which was only 1hour away. Do I list the Detroit AIGA chapter on the
Ohio page? Or do I make Ohioans check out theMichigan page?

4.

Having a single web page for a state that linked to ahalf-dozen chapter web sites was useful for awareness,but not for repeat visits. What people really needed wasa deeper level of integration of chapters: for example, aunified calendar of events. “I live in Austin, Texas,
show me what is happening this month across all ofthese local chapters.”

7.2

CONCEPTUALIZING THE NETWORKThe name “user experience network” arose in part from a
local chapter prototype I built. I collected the URLs of all of
the US local chapters for ACM, AIGA, AIP, ASIST, HFES,SIGCHI, STC and UPA. I organized them in a database bystate. Users could select a state and see all of the local
chapters serving that state. My purpose was to mainly
address a common pain point I had felt from various
people: not knowing what other professionals were in thesame geographical area as them.
There was a ‘”pecking order” to the local chapters.
SIGCHI, UPA, AIGA, ASIST, HFES and STC chapterswere listed first (in alphabetical order). If any of these local
chapters existed, they were your best bet to find others
interested in user experience. ACM and AIP chapters werelisted last. In some states (like Alaska), these were the only
local chapters, so one’s best defense against being lonely
would be to see what ACM & AIP had to offer.
The overall concept was simple, however: take the silos ofeach organization’s local chapter directories and merge
them into a single directory. This was a simple way to help
individuals cross over the professional society boundaries
in a “local” way that they could take advantage of. There
were shortcomings to the prototype, however:Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

1.

Others took the local chapter network concept and applied
it at the organizational level – linking the various
professional organizations that are related to user
experience at a high level. See figure 1 for a screen mockup of how we might convey this network to users.
THE UMBRELLA TOPICAs individuals started talking about fostering thesecollaborative efforts, we avoided “the naming problem” forthis over-arching idea. Eventually we decided on “userexperience” because it was the least politically-charged andseemed to be emerging as the preferred term in the industry.
“Usability” was very often interpreted very narrowly (rightor wrong) and “Experience design” was already associatedwith AIGA. AIfIA adopted “information architecture.”
It is important to note that user experience is still not the“ultimate” term for this umbrella concept. “User” as a term
has its legacy. “Experience” will probably endure – but I
am less concerned with the “perfect” label than with thebest label that promotes collaboration today.
The other important aspect of “user experience” for me isthat I consider it a “topic” – a topic that many different
professionals are interested in (or at least should be). When

Figure 1. “Related professional organizations” (at the top) start to build the user experience networkorganizing some local UX meetings, I did not take theapproach that the meetings were for UX professionals(there just are not enough in Toledo, Ohio, yet) but instead
they were events where we would meet and talk about UX– and that anyone interested in this common ground waswelcome. I tried to explain why UX would be interesting tomany different types of professionals: from Computer
Science professors, to IT managers, to public relations
officers, to technical communication students, towebmasters, etc.
I believe this is one way to temper the “territory” problem –thinking of user experience as something that everyone has
an interest in, can contribute to, and has responsibility for.
Over the long term, I believe the folks who gather to talkabout the topic of user experience will start to think ofthemselves as a semi-cohesive industry and we will be able
to start to address the economic impact of our work.
USER EXPERIENCE DISTANCES

If you think of UX as a topic, then you can make a map ofvarious professional organizations and how interested they
are in the topic. I have 4 classes of “distances” that make up
my personal view of user experience:1.

2.

Core: These are my core professional organizations
that I have been a member of since “day 1.” (SIGCHI,
UPA and AIfIA) How active I am in theseorganizations changes over time, but I track what thegroups do closely.
Specialize: These groups have origins in other areas
but have recognized specialties that interest me. (AIGA> Experience design, STC > Usability & Information
design, ASIS&T > Information architecture, ASIS&T> HCI) I rotate memberships in the parent
organizations over time (currently, ASIS&T, before
that AIGA, before that STC). Ideally for me, I could
become a member of only the specialty group. When I
present at events sponsored by these groups, I feel an
immediate synergy. When I look over their list of local
events, I see often connections to user experience.

Sure, sometimes the STCers are talking aboutsomething very specific to their profession that I do not
relate to, but the members overall are open to thebroader discussions.
3.

Applies to: What the group does is important to UX –but I have not made the personal connection yet, forvarious reasons. (HFES, IDSA, IIID, SIGGRAPH,
IxD) The reasons these groups are still “distant” for mevaries. For IIID, they have no local groups and I havenever been to one of their large events. For HFES, theirlocal chapters near me are not that active or not thatmuch into the broader user experience topic. Any ofthese could move into group 2 – for example, HFES
has its Internet Technical Group, which I used to beconnected to, but I have lost track.

4.

Interested in: These groups are interested in UX as a
topic because they realize it matters to what they do,but they have other foci so UX may just be something
they think about on occasion. There are many
professional groups that fall into this category, such as
ACM, IEEE, any IT group, and any marketing group(e.g. AMA, PRSA). To me, UX will never be central towhat these groups do, but there is plenty of common
ground that can be found.

Who belongs into each group is open to debate – above are
my personal views. Even though I have been searching out
various groups for several years, I am continually amazedto find more and more groups which should be included inthis framework. Raising awareness of UX issues among
those that are not interested today but should be is an
important initiative for the UX industry as a whole.
One use of the these “conceptual distances” is to help me
understand the probability that any given organization will
be doing something that I am interested in – something
about user experience. I pay attention to everything that
happens in the core, while I only check in on the “interestedin” parties every once in a while to see if they are putting
the UX spin on whatever is their hot topic.

Applied geographically

My original local chapter directory is no longer online, but
I am working on a new version. This one is narrower in thesense that I am focusing on the Ohio-Indiana-Michigan
geographic area. It is broader in the sense of being morethan local chapters – more of a personal link directory aboutuser experience, with events one key component.
The prototype is at http://user-experience.org/links/
The most fleshed-out part of the prototype so far is thegeographic distance x conceptual distance aspect for local
chapters (see Figure 2). The more local and more central to
my core, the more interesting it is to me. But “farther away”
things are also on my radar: a local ACM chapter or a local
PR society might have 1 meeting a year that I am interestedin, for example. I regularly drive 1-2 hours for SIGCHI and
UPA meetings, so I need to plan ahead. If the topic wasvery targeted, such as about UX as an umbrella topic, I
would travel all of the way to Indianapolis (> 4 hours).
Thus, things in the upper left have the greatest probabilityof being interesting to me; things in the lower right the least
chance; all is worth tracking.
At this point, this is a simple directory of links.
The links need to be expanded from justprofessional associations to companies (e.g.
firms that offer UX services) and academia (e.g.
professors who are teaching UX topics in theircourses).
Ideally, my geographic component would also
include the New York City area, where I travelon occasion for work.
A feature that needs to be added is to more
precisely assign “weights” to these distances –conceptual and physical distances. It should beeasy for me to find things that are local and on
topic. Things that are on topic but farther away,
plus things that are local but not quite on topic,
should not be presented as urgently. I am surethere are many visualization techniques aroundto do this.
This view of the world still has limited value toothers. Even better would be a system thatcovered all geographies and the whole spectrumof UX. Then any individual could input theirlocations of interest AND their UX-related topics
of interest, and get their own visualization of the
UX world for themselves. The profile should
include what organizations they are members of(which would cause some added weighting foritems sponsored by that group). This could be

the next stage of the UXnet calendar / directory initiative.
For example, this personalized user experience portal could
support a technical communication professional in the
Washington, DC area. She would make STC and STC
usability and STC information design as her core. AIfIA,
UPA, AIGA and SIGCHI could be her specialties (e.g.,
SIGCHI is “research specialty” in her view). HFES istagged “worth keeping track of.” She flags usability,
accessibility and IA as topics of interest. She marks the DCarea geographically.
The result will be her personalized view of user experience.
Since the local HFES chapter is active, their events willappear in her local calendar, but sorted to the bottom under
the local STC, UPA and SIGCHI events. A local IDSA
event would not normally appear in her calendar (she has
not included that organization in her profile), but when alocal IDSA meeting is tagged “usability” because they aretalking about user testing applied to traditional productdesign, then it shows up as something she may be interested
in. A national accessibility conference taking place in DC
next year – sponsored by a group she has never heard of –appears on her calendar early so that she can plan ahead.
Conceptual distanceGeographic
distance

My Core My Specialities Applies to UX Interested in UX
SIGCHI
AIGA
HFES
ACM
UPA
ASIST
IDSA
AMA
STC
SIGGRAPH
IEEE CSPRSA

Less than 1 hour--

BGSU STC--BGSU ACMNWNUGPRSA NwO

MOCHI
MIUPA

AIGA Detroit
MI-ASISTSTC-SM

SIGGMOAMA Detroit

BuckCHINEOUPAAIGA Clev
CO-ASIST
CO STC
Hoosier STC
NEO STC
SOASIST
SWO-STCCSCA
CO HFESIDSA COIDSA NONEO SGSOCHFES

Clev AMA
COACM
ColAIP
Col AMA
Dayton ACM
Dayton AMAPRSA Dayton
Web Assoc--

AIGA Cinti
STC-SJVCAGFA

A/C AMA
Cinti AMA
Michiana AMA

INUPA

AIGA Indy--

CI ACM
Indy AMASEOMUG

ToledoBowling Green
1 hourAnn Arbor
Detroit
2 hours
Cleveland
Columbus
DaytonFt. Wayne
Lansing (East)

3 hours
Akron/Canton
Cincinnati
South Bend
4 hours
AthensIndianapolis
Other outskirts

Figure 2: My User Experience distances

IxDG: Finding a Home in the UX Community -Build it and they will come; And they did!
David Heller
Interaction Design Group (IxDG)
IntraLinks, Inc.
104 S. Portland Ave.
Apt. 4A
Brooklyn, NY 11217
dave@synapticburn.com
ABSTRACT

For most of the last 2 years, IxDG has basically existed at
two levels: First, as an online community, where a similar,
yet slightly different conversation was going on; second, aseries of face-to-face gatherings around the world: London,
New York, Pune (India), San Francisco Bay Area and Los
Angeles. Other communities have said that they would liketo plan an event: Boston, Vienna, Bangalore, Mumbai, St.
Louis, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

For close to 2 years now I have been part of an exciting
project—to create a new community and organization
dedicated to the advancement of Interaction Design (IxD).
It has been both a fun and frustrating road. We have had
mostly successes, but there is an environment out there
today in the UX community that makes it difficult for thiscommunity to grow freely.
I’d like to take the opportunity of the consortium to discuss
what it has been like to take on this initiative and how wehave been thinking about how to make this project more
successfully. Finally, how can a more organized UX
community can help facilitate this, instead of fighting what
is probably the inevitable.

The first project of the new steering committee andworkgroup was to create a definition of what is IxD. The
key part of this conversation was that the steeringcommittee at that time and many of the people who were
working on this first initiative were and are committed totalking about the discipline of interaction design and not
people who hold the title of interaction design (or any other
title for that matter.) This focus is at the core of our strategy
and a strict guideline to reflect off of as we moved forwardwith other initiatives and strategy.

BACKGROUND

In 2003 a “call to arms” was made by two people over theInternet—Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini 1 and Challis Hodge 2—
to form an organization dedicated to the promotion, andadvancement of Interaction Design (IxD) and to benefit the
careers of those who practice it. That call led to an e-maillist hosted by Challis where some 200-300 design
practitioners, researchers, students and teachers came
together in short of a month.

