April 2007 Contents

Small UX teams: Jared Spool at NYC UPA

Jared Spool led the NYC UPA membership in an energetic discussion of user experience successes and failures. Comments ranged widely but centered on three main questions.

• Do successful UX teams share common characteristics?
• What kinds of organizational approaches can teams take?
• What kinds of people are most effective in these roles?

By Fred Sampson

Design for Life Cycle

On reading Fred Sampson's article, “Old Dogs, New Tricks,” I was struck by the similarities in the challenges of getting software engineers to consider usability during design, and getting mechanical product designers to consider life cycle issues during design. It occurred to me designers may resist adopting these two design processes for very similar reasons, and that possible solutions may be almost identical. I will explore this idea by describing:

• The Design for Life Cycle approach
• Challenges shared with Design for Usability
• Thoughts on what is needed to change practices and culture of designers

By Caroline Hayes

Seeking an Accessible and Usable Survey Tool

When we set out to survey members of the AccessAbility SIG of Society for Technical Communication (STC), we needed an accessible tool to live up to the SIG's name and charter. Free was also a nice price tag.

By Karen Mardahl and Lisa Pappas

Help Wanted: Online Publications Volunteer

The online publications volunteer is responsible for formatting and posting the UPA Voice, UPA Monthly, and JUS on the UPA website. The time commitment is roughly 3-7 hours per month with some months requiring more or less time.

By Amanda Nance