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 theOhio 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 othersinterested 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. Therewere 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 andUPA meetings, so I need to plan ahead. If the topic wasvery targeted, such as about UX as an umbrella topic, Iwould 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 ontopic. 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 theUX 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 theWashington, 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 distanceGeographicdistance

My Core My Specialities Applies to UX Interested in UX
SIGCHIAIGA
HFES
ACM
UPA
ASISTIDSAAMASTC
SIGGRAPH
IEEE CSPRSA

Less than 1 hour--BGSU STC--BGSU ACM
NWNUG
PRSA NwO

MOCHIMIUPA

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 AMAMichiana 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