A next core part of the creation of the group was thesteering committee focused on creating value for its
constituency. We were in no position to charge formembership and create services that would make a US$50
expense worthwhile, but we knew we had to do something.
We created 3 initiatives and a few taskforces that would
help support those initiatives. The initiatives are Career
Development, Education, and Tools & Resources. Because
we are a purely volunteer based organization these have notcome to fruition (hopefully by the end of this month the
Resource Library, a main effort of the Tools & Resources
Initiative will go live.)

After further time it was clear that this list needed more ofan organizing bodny and Challis invited people to join asteering committee and 3 people heeded that call—including myself. This steering committee took it uponitself to represent this community, and asked for volunteers
to help create some initiatives. The very first initiative wasdefining the discipline and creating a mission statement.
Both are available on http://ixdg.org/ 3.

Another defining element of IxDG’s community is that wehave a very active international “membership”. This might
be coincidental, but the steering committee from the firstday set out to create a home that worked against its UScentric realities. We recently produced our first translated
version of our website: German.

When we first started to organize, there were manyorganizational reactions from abject horror to fullembracing, but none that really wanted to consider the needfor a new home for the interaction design practitioner assomething separate from what already existed. Most
embracing was in the offer for us as IxDG to join theexisting entity.

This spring the IxDG is going to be having a small retreat todetermine its final strategy and tactics for achieving thatstrategy. The goal of this meeting is to make some final
decisions towards formalizing the IxDG community into a1

functioning organization. The form of that organization is
not finalized and will be in large effort the point of theretreat to determine:•

Are we an independent organization?

•

Do we take up the offer of 1 or 2 existingorganizations to find/make a home within theirorganizational structure.

•

What type of membership will we have?

•

What are our immediate offerings for thatmembership? For the IxD community?

Yes, “If you build it they will come, but it helps A LOT
when the person getting the word out is famous in the fieldand puts out an amazing call to action, not just once, but
now twice. (See the May/June issue of Interactions.)
REFERENCES

1. Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini, It’s Time To Get Respect
http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRes
pect.html

Creating another group in the UX community? Are
we yet another faction? Is there anything wrong
with factions?

•

Can/will a single practioners/human find a homein just one organization?

•

What is a home for a practitioner?

Why UXnet’s success is important to the successof IxDG, and why IxDG’s formation during thesame period of UXnet is not a coincidence?

Final reference to title:

To this particular audience, I would like to offer this story,
and address some of the experiences we have faced in thelast 2 years.

What is it about existing organizations that evennecessitate this?

•I’m sure there are more questions, and in fact I’m looking
forward to an opportunity to collaborating with peers sothat as I go into the retreat for IxDG I can reap theexperiences and knowledge of the attendees to theconsortium.

THE PRESENTATION•

What does it mean to not only create anorganization, but create a community where there
wasn’t one already naturally?

My goal here is not to present final answers, but rather
reflect the history of IxDG into the workshop as a dialog forthinking about the future of User Experience Design.

We have a tough road ahead of us. We have attempted tointerview people who have been a part of doing this work in
the past and who are doing the work currently to find out
what challenges and what opportunities they were able toovercome or take advantage of. We have learned a lot.

••

2. Challis Hodge, A New Home For Interaction Designers
http://www.challishodge.com/2003_08_01_uxblog_arch
ive.html
3. Interaction Design Group (IxDG)
http://ixdg.org - core web site
http://discuss.ixdg.org/ - discussion list site

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

A Focus on Conferences
Nico Macdonald
Spy
102 Seddon House, Barbican, London
EC2Y 8BX UK
nico@spy.co.uk+44 7973 377 897
ABSTRACT

Conferences are still valuable for established attendees andpotential new audiences, and the overall audience for events
can be increased, helping alleviate competition between
professional organisations.
In addition professional organisations need to avoid
conferences being run-of-the-mill, and taking their audiencefor granted. They need to widen their primary and secondary
audiences by helping potential attendees and presenters findout about events, evaluate those they might attend, andbenefit in other ways from participating in; professionalisingpresentation and documentation; facilitating more
controversial discussion; improving media relations(including with informal commentators).

•

Focussed, reflective, and visually supported learning
about high quality new design work, research, andtheoretical insights – and related references•

Developing a broader view of a theme or subject area•

Questioning presenters about their work, and learningfrom others’ questions•

Meeting and engaging with old colleagues and newacquaintances, the latter introduced by old colleagues,
identified in Q&A sessions, or met by chance•

Raising your profile as a presenter or panellist, or as anattendee in Q&A sessions

The trends around conferences have been discussed more in
the design world than the HCI world, and the latter may be
more aware of the design element of conference creation1, 2,
3 4, . However, the issue of meta conference programming andcoordination has been discussed relatively little.

Some of the solutions involved re-designing and reprogramming
events,greaterinter-organisational
cooperation, technical developments, and greater intelligencewhen thinking about audiences and stakeholders.

Discussion
Author Keywords

There are a number of factors undermining the value of
events and conferences for attendees and potential attendees.
These are expanded on in the ‘Supplemental information’.

Conference formats, conference documentation, conference
discussion, conference attendees, presenters, presentationreferences, information sharing, conferencing reporting,
Weblogging,
ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.m Miscellaneous
INTRODUCTION

I should begin by noting that the call for participation
assumes that there is an assumption that professional
associations, and specifically the events they program, are or
could be of value to professionals.

Conferencing by default•

Taking the audience for granted•

Widening audiences•

Lack of controversy•

Media savvy missing•

Failing to connect

Challenges

I will consider potential solutions within the timeline of atypical conference.

Events in the area of design and human-computer interaction
have a number of potential benefits for presenters, attendees,
and related stakeholders:••

Finding out about and evaluating events

Standards for sharing information about planned,
forthcoming and past events need to be established between
event programming organisations. Information about planned
events will help organisations at least ensure there aren’t dateconflicts (as there will be between this year’s CHI conference
and INCLUDE 2005 at the Royal College of Art in London),and at best that conference themes are complementary.

Finding new and high quality sources of information andideas from presenters selected by a conference
programmer or coming out of the peer review process

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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This information should be easy to incorporate into otherinformation environments, including personal calendars,
word processors (as citations), other electronic tools, andWeblogs (for instance, to allow Weblog hosts to indicate they
are attending an event). It should be used by these and otherorganisations and publications to present event information
in a strongly visual manner.
There should be an emphasis on annotating eventsannouncements with information that would help potential
attendees evaluate the events. This might include lists ofregistered attendees (who potential attendees may contact for
their take on the event if they already know them), links toreviews of previous or related event, and to previews of theevent. Reviews and previews should encompass Weblog
entries.

•

Territoriality of professional organisations, which insome areas are in competition, and in general may beunused to collaborating•

The tension between formalising and structuring
information and the relatively unstructured way in whichpeople tend to share information•

Creating dynamics that will encourage overall beneficial
acts, such as indicating if you are attending an event,previewing an events, and sharing learning•

Raising standards in professional conference situations
where volunteers are unremunerated and have little togain by learning new practices

CONCLUSION

There is a keen desire for design and HCI knowledge, which
can been seen in the development of events around groups
such as AIGA Experience Design, Doors of Perception,
O’Reilly, and individual facilitators. With greater pressure on
professional organisations, clearer thinking about event
design, and greater consideration of event documentation andinformation sharing, and open-minded collaboration andprogramming between professional organisations it will bepossible to better serve professionals and other interested
parties in the future.

Getting value out of the event

There should be an increased emphasis on working withpresenters to improve the rhetorical and visual aspects ofpresentations (particularly at conferences based on peer
review). Documentation should also be addressed, helping
attendees to frame, structure and reference their notes, fortheir own use and for trip reports. The design and production
values of conference proceedings should be reconsidered tomake them more useful to attendees, and more attractive topotential future attendees and interested parties11.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Much could be learned from presentations, moderation anddocumentation at conferences such as Doors of Perception,
TED12, and the AIGA National conferences.

I have been collaborating in developing thinking arounddesign and HCI event information (and broader areas ofknowledge) with members of the steering committee of the
AIGA Experience Design group including Robert Reimann,
Julie Stanford, and Molly Wright Steenson. I have also beenworking with the UXnet calendar working group.

Getting the word out

During and post-conference there should be an emphasis on
telling engaging stories about the conference presentations,debates, and activities in a manner that makes it easier for
media representatives to talk about them, and presents theconference as a coherent whole.

REFERENCES
1. ‘Conference madness’ Alice Twemlow, Eye issue 49,

Autumn 2003
http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=71&fid=469

Media relations should also support Webloggers writing
about the conference, creating a buzz during the conference
that non-attendees can tap into, and seeding the public
documentation of the event. The Doors of Perception
conference is extremely effective in this area.

2.

Aspen 2004 conference review, John Maeda, Creative
Review, October 2004

Material related to the conference and presentations should
be make readily available (where copyright allows) andinformation presented in ways that make it easy toincorporation references into other writing, reviews, essays
and books, Weblog posts, and conference previews. In thismanner, the conference may become part of the informationsphere, clarifying its nature, making more impact, andwidening its (and the total) audience.

3.

‘1989: Roots of Revolution’ Michael Bierut, March 6,
2004. On the biennial conference of the American
Institute of Graphic Arts.
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/000110.html

4.

‘Does Aspen Have A Future?’ William Drenttel,
October 9, 2004. Comment from Michael Bierut: The
purpose of design conferences is still somewhat
mysterious, and I say this as someone who has organized
more than a few.
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/000208.html

5.

Doors of Perception conference
http://www.doorsofperception.com/

Barriers

Barriers to these solutions, and their strengths andweaknesses, include:•

The difficulty of the process of developing andmaintaining any standard for information sharing

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium
6.

February 9-12, 2004: O’Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etcon/](San Diego)

7.

October 23-26, 2003: AIGA National Conference: The
Power of Design [http://powerofdesign.aiga.org/](Vancouver, BC) and March 21-23, 2002: Voice: AIGA
National Design Conference[http://www.voice.aiga.org/] (Washington, DC).

8.

November 12-14, 2004: Design Engaged[http://www.heyotwell.com/engaged2004/](Amsterdam)

9.

October 16-17, 2003: HITS: Humans Interaction
Technology Strategy [http://www.id.iit.edu/events/hits]/](Chicago, Illinois)

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques.
2002. ISBN:1-58113-515-7
12. February 23-25, 2005: TED2005[http://www.ted.com/ted2005/] (Monterey, CA). TED is
the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference,founded by Richard Saul Wurman.
SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION
The author’s qualifications

The author has been involved in programming design and
HCI events for over years. Major conferences include
Designing the Internet (London, 1994), and Design For
Usability (London, 2000). He has been on conference
committees for DIS2002 (including editing the proceedings)
and CHI2003 and consulted on communications for
DIS2004. He has programmed and chaired panels at
DIS2000, DIS2002, CHI2003, and DIS2004. He is on thesteering committee of the AIGA Experience Design group,
has been involved in programming a number of its Summits,and founded and programs its London events. He was on theexecutive of the British HCI Group for three years, where he
was key to the launch of its Usability News publication, on
which he still advises. He also programmed and chaired the
CHI2003 Development Consortium on Mass Communication
and Interaction. In addition he has spoken at many
conferences including AIGA and IIID events.

10. During December 2004 on the CHI-ANNOUNCE list

alone there were almost 20 calls for participation for
conferences and workshops (some part of bigger
conferences). Over a year an industry professional might
have to decide between 20 to 200 events they might
submit a paper to or attend.
11. The conference committee for the 2002 Symposium on

Designing Interactive Systems (of which I was amember) attempted this, with some success. See
Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive1095

academics and researchers (peer kudos, departmental
benefits, value when promotion is considered or in job
applications, impressing potential publishers), nor will theiremployers have the funds to support attending a conference.
There is also less value for this audience in the format oftypical conferences or the nature of the level at whichanalysis is presented.

A FOCUS ON CONFERENCES:
SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION (NICO M.)

Discussion
Conferencing by default

One of the factors undermining the quality and value ofconferences is the obligation organisations are under to put
on a regular (and often annual) events, and the financial
value of conferences (attendee fees, sponsorship income,and licensing or selling of proceedings). By contrast, someevents have a strong individual character, and a distinct andintriguing theme. For instance the Dutch-based Doors ofPerception conferences5, the O’Reilly Emerging
Technologies conferences6, the bi-annual AIGA National
Conferences (whose last two themes have been ‘The Powerof Design’ and ‘Voice’)7, and the Design Engaged events
programmed by Andrew Otwell8. In the SIGCHI area, apartfrom the DUX conference, the most significant recent event
has been the HITS conference9, which combined an
intriguing and timely theme with high quality and engaging
presentations.

Lack of controversy

Professional conferences have tended to move from nicheareas of interest to address wider audiences, and broader
societal and business issues. However, programmers haveoften failed to address these developments, or where they
do they often assume there are common interests and views
across their audiences. As a result, programs often fail toengage new audiences, and new thinking is not effectively
challenged or developed.
Media savvy missing

The focus on existing audiences, and the lack ofcontroversy, also tend to lead to the neglecting ofcommunication to new conference audiences and otherinterested parties. Although many events and conferences
have formal media relations, they are often poor at sellingstories in a manner that will gain coverage and appeal toaudiences and other interested parties.

Taking the audience for granted

Another factor is a product of the established nature ofmany conferences and their focus on their traditional
audiences. As a result, the audience is taken for granted,
established presentation and documentation formats are notdeveloped, and fail to engage potential new audiences.

Failing to connect

With the proliferation of events and conferences, and ofcommunication channels, it is becoming harder for potential
attendees to determine which events are significant andwhich they might submit to or attend. The obligatory natureof many events, and the tendency to take audiences for
granted, also leads to their communications being
information driven and bland, leaving few ways in forpeople to judge their value.

Widening audiences

As design and, particularly, HCI have become more key toindustry the audiences for events and conferences on these
themes have broadened beyond the traditional academic
and research communities.1 Typically this wider audience
doesn’t have the incentive to submit papers that motivate

1

CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

Organizational Collaboration:
An STC Perspective
Fred Sampson
Senior Member and Immediate Past President, Silicon Valley Chapter
Society for Technical Communication
76 Cutter Dr., Watsonville CA 95076
fred@fredsampson.com
831-728-1339
ABSTRACTencouraged our members to view themselves as part of theuser experience development team. And I have actively
engaged with other user experience organizations to promote STC and its members and to bring additional value to
STC members.

In this proposal I submit personal qualifications for participation in the CHI 2005 Development Consortium, alongwith a review of some issues to be discussed and possible
resolutions.

For example, I initiated STC involvement in the DUX2003
conference as a cooperating society, encouraged attendanceat the conference by STC members, and had the Silicon
Valley chapter of STC co-sponsor the conference's closing
reception. Likewise, I led STC's involvement in BayDUX,
an organization that grew out of DUX2003 to promote interorganizational cooperation in the San Francisco Bay
area. BayDUX subsequently became the local representative for UXnet, which also promotes cooperation between
user experience organizations. I have also worked as a volunteer for CHI2004 and CHI 2005, which involvement hasforged additional links between CHI and STC.

Author Keywords

Development consortium, STC, Society for TechnicalCommunication.
ACM Classification Keywords

K.7.2 The computing profession: organizations
INTRODUCTION

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) represents nearly 20,000 professional technical communicators
around the world. STC members fill a wide variety of technical communication roles in a wide range of industries,
including technical writers, technical editors, technicalillustrators, usability professionals, content developers, human factors engineers, information architects, information
designers, instructional designers, technical trainers andinstructors, visual designers, Web designers and developers,
performing services for computer software and hardware
development, financial and insurance, medical and biotech,government, and other industries. As such, STC members
not only interact with and support user experience professionals, they often take on the role of user experience professional or project manager for user experience projects.

Professionally, I am an Information Developer at IBM’s
Silicon Valley Laboratory. In my previous position at PeopleSoft, a large enterprise software vendor, my primary role
was writing developer documentation for users of the proprietary software development tool set. However, I also
took the lead in promoting cooperation within the company
between the information development and user experienceteams. I tried to bring the perspective gained from my involvement in CHI and DUX to my work at PeopleSoft,keeping the user experience in mind while developing
documentation, and will continue to do the same in my new
position at IBM.

PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS

As a senior member of STC, I have volunteered in leadership roles at the chapter and society levels, including a year
as president of the Silicon Valley chapter, STC's largest. I
have arranged presentations to chapter meetings by user
experience professionals such as Jared Spool from User
Interface Engineering and Steve Calde from Cooper. I have

ISSUES

Following are some of the issues that I see involving STC
and the topic of this CHI 2005 development consortium.
Existing Relationships

STC recognizes many related organizations, such as
SIGDOC, IEEE/PCS, IABC, and UPA, but in practice has
little interaction with these organizations (with the notable
exception of UPA, which has a close relationship with
STC). However, some STC members, recognizing the benefits of interorganizational cooperation, have actively engaged with organizations such as UXnet. And many STC

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

members maintain active membership and involvement inother professional organizations. Do these members promote cooperation between the organizations of which they
are members? Do they find that time and resources limit
their involvement in multiple organizations? Are membership dues a limiting factor? How many different sponsoredconferences can a member attend in a year?

existing model of geographic communities (local chapters)and virtual communities (the special interest groups, SIGs).
STC recognizes that changes in how we communicate andrelate to each other within STC and with other groups require changes to how we organize and support our communities. I worked with Whitney Quesenbery and Ginny Redish on the Communities Committee in the early stages of
STC’s transformation to help define our transformed communities, and believe that our experience can bear positively on the work of this DevCon.

Conferences

STC sponsors an annual conference that brings together
members from all its chapters and SIGs. In addition, STC'svarious regions have sponsored regional conferences serving more localized membership, with varying success. Even
individual chapters have sponsored small local conferences.
Is it possible that the regional or local model might be effective in bringing together related organizations? Is it more
likely that local or regional cooperative conferences might
be easier to organize? Might they make use of industrysponsored venues to reduce costs? And could such local
and regional efforts promote interorganizational cooperation and coordination more readily than larger conferences?
Would local or regional DUX conferences be successful?

Cooperation

The Call for Participation for this DevCon acknowledges
that there may already be too many conferences and meetings for those who wish to attend, and that some conflict as
to time and location. Is it possible to coordinate co-locatedconferences on overlapping themes? Can, for instance, STC
and SIGDOC combine their annual conferences? Or are theconference goals sufficiently distinct to make such a combination counterproductive? Could STC and UPA coordinate their conferences to meet in the same week in the same
location, reducing travel and lodging expenses while improving the value of conference attendance? Does suchcooperation require that a third organization promote such
coordination, or can the two organizations make such arrangements themselves? And how useful might it be for an
organization such as UXnet to publish combined calendarsof related organizations to facilitate planning and coordination? In the San Francisco Bay Area, the co-chairs of BayDUX find it difficult to juggle conflicting schedules just in
the local area. What are the chances that a more global coordination would be effective?

STC’s Transformation

Recognizing the changing needs of its members in a changing world, STC has undertaken a major transformation of
its organization and membership model with the goal ofaddressing the society's value to members. I suggest that thequestion of membership value impacts all user experienceorganizations. We can see this impact in falling conference
attendance, a drop in membership numbers, and reduced
sponsorship of organizations and membership by employers. How can we increase interrelationships between organizations when resources are already strained? How can
we support the creation additional organizations when potential members already have difficulty justifying the costof membership? How will it be possible to share alreadystrained resources? I believe the answer lies in ensuring that
all organization activities provide value to the organizationand its members. This is the key focus of STC's transformation. I believe that STC's experience may be of use during
the discussions of this DevCon.

SUMMARY

Much of my involvement with various user experience organizations has been as an individual, and I believe thatmuch of what can be accomplished toward organizational
cooperation will develop at the interpersonal level, frombottom-up action. At the same time, we must address how
existing organizations interact, and how their missions andgoals can support each other.
I am keenly interested in resolving the issues presented at
the CHI 2005 Development Consortium, and look forward
to the opportunity to participate.

Communities

A major focus of STC’s ongoing transformation is the definition and support for various communities, based on the1101

The View From the Society for Technical Communication(Supplement)
Fred Sampson
Senior Member and Immediate Past President, Silicon Valley Chapter
Society for Technical Communication
76 Cutter Dr., Watsonville CA 95076
fred@fredsampson.com
831-728-1339
ABSTRACTThe society provides the following services:

This paper describes the initiatives and services of the Society for Technical Communication as related to the goals of
the CHI 2005 Development Consortium.

•

An annual conference•

Regional and local conferences

Author Keywords•

Several professional publications

Development consortium, STC, Society for TechnicalCommunication.

•

Community newsletters•

Awards and other recognition programs•

Community-based awards and recognition•

Technical communication competitions•

Educational programs, including seminars and supportof students at various academic institutions•

Employment databases•

Networking and volunteer opportunities

ACM Classification Keywords

K.7.2 The computing profession: organizations
INTRODUCTION

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) represents nearly 20,000 professional technical communicators
around the world. STC members fill a wide variety of technical communication roles in a wide range of industries,
including technical writers, technical editors, technical illustrators, usability professionals, content developers, human factors engineers, information architects, information
designers, instructional designers, technical trainers andinstructors, visual designers, Web designers and developers,
performing services for computer software and hardware
development, financial and insurance, medical and biotech,government, and other industries. As such, STC members
not only interact with and support user experience professionals, they often take on the role of user experience professional or project manager for user experience projects.

STC’s Annual Conference

The society conducts an annual conference, generally threedays long, with keynote presentations, paper presentations,workshops, panel discussions, and other educational opportunities. An additional day is devoted to leadership training,
and another day provides in-depth tutorials. Vendors display their products and services in an exhibition area, and abookstore offers relevant publications.
Regional and Local Conferences

At their discretion, each of STC’s eight regions may conduct an annual conference targeting regional audiences withtimely and relevant presentations. Some local chapters(geographic communities) also choose to hold one-day conferences which may attract regional attendance.

STC SERVICES

STC provides services to its members at both the society
level and through its communities, both geographic (regions
and chapters) and virtual (SIGs).

Professional Publications

STC publishes two professional periodicals:•

1

Technical Communication, The Journal of the Society
for Technical Communication, (www.techcommonline.org/) published quarterly, provides a venue foracademic and research papers, as well as book reviews.

•Employment Databases

Intercom, The Magazine of the Society for TechnicalCommunication, (www.stc.org/intercom/) published 10
times a year, provides “practical examples and applications of technical communication that will promote its
readers’ professional development.” Contributors are
generally STC members who share their experiencesand expertise with the larger community. A recent edition of Intercom included articles on usability, user experience, and designing websites for older users.

STC endeavors to improve the employment prospects of its
members by providing a database of job opportunities. Local chapters also provide their own job listings. For example, the Silicon Valley chapter posts job listings that areaccessed by members of the six Bay Area STC chapters aswell as by members interested in learning about opportunities in the area.
STC also conducts and publishes an annual salary survey
covering the United States and Canada that is referenced byboth employees and employers to learn appropriate compensation and to see how compensation varies by region,industry, and experience.

Until the current transformation of STC, all members received the print editions of both publications. However, inorder to address cost issues and member requests, an electronic membership option has been added, providing accessto online versions of the publications. Online archives ofboth publications are restricted to members.

Other Organizations

While STC acknowledges and maintains relationships withother related organizations (www.stc.org/related_orgs.asp),
there is little formal interaction between STC and theseother organizations. Informal interactions take place when
STC members – especially those who are members of otherorganizations – take the initiative to engage with relatedorganizations. For example, members of the Silicon Valley
chapter of STC have cooperatively engaged with membersof BayCHI (www.baychi.org) and others to form BayDUX(www.baydux.org), and to subsequently use BayDUX as
the local incarnation of UXnet (www.uxnet.org).

Other Publications

The Society also publishes a newsletter, Tieline, aimed atcommunity leaders to provide timely information on leadership issues.
Typically, each geographic and virtual community publishes a newsletter for its members. These newsletters are
increasingly published online to reduce costs.
Awards and Recognition

STC honors members and distinguished non-members fortheir work and contributions to the society and to technicalcommunication with a variety of awards, including fellowships, associate fellowships, and honorary fellowships. STC
also distributes awards for outstanding journal articles andcontribution to technical communication education, andsponsors two honorary societies for students of technicalcommunication.

STC more actively associates with various educational institutions through student chapters, student award and recognition programs, scholarships, and research grants.
Networking and Volunteer Opportunities

STC is a member-run volunteer organization assisted by asmall paid administrative staff. As such, the society offers
numerous opportunities for experienced and aspiring leaders to help run the organization at the local and international
levels.

STC also recognizes the achievements of its chapters andspecial interest groups and of individual chapter and SIG
members. At the society President’s discretion, one or moremembers or organizations may be honored annually with
the President’s Award.

STC members find that networking with others – at chapter
and local SIG meetings, at regional and society conferences, online and in person – is an activity that provides
tremendous value. Many members cite the networking opportunities as the primary reason for maintaining theirmembership.

Technical Communication Competitions

STC sponsors technical communication competitions at theinternational, regional, and sometimes local levels. Competition winners’ submissions can be viewed at the annual
conference and in a traveling exhibit that brings examples
of excellence in technical communication to all members.

Many members of STC are also members of other professional organizations, finding value in the expanded networks and cross-organizational communities of practiceavailable by such involvement. For example, STC members
are also involved in the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA); the Association for Computing Machinery(ACM) and its special interest groups, such as those for
Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) and for Design ofCommunication (SIGDOC); IEEE Professional Communication Society; the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA); the Interaction Design Group (IxDG);
and the User Experience Network (UXnet). STC members
have presented papers and otherwise participated in theconferences of all these other organizations, and participate

Educational Programs

In addition to its support of academic programs in technicalcommunication, STC sponsors educational programs, including its annual conference and regular web and telephone conference seminars. As part of its transformation,
STC plans to expand its educational programs by recognizing and aggregating the body of knowledge existing amongits members and communities.

2

as founders, officers, and leaders of many of the same organizations.

encourage and nurture formation of additional communities
of practice.
Indeed, participation in STC’s virtual communities indicates a wide appeal to STC members. Each of the four largest SIGs has more than double the membership of STC’s
largest chapters (for example, 1,827 members of the Information Design community versus 816 members in the Silicon Valley chapter). More than 40% of STC members belong to at least one virtual community, and many belong tomore than one.

STC’S TRANSFORMATION

For nearly two years, STC has been actively engaged intransforming itself into an organization that better addresses
its members’ needs. The primary focus has been to ensurethat the society provides value to its members. The transformation effort includes changes in society governance, itspublications, its finances, and particularly in its communities and how they are organized and how they interact witheach other and the society as a whole. I believe that STC’s
new community focus has relevance to the current discussion.

But STC’s virtual communities also recognize that theirmembers have a variety of interests even within each community. Hence, for example, the former Usability SIG has,as part of the transformation, become the Usability andUser Experience Community. And this particular community’s members participate actively in other organizations,such as SIGCHI and UPA.

Communities of Practice

STC recognizes that its members communicate and interact
with a wide variety of communities in both their professional and personal lives. Communities of practice associated with a technical communicator’s professional interactions include a range and variety that often extends beyond
the historical limits of technical communication.

CONCLUSION

STC’s newly reorganized and energized communities ofpractice have existing and potential relationships with otheruser experience communities, which offer the opportunity
to reinforce existing relationships and to forge new relationships. Membership in an STC community of practice does
not exclude participation in other related organizations; infact, such cross-organizational memberships can reinforce
our relationships and energize common activities.

As defined by the STC Transformation Communities
Committee (Whitney Quesenbery, Ginny Redish, and Fred
Sampson):A community is a group of people who share common
interests, activities, and initiatives; who communicate
regularly; and who derive benefit from their association.

STC doesn’t claim ownership of user experience, but its
members are actively involved in user experience practiceat all levels and in cooperation with members of many otherorganizations. STC welcomes further cooperative involvement with other user experience organizations.

STC’s communities include geographic communities (chapters), which are defined by their location, and virtual communities (SIGs), which are defined by their common interests. While in many cases a geographic community can befurther defined by the industries served by its members (forexample, the computer software industry served by a majority of Silicon Valley chapter members), not all geographic
communities are so neatly united. Conversely, STC’s virtual communities are more well-defined in terms of theircommon interests, such as information design, technicalediting, and usability. A goal of STC’s transformation is to

REFERENCES

1. STC website: http://www.stc.org
2. STC Transformation website:
http://www.stc.org/transformation

3

Engineering the User Experience: UX and the Usability Professionals’ Association
Whitney Quesenbery and Paul Sherman
Somewhere in the world, a customer service representative is on the phonewith a customer. The customer has an easy problem—at least it seems
easy to him. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for the rep. She has tonegotiate three different applications—one for entering the caller’s issue,
another for searching the product’s support knowledge base, and still
another for making call notes—all while responding quickly andattentively to the customer’s issue. She starts to fall behind, so she does
what the reps have been taught to do—she puts the customer on hold while
she struggles through the task. Minutes go by and the customer becomes
impatient, finally hanging up before getting the help that he needs. Caught
on audiotape, the customer was muttering about the terrible customer
service.
What’s the problem here? Is it outdated technology? A badly designed information
structure? Misunderstood business requirements? Inadequate understanding of the rep’s
tasks?
Maybe it’s simply that the design of the customer service systems did not start with anunderstanding of this simple context: two humans talking on the phone—one a customer,
the other representing the company. That interaction is the customer’s experience of thecompany. Or, as a popular saying quips, “to the user, the interface is the product.” Toomany new systems and digital products fail because their creators were focused on thetechnology and assumed—either implicitly or explicitly—that users will adapt. However,people will only stay with products that meet their needs. Fortunately, as usability anduser experience professionals, we can ensure that our products meet actual users’ needs
by starting with the people, their tasks, and their goals. This is the essence of usability.
We can define usability—following the ISO standard—as the effectiveness, efficiency,
and satisfaction with which a specific set of users can complete a specific set of tasks in aparticular environment. This terse “standards language” represents some core concepts
for usability professionals. The definition insists that we look at people, not just systems.
It also directs us to define usability in the users’ own terms.
Usability engineering, then, is a methodical approach to user interface design andevaluation, involving a practical, systematic approach, and the processes, techniques, andmethods for measuring various aspects of a system’s or product’s ease of use. But
usability often means more than just testing—that is, end-of-cycle testing to evaluate thesuccess of a design. The word usability also refers to:• a quality or result—the goal of [creating] usable systems or products• a user-centered process for design and development• a philosophy or approach that starts with users’ needs

The UPA is a home for the body of knowledge—the skills, techniques, and methods—foruser research and usability evaluation. We provide members with a place to develop andexpand their skills in these areas. But we also focus on strategic usability and theimportance of centering the design process around the people who use our products.
The user experience community brings together people from many different disciplines,
with many perspectives on the design process and many different vocabularies. We see
this diversity as one of the strengths of our field, because it provides many viewpoints,
techniques, and methods for evaluating and creating product designs, allowing us to
improve our products' usability and usefulness and make them more enjoyable to use..

The user experience community is diverse,
converging from many different directions.
Imagine a different customer service call. This time, the customer service rep can stay
focused on the customer’s needs, because she’s using a single new customer support
application that• makes satisfying customers’ most frequent requests easy
• helps her find the information she needs during calls• facilitates solving customers’ complex problems• tracks customer issues• allows the rep to take call notes.
The product team that designed this new application not only analyzed the types of callsthat reps receive and the information they need to do their jobs, but also observed how
the best reps work with customers. Throughout their design process—starting with simple
paper prototypes—the team tested both the overall task flows and interaction details.
They designed a task flow that supports a natural conversation.
On rollout day, the customer service reps practically cheered with delight, nearly bringing
tears to the eyes of the newly appreciated internal IT team. Let’s listen in on a support
call again. This time, the rep’s “Hi, how can I help you?” is heartfelt…because her new
tools really do let her help.

About UPA
Usability Professionals’ Associationwww.usabilityprofessionals.org
The UPA is a membership organization that supports usability specialists and advocatesof user-centered design. Members come from all user experience disciplines, and over 39
countries. The UPA has 26 chapters providing local opportunities for networking andprofessional education. UPA:•

Publishes User Experience Magazine and[the Web magazine UPA Voice, andplans to launch a new online journal of usability studies in 2005.

•

Hosts a Job Bank, Consultants Directory, and professional networking service•

Is developing a Usability Body of Knowledge•

UPA 2005: Bridging Cultures will be in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on June 27–
July 1.

•

November 3, 2005 is World Usability Day—a celebration of the power ofusability and user experience to change people’s lives

BiosPaul Sherman is Director of User-Centered Design at Best Software and a SeniorLecturer in HCI at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a member of the UPA Boardof Directors and founding President of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Chapter. Previously, at Intuit
and Lucent Technologies, Paul designed and usability tested ecommerce and support
Web sites and accounting, financial-planning, portfolio-management, andtelecommunications-management applications. He received his Ph.D from the Universityof Texas at Austin, where his research focused on pilots’ use of automated systems.
Whitney Quesenbery is a user interface designer and usability specialist with a passion
for clear communication. As the principal consultant for Whitney Interactive Design(WQusability.com), she works with companies around the world to design usable Web
sites and applications. Whitney is President of UPA, a member of the UXnet Executive
Committee and manages the popular STC Usability SIG Web site. As an appointed
committee member for the US Election Assistance Commission, she works to ensure theusability of voting systems. Before being seduced into the world of usability by a little
beige computer, Whitney was a theatrical lighting designer on and off Broadway.

Usability Professionals’ Association
The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) is an international non-profit membership association,
incorporated as under IRS 501(c)(6).
The Usability Professionals’ Association supports usability specialists, people from all aspects of humancentered design, and the broad family of disciplines that create the user experience in promoting the designand development of usable products. Our goals are to:
•
•
•

•

Provide an international network through which usability professionals can share information
about the techniques and methodologies in the profession.
Create an inclusive community for those interested in usability, whether it is their primary focus ora related discipline.
Change new product development processes to include a concern for the people who use them bypresenting the business case for usability in product development to colleagues, customers, thepublic and governmental agencies.
Increase the body of knowledge about usability and user-centered design through professional
education, meetings and conventions and other professional interchanges

UPA programs and services include:
Publications• UPA Monthly – a monthly e-letter to members• UPA Voice – a bi-monthly online magazine with short articles and industry news
• User Experience – a quarterly print magazine focusing on a range of practical and visionary topics• A peer-reviewed online journal of usability studies, launching in the second half of 2005
• Web site
• User-centered design/user experience poster• Design for People by People: Essays in Usability – a book with the best articles from Common
Ground• Conference Proceedings
Chapters• We currently have 26 chapters around the world
Conferences• Several of our chapters hold 1-2 day “mini-conferences” in their local area, sometimes incooperation with other local organizations• Our annual conference is held in June each year. This year’s conference is scheduled for June 27 –July 1 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It includes leadership events, tutorials, workshops and a 2-1/2
day general program with panels, presentations, peer-reviewed papers, posters and invited speakers.
The invited speakers are from outside of the immediate usability field and add breadth to theconference topics.

promoting usability concepts and techniques worldwide
140 North Bloomingdale Road
Bloomingdale, IL 60108-1017

Telephone: 630/980-4997
Fax: 630/351—8490

www.upassoc.org
office@upassoc.org

Projects• Friends of Usability – a recognition program to allow members to acknowledge those who support
their work
• Voting and Usability – an information and advocacy project• World Usability Day – a new project, being launched in 2005 to bring awareness to the value ofusability and user experience.
• Usability Body of Knowledge – a professional development project to document usability
knowledge. This project is starting with a methods catalog and documenting curriculum topics andopportunities• Usability in the Enterprise – a project to collect and publish information about adoption and ROI• Usability and e-Gov – an informal discussion group for those working in government
Professional Networking and Career Development• Job Bank – Ads paid for by listing agency run for three months on a publicly available page
• Consultants Directory – Open for a fee to UPA members• LinkedIn – UPA identification in a third party networking group• Voting Consultants Directory – Open to any user experience professional• Member/Salary Survey – Last conducted in 2000, new version planned for 2005
• Membership Directory – Open to members only
Other
• Code of Conduct – this code is currently in a trial period and is schedule for full adoption in late2005
• Representation at industry meetings – on an ad-hoc basis, members may be appointed to represent
UPA at other industry groups or meetings

January 2005

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

Local Ambassadors: Local action/global impact
Dirk Knemeyer
Involution Studios LLC, International Institute forInformation Design, American Institute of Graphic
Arts, Industrial Designers Society of America,
American Marketing Association, UXnet
21 School St., Suite 2L, Somerville, MA 02143
dirk@involutionstudios.com

Nick Finck
Digital Web Magazine, Asilomar Institute forInformation Architecture, Association for
Computing Machinery (SIGCHI), Society forTechnical Communication, DevGroup NW, UXnet
Matteo Penzo
Consultechnology, Idearium, UXnet

ABSTRACT

active, collaborative network of those Ambassadors,
sharing ideas, resources, and energy across geographic
boundaries. This would simultaneously provide localized
regions with the natural benefits inherent in cooperation andoptimization of related efforts, while helping to raise theprofile, scope, and importance of user experience as animportant part of successful business. At the same time,
Local Ambassadors would serve as a critical lynchpin
between related organizations, helping both their businessinterests and aiding their members through the thoughtful
cross-pollinationof
information,
resources,
andopportunities.

This position paper for the CHI2005 Development
Consortium introduces the Local Ambassadors Initiative of
the User Experience Network (UXnet), a collaborativeinternational vision that unites user experience
professionals with a variety of skills and backgrounds in ashared effort to develop a productive user experience
community.
Author Keywords

UXnet, User Experience Network, Local Ambassadors
ACM Classification Keywords

Once UXnet launched, the nuances and complexity ofrealizing the Local Ambassador vision firmly took hold.
Even though there was a basic acknowledgement thatdifferent regions would face vastly disparate opportunities
and challenges, it was only through getting all of thevolunteers involved in the same conversation that we wereable to adapt the vision to truly mesh with reality. We are in
the process of documenting, understanding, and best
adapting to this, an ongoing process that should crystallize
in our group’s vision by early-to-mid 2005.

K.7.2. The computer profession: organizations
INTRODUCTION

In June 2004, the User Experience Network (UXnet) madeits initial public “pre-launch.” Word about UXnet spreadquickly, and it was not long before volunteers from aroundthe world raised their hand to participate as volunteers.
Much of this early enthusiasm channeled into the Local
Ambassadors initiative. As UXnet evolved over the rest of
2004, the energy and activity of the Local Ambassadorsserved as the primary tactical point of progress, leading tothe organization and co-sponsorship of events, theconsolidation of individual efforts in a variety of major
municipalities, and the early development of tools.

LOCAL AMBASSADORS: PARTICIPANTS &STRUCTURE

There are currently 22 geographical regions in fivecontinents, overseen by 29 total Local Ambassadors. Eachregion and community is dealing with a different local
situation – in some cases dramatically so. Consider:This presentation will explore the Local Ambassadors
initiative in some depth, including the vision and purpose of
the group, the participants and basic operating structure, as
well as examining some of the tactical achievements thegroup has enjoyed to date, and where the group is heading.

• The San Francisco Bay Area already had an organizationin place that served the basic Local Ambassador function
for their region – BayDUX. With an active community
and replete with resources, BayDUX operates more likethe local chapter for a large industry association,
including three primary organizers, a solid web presence,
and awareness in their local community. Surrounded by astrong local presence from every major user experienceorganization, the role of our San Francisco Bay Area
Local Ambassadors is one of networking andorganization, building user experience through thecoordination and connection of different local groups
under the umbrella of user experience.

LOCAL AMBASSADORS: VISION & PURPOSE

The Local Ambassadors initiative was designed to create
local infrastructure and cooperation between different
groups involved with user experience, and to serve as an
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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event in Switzerland that brought together the efforts of two
Local Ambassadors from different parts of the country.

• UXnet Executive Council member Keith Instone has
spent a few years trying to organize a user experience
community in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio. However,Keith is faced with not having any meaningful local
chapters of UX-related organizations, and a small,
uninformed,
anddisinterested
communityofpractitioners. Thus, Keith’s challenge lies more in theaggregation of resources and opportunities from otherregions in the approximate geographical vicinity, and ineducating local practitioners about user experience andsharing the out-of-market opportunities with them.

The Local Ambassadors are also in the process of creating
tools to help their efforts and serve their various
constituencies. The primary tool is a set of web templates,
so Local Ambassadors can easily plug in their own local
information, incorporate global UXnet information, allwithin an easy-to-use template that sports the UXnet brand.
Following a systematic best practices approach, thedevelopment team has already put significant time into theinformation architecture, interaction design, and user
testing. Ongoing work on personas and scenarios – as wellas technological specification and research – will befollowed by visual design and implementation. This projectis expected to be complete in the second quarter of 2005.

• Over in Italy, Matteo Penzo is new to the role and idea ofbeing a Local Ambassador, and is further faced with UX
organizations largely operating on a national – not local
or regional – level. Whereas Keith may not have much
activity in Toledo, cities like Detroit, Michigan andCleveland, Ohio – each within a two-hour drive – dooffer many opportunities for his constituency. This is not
the case in Italy. Then, as an additional complication,
most UX organizations are primarily English speaking.
Even though most Italians speak English, it is not theirfirst language.

These approaches are very bottom-up: by establishing
Local Ambassadors in an ever-widening sphere around theworld, involving UXnet and our Local Ambassadors in the
co-organization or sponsorship of events and activities, andbuilding the toils and infrastructure to arm our Local
Ambassadors with the things they need to best service theirlocal groups and participants, we will enable these
constituents to participate in and leverage the crossdisciplinary nature and practical business potential of user
experience.

This snapshot of three very different regions reflects thechallenges we face in structuring and organizing the group.
To date, we operate as a group of peers working together toadvance the initiative. Insodoing, we are identifying
profound differences in geographical regions, theexperience and network depth of various participants, andeven the level of participation in the activities of our overall
group from those participants. As our tactical efforts begin
to gain momentum and the picture of who and what we aregets clearer, so it would seem our structure will also
formally shift to reflect the practical differences we are
already negotiating.

CONCLUSION

Although the initiative is less than seven months old as ofthis proposal, the group has achieved quite a bit. A solidand growing infrastructure of participants organizing,
hosting, and sponsoring UX events, and producing strategic
tools that enable the group to best represent its various
contingencies, is just the beginning. The group is taking ona structure and personality beyond the initial vision of theorganization. In different ways and to different degrees,
Local Ambassadors are advancing the UXnet vision toorganize and build a user experience community, to provide
new opportunities and infrastructure to industry
associations, and to connect interested individuals to UX
information, events, and experiences.

LOCAL AMBASSADORS: PROGRESS &ACHIEVEMENTS

It is a credit to the interest, effort, and spirit of the Local
Ambassadors that the initiative has rapidly taken flight. As
indicated above, people from five continents have stepped
forward to volunteer and participate as Local Ambassadors.
This is an extraordinary achievement, considering the “softlaunch” of the organization and that only a couple of thoseparticipants were aware of the initiative prior to June 2004.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The success of this initiative and the content herein is the
product of the hard work and dedication of our Local
Ambassadors. The Local Ambassador initiative is overseenby the Executive Council of UXnet: Richard Anderson,
Keith Instone, Dirk Knemeyer, Beth Mazur and Whitney
Quesenbery.

Individually, a number of regions have hosted or cosponsored UXnet events. These include an event in the San
Francisco Bay Area with about 200 attendees, a London
event was promoted above capacity, with a full house andnumerous other people turned away in advance, and an

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UXnet: Making Connections
Whitney Quesenbery
UXnet UPA,
Whitney Interactive Design
New York City Area, NY, USA
whitneyq@wqusability.com

Richard Anderson
UXnet, SIGCHI, Riander
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
riander@riander.com

ABSTRACT

Beth Mazur
UXnet, STC
Washington DC Area, USA
beth@idblog.org

encourage joint sponsorship of events, and host First
Friday social networking events.

This position paper for the CHI2005 Development
Consortium describes the vision that led to the formation of
the User Experience Network (UXnet) and cross-disciplinary
needs it addresses, for individual practitioners and for theongoing development of the field as a whole.

• Events Calendar and Group Directory –a searchable
listing of UX-related organizations and events. This
ambitious technical vision is being implemented in stages,
working towards a site that allows visitors to identify
locations, organizations and topics of personal interest tothem. 1

Author Keywords: UXnet, User Experience Network
ACM Classification Keywords

A third initiative addresses a structural goal of encouraging
cooperation among the organizations

K.7.2. The computer profession: organizations• Organization Collaboration – facilitating cooperation
among UX-related professional organizations.

INTRODUCTION

User Experience (UX) is an emerging field concerned withimproving the design of anything people experience: a website, a toy, or a museum. UX is inherently interdisciplinary,synthesizing methods, techniques, and wisdom from many
fields, ranging from brand design to ethnography to libraryscience to architecture and more..

Although each society has value in serving a specificdiscipline or perspective on user experience, we also see thevalue in making connections between these organizations forjoint conferences, shared meetings, advocacy initiatives,
cooperative publications…the possibilities are endless. We
believe that these connections will only strengthen eachorganization by providing additional breadth and member
benefits. This process already goes on informally. UXnet canbecome a common ground to facilitate these efforts.

In finding colleagues and organizations, there are many, rich
options for UX professionals to choose from. The User
Experience Network (UXnet) starts from the principle thatfacilitating connections is key to increased value: for the
profession, for organizations, for businesses and forindividuals. We can all benefit from supporting ourcolleagues from all parts of the user experience world.

HISTORY: THE ROAD ALREADY TRAVELLED

In the fall of 2001, Lou Rosenfeld began a discussion of themeaning of user experience among a variety of practices andorganizations. This free-ranging discussion covered practicalissues, philosophies and tried to understand what shapecollaboration or coordination might take. The groupconsidered three metaphors to describe the emerging vision:

One of the goals for UXnet is to provide a “home” for the big
picture or strategic discussions that, by their very nature,require cross-disciplinary communications. On virtually
every professional e-list, the question of “the big picture”
overtook more targeted discussions, as each community
struggled to understand both the complete field and thecontribution its skills brought to it.

• Linked arms. The concept that all of the skills representinter-related aspects of creating a product and the users’
experience of it. (See Figure 1)

At the same time, there are some practical tools that can
provide immediate value to both practitioners andorganizations. Two have been defined and launched. Each ofthese initiatives has intrinsic value, and meets specific needs
expressed, sometimes forcefully, by UXnet supporters.

• Super-SIG. An umbrella organization that would bring
together all of the organizations and skills.
• Interfaith Council2. A forum for the leaders of the“linked” communities.

• Local Ambassadors –a network of representatives tofacilitate collaboration in local areas: coordinate meetings,
1

Keith Instone’s position paper “User Experience: Anumbrella topic” covers this initiative.

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2004, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

2

The name was a word play on the fervently held (evenevangelical) views of many of the participants.

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the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in Pittsburgh or the
Design Council in the UK which serve to both shape andcommunicate critical issues in their fields.
One long-term vision to meet this challenge is a “UX
Institute.” Such an organization could not only bring
together the UX disciplines, but also work other fields (suchas software and product development, marketing and others)
to create a better understanding of how they contribute to
great (not just good) products.
Where the current organizations are focused on a single
aspect of UX, and on the critical goal of serving theirmembers, UXnet is focused on the overview and therelationships between the disciplines.

Figure 1. The “linked arms” visualization

In mid-2002, Lou Rosenfeld invited a group of people to join
him in creating something new. He wrote, “I'm hoping we
can create a small, agile, and strategic team that believes inthe value of a truly interdisciplinary approach to user
experience design…It's absolutely not foolish or overly
ambitious to believe that we can do things that will make a
big impact for thousands of our fellow professionals.”3

CONCLUSION

The general idea of a UXnet as a way to connect individuals
and organizations from many different disciplines under theuser experience umbrella has always been a compelling one.
However, despite enthusiasm for the idea, it has been hard to
move from discussion to action, and harder to define concretegoals. The UXnet Executive Council concluded that only big
goals, a mission that would make a substantial difference,
were worth the effort that bringing together so many(sometimes competing) interests. Along with a large group of
volunteers, we have begun the work of networking in thecommunity and building collaborative tools to support thatcooperation. The next steps will require commitments fromthe organizations, and a plan to achieve the potential of the
UXnet vision.

The results of that work was “soft launched” on June 21,
2004, with a web site (www.uxnet.org) to communicate the
UXnet vision, individual supporters, and several
organizations informally supporting the effort.
THE JOURNEY AHEAD

One thing became obvious the early discussions: this could
not be a small vision. UXnet can only succeed if it adds towhat current organizations already offer, and creates
something greater than the sum of the parts. The UXnet
Roadmap (see supplemental material) maps out a three year
strategic plan and long-term vision. In addition toorganizational development activities, it identifies three mainareas of focus:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper is based on a discussion lasting several years
among many people. First among them is Lou Rosenfeld,
who first brought the group together. The Executive Councilof UXnet is Richard Anderson, Keith Instone, Dirk
Knemeyer, Beth Mazur and Whitney Quesenbery.

• Building the network: networking the idea in thecommunity and facilitating the discussion of sharedprofessional interests. Long term ideas include symposia
or “UX retreats” to continue to develop UX concepts.

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION• Reaching out: sharing best practices, communicating UXprinciples both within the community and to a broadening
base. Long term ideas include educational programs forpractitioners and business colleagues.

The following supplemental information will be madeavailable to Development Consortium participants.
• Organizational Models – A summary of different
approaches to creating an organization.

• Influencing others: influencing public policy, advocacy,
fostering UX research and development, promoting thebest work in the field through recognition programs.

• UXnet Roadmap – A three year strategic plan and longterm goals, released January 2005.
• UXnet Governance – A preliminary diagram of thestructure and leadership of UXnet, released January 2005.

LONG TERM VISION: THE INSTITUTE

One of the challenges in developing user experience as afield is that this work is inherently multi-disciplinary,. It
cannot be effectively led by any of the current organizations,as each is centered on one aspect of the field. However,
without an umbrella under which this work can be done, thefield will never gain the maturity and public stature it
deserves. Other fields have their thought leaders, for example
3

Private communications, dated June 8, 2002

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UXnet: Making connections
Supplemental Information
Beth Mazur
Society for Technical Communication, UXnet
AARP
Arlington, VA
bowseat@bethmazur.com

Whitney Quesenbery
Usability Professionals’ Association, UXnet,
Whitney Interactive Design
78 Washington Ave, High Bridge, NJ 08829
whitneyq@wqusability.com

Organizational Models
As the User Experience Network (UXnet) was in formation, the executive council1 considered several
different organizational models for the new organization.
Most of the organizations where we had substantive experience were based on an individual
membership model. For all of them, serving these individual members with binding member benefits(including professional development, education and outreach) is the core mission.
UXnet would be a different kind of organization, one more focused on the development of the field andin collaboration among individuals and associations. As we considered how to meet the needs of boththe bottom up (individual) and top down (organizations) constituents, the executive council looked in
depth at five organizations with similar missions, but very different organizational approaches.

Group

PurposeHow

Customers

ICOGRADA

awareness (bringassociations
together)umbrella groupprofessional societies

Design Management
Institute

make money,
publish, educate(corporate) memberships,
tightly held assets (pay toread)managers

Corporate Design
Foundation

education

publishing and good works

sponsors (public)

Software Engineering
Institutechange the world(software industry)

government funding,academic linkage

software industry

Move Onchange the world

donationsactivists (politicians)

1

The Executive Council of UXnet includes (as of January 2005) Richard Anderson, Keith Instone, Dirk Knemeyer, Beth
Mazur and Whitney Quesenbery. Other participants in the discussions included Lou Rosenfeld, Challis Hodge, Nigel Bevan
and George Olsen. Beth Mazur led the project to gather organizational models.
1

ICOGRADA(International Council of Graphic Design Associations)
Governance: Board of Directors
ICOGRADA's Executive Board consists of individuals who are duly nominated and elected by
ICOGRADA member associations at the biennial ICOGRADA General Assembly. Members of the
Executive Board serve in a volunteer position and donate their time and expertise to further
ICOGRADA 's mandate. Board meetings are typically held four times a year in different locations
around the world, usually in conjunction with regional meetings, seminars, or other scheduled design
events.
Funding: Membership, sponsorship, and donation\
Membership: ICOGRADA is an association of independent Member associations, forming a global
network. More than 70 Member associations in over 45 countries share common concerns,
commitments, and standards. Professional design organizations join ICOGRADA as Full Members withvoting rights. Promotional or technical organizations join as Associate Members with voting rights. Nonvoting Members include: Patron Members, who contribute financially; Subscriber and Education
Members, engaged in education, the raising of standards, or design research and practice;Corresponding Members, residing in a country not represented by a Member organization; and Affiliate
Members, international organizations concerned with professional practice in fields related to graphic
design.
The ICOGRADA Foundation was established in 1991 for the advancement of worldwide understanding
and education through the effective use of graphic design. The Icograda Foundation charity registeredwith the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It obtains funds from corporate sponsorships,
individual donations, legacies, and various fundraising activities.
Friends of ICOGRADA is a worldwide network of individuals and corporations who share a common
interest in graphic design and visual communication. Friends support ICOGRADA and desire tocontribute to ICOGRADA and its worldwide aims. Anyone who wishes to support ICOGRADA and who
agrees with ICOGRADA 's aims and values can become a Friend of Icograda on a contribution basis.
ICOGRADA 's Purpose
Icograda is the world's non-governmental and non-political representative and advisory body forgraphic design and visual communication. It serves the worldwide community of graphic designers. In
doing so, ICOGRADA aims to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

raise the standards of design, professional practice, and ethics
raise the professional status of the graphic designer
further the appreciation of designers' professional achievements
extend design's contribution to understanding among people
promote the exchange of information, views, and researchcontribute to design education - theory, practice and researchcoordinate matters of professional practice and conduct
establish international standards and procedures
hold congresses, conferences, seminars, and symposia
publish and distribute information concerned with graphic design.

URL: http://www.icograda.org/web/ and http://www.friends.icograda.net/web/home.shtml

2

DMI (Design Management Institute)
Governance: Staff plus advisory council
DMI has a 6-person staff, including president, a board of directors and an advisory council
Funding: Membership and educational revenue
There are several membership types:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Professional Individual
Professional Group
Professional Organization
Forum
Student
Academic Individual
Academic Group

DMI’s Purpose
Founded in 1975, the Design Management Institute (DMI) has become the leading resource andinternational authority on design management. DMI has earned a reputation worldwide as amultifaceted resource, providing invaluable know-how, tools and training through its conferences,seminars, membership program, and publications. DMI is a nonprofit organization that seeks toheighten awareness of design as an essential part of business strategy.
The DMI strategy is at once practical and dynamic – in touch with technological and business realities,
and driven by a deep commitment to managing for design excellence. DMI brings together design andbusiness professionals from corporations, consultancies, the public sector, and universities – across all
categories of design – who are interested in advancing their understanding and providing greater value
to their organizations, and participating in a community of professionals sharing their knowledge.
The DMI mission statement is:
VisionImprove organizations worldwide through effective management of design for economic growth.
MissionBe the international authority, resource and advocate on design management.
Objectives•

Assist design managers to become leaders in their profession.

•

Sponsor, conduct and promote research.

•

Collect, organize and make accessible a body of knowledge.

•

Educate and foster interaction among design managers, organizational managers, public policy
makers and academics.

•

Be a public advocate for the economic and cultural importance of design.

URL: http://www.dmi.org/dmi/html/index.htm

3Corporate Design Foundation
Governance: Board of directors.
No mention of staff on website.
Funding: Sponsorship/donation.
Support for Corporate Design Foundation takes the form of both charitable contributions andparticipation in the development of programs.
Corporate Design Foundation’s Purpose “It is the mission of the Foundation to improve the quality oflife and effectiveness of organizations through design. At the heart of this mission is a desire to expand
the awareness of design through the education of corporate leaders, managers and public sector
executives. Through its programs, the Foundation promotes the research and documentation of the
impact of design in business, and the development of new teaching curricula and materials for use inbusiness education.”
Accomplishments
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

In 2002, launched Natural Design Consortium, to establish multidisciplinary courses onsustainable product development and sustainable architecture
In 2002, collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University and Rochester Institute of Technology, toproduce The Business Edge, a nationally broadcast teleconference to 43 locations illustrating
the impact of design on business. Sponsored by NEA.
Since 1995, publish @issue: The Journal of Business & Design, the first publication written forcorporate executives about design, sponsored by Sappi. Current circulation 60,000 with anadditional 40,000 distributed at business schools and conferences.
Collaborated with Rochester Institute of Technology to produce the teleconference Business,
Design and Communication, a program dedicated to educating executives and students about
the effect of design on successful business.
Organized the National Forum on Design (1995-1997) with the National Endowment for the Arts
and General Services Administration aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of government
through workplace design.
Organized the first conference for university faculty about teaching interdisciplinary courses,
including design and business, and published the results of this conference and research as
Teaching Collaborative Product Development (1994).
1991-1998, offered the annual Design Leadership Symposium, to bring business school faculty
together with designers and business executives to discuss design practice and businessschool teaching about design, sponsored by IBM.
Since 1990, distributed over 500 design related books to 50 business school and public libraries
as part of the Library Initiative.
Developed a library of business school case studies and videos that examine the impact ofeffective design on successful business.
Produced Winning through Innovation, a program for corporate executives develop a framework
for thinking strategically about design and innovation.
Facilitated development of the first interdisciplinary courses bringing together students andfaculty in design, business, and engineering.
Collaborated with business school faculty to establish the first full-length courses at businessschools about design and business. The Foundation continues to collaborate with over 250
faculty at 70 business schools.

URL: http://www.cdf.org/
4Software Engineering Institute
Governance: Staff, funders.
SEI now has four offices in US and Europe
Organizations that sponsor and otherwise oversee SEI operations, include the following:•

Office of the Secretary of Defense/Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (OSD/AT&L)•

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)•

Joint Program Office (JPO)•

Carnegie Mellon University•

Board of Visitors

Funding: Grant-funded.
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for
Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics [OUSD (AT&L)].
SEI’s Purpose
The SEI's core purpose is to help others make measured improvements in their software engineering
capabilities.
Vision The right software, delivered defect free, on time and on cost, every time.To be successful,
integrated teams of developers, acquirers, and software users must have the necessary software
engineering skills and knowledge to ensure that the right software is delivered to end users.
Mission The SEI is a preeminent software engineering R&D technology center.
The SEI provides the technical leadership to advance the practice of software engineering so the DoD
can acquire and sustain its software-intensive systems with predictable and improved cost, schedule,
and quality. The SEI mission includes four objectives:
1. accelerate the introduction and widespread use of high-payoff software engineering practices
and technology by identifying, evaluating, and maturing promising or underused technology andpractices
2. maintain a long-term competency in software engineering and technology transition
3. enable industry and government organizations to make measured improvements in theirsoftware engineering practices by working with them directly
4. foster the adoption and sustained use of standards of excellence for software engineering
practice
The SEI works closely with DoD engineering organizations. In addition, the SEI offers continuing
education courses based on matured, validated, and documented solutions. The SEI also licenses the
packaging and delivery of new and improved technologies, working with developers and acquirers aswell as with transition partners -- DoD and industry organizations that help others adopt newtechnology.
URL: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/sei-home.html

5Move On
Governance: Staff
Small staff (four at MoveOn.org, plus others at MoveOnPac)
Funding: Donations.
Because MoveOn.org has only a tiny staff, our basic operating costs are very low. You can support ourwork with a secure online contribution. Almost all of our funding comes through these donations frompeople like you.
MoveOn’s Purpose
MoveOn is working to bring ordinary people back into politics. With a system that today revolves around
big money and big media, most citizens are left out. When it becomes clear that our "representatives"
don't represent the public, the foundations of democracy are in peril. MoveOn is a catalyst for a newkind of grassroots involvement, supporting busy but concerned citizens in finding their political voice.
Our nationwide network of more than 2,000,000 online activists is one of the most effective andresponsive outlets for democratic participation available today.
URL: http://www.MoveOn.org

6

CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

Towards Knowledge Building in Professional Groups
John Zapolski
National Board Member, AIGA
999 Steiner Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
J_zapolski@yahoo.com
415/867-2896

ABSTRACT

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

In this submission for the CHI05 Development forum, I
reflect on my experience leading the Experience Designcommunity of interest of the American Institute of Graphic
Arts and suggest that the focus of the group needs to shift inorder to successfully accomplish our mission.

Looking back over our accomplishments these last six
years, I believe we have primarily tried – with mixed
success – to do three things. Firstly, we have functioned asa leading-edge collective of practitioners looking at how
design practice is evolving, and trying to feed that back into
the general AIGA membership. This I would describe as aninternal think-tank function for the larger AIGA, and to thisend we have influenced change in the organization’s
national agenda and helped produce a more broadlyfocused and inclusive organization.

Author Keywords

Development Forum, AIGA ED, User Experience ,Professional Organizations, Design Communities of Interest
BACKGROUND

Over the last year and a half, as chair of the American
Institute for Graphic Arts' (AIGA) Experience Design (ED)national community of interest, I have put much effort into
thinking about problems in contemporary design practiceand our organization's attempts at addressing them: what
we have tried to do in the past and what we have actually
done; the set of people we have tried to serve and should try
to serve; what the most pressing and relevant problems
facing the community are; what activities we should
undertake to address those challenges; and how we shouldorganize to effectively work towards their resolution.

Secondly, we have tried to crystallize a community toadvance understanding of user experience. In this way, too,
we have been successful. We now have over 2500
practitioners and students, and unofficially helped spur thedevelopment of other groups with narrower and more
specialized objectives (among them AIfIA, IxDG, andUXNet). While these other groups certainly deserve a lot ofcredit for their community building efforts as well, without
a doubt there is certainly a much stronger, and moreaccessible, community of similar-minded practitioners
today than there was before the AIGA ED group camealong.

Our group began in 1998 as an informal gathering ofleading designers at a retreat called the Advance for Design,intended to draw together a small, committed group ofpractitioners intent on investigating new trends in design
and technology. A second gathering was held a year later,
after which time the group was formalized as a communityof interest within the AIGA, a 90-year-old professionalorganization for communication designers.

Far less successfully, we have attempted to build tools thatcan be taken up in everyday use and discussion by design
practitioners and design leaders wanting to expand design¹s
potential, with a special emphasis on expanding its strategic
impact. We have probably come closest to this goal
through our case study initiative (in part through ourcollaboration with ACM SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH), which
has resulted in 38 case studies documented and available
for download on the AIGA website. Undoubtedly, though,we can do more to be successful in achieving this goal, as
the profession continues to severely lack a formalized bodyof knowledge about its practice.

And so began an organized effort to build a community oflike-minded people from design and related disciplines
interested in advancing understanding of user experience
practice.

LESSONS LEARNED

Considering the successes we have experienced inrelationship to one another, it has become clear to me thatthe most productive use of the Experience Design has
heretofore been to serve the needs of the larger AIGA. We

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
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have been successful by looking for ways to shape andadvance the mission of the organization and serve the needsof its members, and we have been least successful inattempting to move beyond the boundaries of the immediateneed of our organizational home, in attempting to create
tools and products useful in the practice of design. That,
unfortunately, is exactly backwards.

foundational knowledge of design, to make basic designaccessible to more people.
To do that effectively, we need to build tools that makeknowledge of design easier to acquire. I believe a more
effective approach to doing this would be to createorganizations that build knowledge products of these andsell them to design consumers. Instead of deriving revenue
from membership dues, these organizations would maintainthemselves through fee revenue attached to the products
they sell. The effect of such an approach is to create more
direct alignment between the needs of the organization andthe needs of its constituents. In short, they have an
incentive to be useful, in order to compete directly for the
dollars of the larger market opened up to them, beyond that
their members.

PRODUCTS, NOT EVENTSIn order for professional organizations to stay relevant totheir constituents in the future, they must recognize thelarger ecosystem of services and organizations available totheir members. Rather than look at their membership in
isolation, as a stable entity to which need be delivered
services, I believe they need to start from the outside – fromthe needs of real people in the real world – and work theirway in to consider the role of the organization in fulfillingthose needs.

Case studies could be an example of one such “knowledge
product”. Case studies have been one way that other fields
have codified knowledge from problems encountered byleading edge practitioners and made them interesting andrelevant to a wider audience. As an imperfect but
nonetheless useful reference point, Harvard Business
School produces approximately 350 business cases per
year. And their incentive for doing so is great – they sell an
average of 6 million cases per year. At around $6 each, thatmakes for a $36million revenue stream. Now of course, I
would not argue that the appeal of design cases would makefor a market of a similar size. And neither am I saying thatthe intention of professional organizations should be tobring in revenues on the order of $36million. But if theintent of these organizations is to influence practice, tomake it better, more excellent, more impactful, I do believe
they need to find ways to get their practices out into theworld at the order at a scale of reach comparable to thosethat business cases enjoy.

For no matter how altruistic a professional organization’s
mission, it inevitably is beholden to its funding model. For
the AIGA and the like, that means that every activity
undertaken, whether done so consciously or not, needs tosupport the goal of getting existing members to “re-up”
their membership. The organization’s revenue comesalmost entirely from membership dues and from annual
member conferences. The underlying promise offered tomembers in exchange for their dues and fees is a sense ofcommunity – a place to fraternize and compare notes withcolleagues of similar mind.
Hosting events, with the corresponding discount given toexisting members, thus become the most effective way for
professional organizations to encourage members to join
and re-subscribe. Looking at this from a customer point ofview, the point of view of the member, the underlying
promise seems to be an opportunity to belong. A chance tohave a home, a place – whether virtual or real – to go toconnect with colleagues. And therein lies the problem. In
our hyper-connected world of social networks, webcommunities, mailing lists, and meet-ups, we now simply
have too many places to belong.

CONCLUSION

It is a truism to say that all institutions initially founded toserve a vital and noble purpose inevitably end up concernedmostly with furthering their own existence. Professional
design organizations, though sincerely intent on promoting
better design in the world, are locked in a trap ofmaintaining the size of their membership and thecorresponding revenue garnered from dues. To truly serve
their missions, however, organizations must think beyond
justifying their existence through annual conferences andother events and create a product which can be marketed toa broader constituency. It may be the only way to avoid
irrelevance.

Stepping back from that, I believe it is useful to ask again
about the larger purpose intended by our various
professional associations. For the AIGA, it is “furthering
excellence in communication design as a broadly-defined
discipline, strategic tool for business and cultural force.”
The subsequent discussion, then, is about, how exactly to
do that. If we see “furthering excellence” as synonymouswith innovation, then we can say that the challenge is totake the practices and characteristics of high-end design,
now accessible primarily only to those at the leading edgeof practice, and attempt to find ways to make only the mostimportant and functional benefits available to more people,
at a cheaper price point.1 In other words, the task at hand is
to create a means for consolidating and sharing

REFERENCES

1. Silverthorne, Sean, and Christensen, Clayton. Are
Crummy Products Your Next Growth Opportunity?
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3437&t=innovation

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA‘User Experience’ Design
A new form of design practice takes shape
Ian McClelland
User Experience Architect
Philips Applied Technologies
Building SFJ 4.70, PO Box 80002
5600 JB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Email: Ian.McClelland@philips.com
ABSTRACTemploy computational technologies. The use of such
systems is becoming embedded in the way we live our lives
in so many diverse ways.

This paper outlines my professional background andinterests in the ‘user-experience’ field. I summarise mycurrent relevant responsibilities related to my employment
as a specialist in ‘user experience’ design and my SIGCHI
activities. I also summarise some observations on theemergence of ‘user experience’ as a focus for the
professional practice of interactive system design andobservations on some directions for the future.

Interest in ‘user experience’ is also being driven by theaggressive way in which businesses worldwide are seeking
commercially viable applications including, among many
examples, IT at work, WWW, mobile telecommunications,audio-video entertainment, digital imaging, etc. And many
corporations are also looking for new ‘competitive edges’,
and for new ways to satisfy consumers and customers.
Whilst the origins of these drivers are the wealthy westernand eastern advanced industrialized societies, we also see
the rapid emergence of other major markets, most notably
India and China.

Author Keywords

Position paper
ACM Classification Keywords

User Experience, User Interface design, Interaction design,
Usage centred design.

PROBLEM?

INTRODUCTION

Why is ‘user experience’ such a ‘problem’?

‘User experience’, in the context of the professional
practice of interactive system design, encompasses thenotion that many aspects determine the type of experiencethat comes from using a device, product, system or service(all of which I will refer to as the ‘design’). It also
encompasses the notion that many aspects can be designed
to generate positive results for the users of a design. This
notion is rooted in, and extends, a long tradition of usage
focused design in the areas of Ergonomics/Human Factors,
Usability Engineering, Human Computer Interaction,
Interaction Design. ‘User experience’ design is anunderstandable extension of these traditions and brings amore holistic perspective to how people need to beconsidered in relation to the ways we use technologies. In
recent years a more diverse array of human behaviouralspecialists such as anthropologists, ethnographers,sociologists, have also begun to play a significant part indeveloping the field.

The way we traditionally design as professionals and associeties is challenged by the combination of 1) the diverse
ways we are making use of computational technologies, and2) the importance of adapting the technologies to the way
we behave as individuals and as social beings in our various
contexts. These developments are stimulating new
perspectives on design and research that are emerging frommany overlapping interests in the fields of marketing,technology research and development, design practice, thehuman sciences, and the social sciences.
These trends are creating significant challenges for thevarious professional societies that currently represent
significant parts of the communities interested in ‘user
experience’. Whilst the traditional fields of interest remain
relevant, interest in ‘user experience’ is throwing up newfoci of attention that are not readily covered by existing
professional societies. The emergence of ‘user experience’has parallels with the emergence of HCI as a specific fieldin the 1970s’ and 80s’.

Interest in the field is being fuelled by the rapid andunprecedented growth in the use of interactive systems that

The emergence of ‘user experience’ challenges the current
professional societies to examine the relevance and scope of
their ‘domain of concerns and interests’. The developmentof recent conferences on the subject as well as thisDevelopment Consortium bear witness to the view that the

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CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
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current professional societies do not offer the type ofrepresentation desired by many professionals. Therefore it
is timely that the topic of ‘user experience’ and how it isprofessionally represented needs to be addressed.

In the shorter term I anticipate many opportunities for intersociety cooperation will emerge from the discussion, and,not least, opportunities to develop a mutually beneficial
programme of conferences.

SOLUTION?

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND, EXPERIENCE AND
INTERESTS

We need to take a medium to long term view of the issue.
‘User experience’ is not a ‘passing phase’.

Some 30 years ago I began my career in Ergonomics (=Human Factors), first working in applied research and thenshifting focus to the application of usability engineering
principles to the design of consumer products and systems.
I worked with designers of various persuasions including
Software, Engineering, Industrial, Product, Interior, andGraphics. Since 1986 I have worked for Philips Electronics,
initially as manager of the Human Factors Group in Philips
Design where, together with various colleagues, we
pioneered the development of interaction design andusability engineering in Philips. Currently I work in our
Corporate Applied Technologies Laboratory, developing a
Usage Centred approach to our advanced softwaredevelopment projects. Philips is one of several examples ofcorporations that are taking up ‘user experience’ (or similar
themes) as a critical commercial issue for the coming years.

The Development Consortium can make a valuable
contribution to helping us understand the nature and scopeof ‘user experience’ research and design. In short help us
define the ‘market’. The main issues to consider include:- what is the scope of the ‘field’ and the nature of the need?
- who constitute the ‘user experience’ research and designcommunity?
- what type of professional backgrounds are most closely
associated with ‘user experience’ research and design, andwhat are they generally employed to do?
- what are the differentiating characteristics of thecommunity compared with comparable professional
communities?

I am also an active ACM SIGCHI volunteer. Currently I am
the SIGCHI Adjunct Chair for ‘Specialised Conferences’(all the SIGCHI conferences other than CHI) and a memberof the SIGCHI EC. Most of these conferences involve
cooperation with related societies in one form or another. I
have also been active in various SIGCHI conferences
including the following. I was Co-chair of Design Briefings
for CHI 1997. I co-chaired DIS 97. I was also a member ofthe DIS 2000 organising committee, which involved
contributing to the development of the ‘design case study’format. The format aimed at developing a way of
documenting practitioner work. As a result I also
contributed to the ‘design case study’ format used for DUX
2003. I have been, and remain, a strong advocate ofdeveloping effective practitioner involvement in SIGCHI.

- what type of events; conferences, professional meetings,
workshops do ‘user experience people’ want to participatein?
One workshop will not provide all the answers. Many of
the answers will only become apparent as the field evolvesand ‘finds its’ feet’. But the Development Consortium canmake a valuable contribution by generating a sharedunderstanding of the field as we see it today. This will
enable the various professional societies to evaluate theirown positions and to address the extent to which theyshould (or should not) cater for ‘user experience’ interests
currently and in the future. Correspondingly the output of
the workshop should also help clarify whether there is aneed for an additional professional society, and what form
such a society might take.

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ACM SIGGRAPH User Experience Initiatives
Barbara Helfer
Capital University and ACM SIGGRAPH
1 College and Main, Columbus, OH 43209-2394
barb_helfer@siggraph.org
614.236.6633
ABSTRACTSMALL CONFERENCES

There has been a substantial growth in the number ofeducational and networking opportunities for professionals
in the computer graphics and related fields in the last three
years. One of the fastest areas of growth is in the field ofcomputer user experience and the development of culturalcommunities through the advent of portal technologies,
blogs, and wikis.

The number of small conferences that ACM SIGGRAPH
sponsors on a yearly basis has grown to forty, which is a
growth of almost fifty percent in the last three years.
Unlike the annual SIGGRAPH conference, these small
conferences deal with specific subsets of the computer
graphics field.
More often than not, these small
conferences are sponsored by multiple SIGs within the
ACM family or with sister organizations that have memberswith similar interests. These conferences range in the 100
to 250 participants.

Author Keywords

Cooperating Societies,
experience.

special interest

groups,user

As the ACM SIGGRAPH small conferences program has
expanded there has also been an increased need to support
those conferences with more publicity and advertising
support. There is a need to provide more than just a link offof our main web page in an effort to get information out
about these programs. ACM provides the approver fromevery SIG a list of events that are occurring within a threemonth window of the event. These database lists could beapplied to a central calendar that would support all theactivities of the ACM SIG family.

ACM Classification Keywords

UX
INTRODUCTION

ACM SIGGRAPH is exploring a number of avenues toretain its excellence in the field of computer graphics andinteractive techniques. As the field has expanded thegrowing diversity at the main conference needs to besupported. The Executive Committee (EC) and theConference Advisory Group (CAG) working in cooperation
are looking into several avenues that could be adaptable to
the UX community.

As portal and XML technologies evolve, the ability torepurpose content in multiple ways will be important to ourmembers. The use of dynamic Web content and taxonomybased delivery mechanisms, similar to Amazon.com, could
give our membership information concerning other learning
opportunities in the categories that support their interest.
All information on an event could be entered once by theorganizer of the conference, and then distributed to SIG
members as interest is displayed.

COMMUNICATEThe first step is to communicate with the professionalgroups that support the community. We seem to think that
we have the answers and solutions. We won’t know if weneed to form a new society without asking, and we can’t rethink what it means to be a cooperating society without
bringing the individuals that has the power to make thosedecisions together. Then because we are mostly an electedvolunteer base how do we sustain that communication andcooperation over multiple terms? It can be done, but it willtake champions in each participating society to achieve thegoals. But open communication with all the players is thefirst step.

In a similar vein, most small conference are attended byword of mouth of the organizers, published final reports,summaries or event reports with pictures that give theprofessional a flavor of what the conference is like. ACM
SIGGRAPH gives a small monetary sum to one attendee
for writing an event report for a small conference. As thenumber of conference opportunities grow so do thedecisions on which conference to attend, these users
experience and summary reports will allow the professional
to make informed decisions.

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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HUB CONCEPT

Intronetworks provides this networking opportunity atconferences where meeting a person with similar interests
in a crowd of over ten thousand is slim. Each participant at
the conference is given the choice to enter interests throughkiosks situated throughout the venue. Through tracking,participants spark meaningful professional partnerships
with this comprehensive, interactive, online directory oftechnology players. A similar concept could be applied to amap technology to allow users throughout the country, or
globally for that matter, to connect.

In an effort to support the growing diversity of ourmembership, the EC and the CAG are looking jointly at a
Hub Concept for the annual conference.
The Papers Program has been the center of the technicalexcellence of the annual conference. Last year’s program
received a record number of submissions, totaling near 700,
with 88 accepted papers in 22 different categories. Even
still, this represents a small subset of the diverse topics
within the community. Other programs, such as the
Sketches and Courses, are experiencing similar growth.

CONCLUSION

The Hub Concept will take a two-prong approach. The firstwill be to have the spokes of the wheel being co-locatedsmall conferences that will run prior to the annual
conference. From those small conferences the best papers,
panels, sketches, and courses will be peer reviewed with afinite number of slots allotted to these quality submissions.
This could work well with the UX community where thediversity of interests spans multiple disciplines.

The user experience is paramount, and you have one shot tomake an impression on your membership base. If it is good
loyalty will follow, but if it less than optimal, there aremany possibilities for the professional to find what theyneed. Knowing what they need is the first step; working
cooperatively among the SIGs and to provide the sense ofcommunity will be obtained if the first goal is met.

SIGGRAPH and most of the small conferences have adefined view of what a technically excellent submission
contains. All of these submissions are peer reviewed withthe same process from year to year. This leaves little room
for a case-based course or paper to be accepted. In many
experienced-based venues case-based submissions are thenorm. The organizers of each co-located conference would
set the standard for submissions, and the peer review
process for the main conference would be based on thecriteria set by the individual small conference.

AuthorBarbara Helfer graduated with a Masters of Mass
Communications from the University of South Carolina in
1979. She went on to get an associate degree in Broadcast
Engineer in 1982. She first started working in the computer
graphics at the Ohio Supercomputer Center with the Ohio
Supercomputer Graphics Project and aPE the Animation
Production Environment a data flow scientific visualization
package. She then went to work for the Advanced
Computing Center for the Arts and Design at Ohio State
University and managed the Emerging Technology Studio(ETS) a multimedia that helped art professors in theCollege of the Arts use technology in traditional classes.
From Ohio State she spent over a year at the Naval
Postgraduate School in the MOVES Institute archiving
video, researching distance education and SCORM
technologies, visualizing 3D objects on the web with X3D,
and working with the America's Army Project archiving the
progress of the game. She is now at Capital University
where she is the Director of New Media Services, which
deals with the Web, distance education, and portal
technologies.

The Hub Concept also provide opportunities for theintermingling of diverse communities at joint sessions, andthe ability for any attendee to sit in on sessions that are ofinterest in the other small conferences.
BLOGS AND WIKIS

Last year SIGGRAPH introduced both a conference blog
and wiki. These met with mild interest, mainly because
advertising and pre-conference hype was minimal. It is
hoped that these will be expanded this year.
Every group has its “star” players, be it people or topics,
and capitalizing on the “star” in the form of a blog willallow intercommunication among like-minded people. The
concept of sites, such as TheFaceBook, allows college
students to post information about themselves so otherpeople AT THE SAME COLLEGE can view that
information, could be applicable in this discussion as well.
It is sort of a networking tool that allows people tocommunicate in non-threatening ways.

She has volunteered in ACM SIGGRAPH related activities
since 1991 when she started reviewing courses for theannual Conference. She was Conference Courses Chair in
1997 and 1999. In 2001 she was Pathfinders Chair, aprogram that she helped initiate in 1998. In 2002 she waselected Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH, a position she
holds today.

As security issues arise these can go behind portals, where
members can respond and participate, while non-members
can only read. Participation in vital blog could help
promote membership as well as provide useful discussion
among the community.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like thank the ACM SIGGRAPH EC and CAG,
CHI, and all small conference organizers, for allowing me
to discussions and thoughts that were generated through ourcommunications.

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