The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) is a professional association for people interested in usability

Usability

Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...

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According to the UPA official web site, the Usability Professionals’ Association supports usability specialists, people from all aspects of human-centered design, and the broad family of disciplines that create the user experience in promoting the design and development of usable products. Founded in 1991, the original 50-member Usability Professionals' Association has grown to serve a community of nearly 2400 members, worldwide, by promoting usability concepts and techniques through its publications, conferences, World Usability Day

World Usability Day

World Usability Day or Make Things Easier Day promotes the value of usability, usability engineering, user-centered design, universal usability, and every user's responsibility to ask for things that work better...

, and over 46 active local chapters.

Goals

According to the UPA official web site the UPA's 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 or a related discipline,
• change new product development processes to include a concern for the people who use them by presenting the business case for usability in product development to colleagues, customers, the public and governmental agencies,
• increase the body of knowledge about usability and user-centered design through professional education, meetings and conventions and other professional interchanges.

Annual Conferences

The 2011 annual conference for UPA members is scheduled for June 20–24, 2011 in Atlanta Georgia with a theme of "Designing for Social Change".

Historic Conference Themes:

2010: Embracing Cultural Diversity: User Experience Design for the World, May 24-28, Munich, Germany

2009: Bringing Usability to Life, June 8-12, Portland, Oregon

2008: The Many Faces of User Experience, June 16–20, Batimore, Maryland

2007: Patterns: Blueprints for Usability, June 11–15, Austin, Texas

2006: Usability Through Storytelling, June 12–16, Denver, Colorado

2005: Bridging Cultures, June 27 - July 1, Montréal, Québec, Canada

2004: Connecting Communities, June 7–11, Minneapolis, Minnesota

2003: Ubiquitous Usability, June 23–27, Scottsdale, Arizona

2002: Humanizing Design, July 8–12, Orlando, Florida

2001: Usability- A Winning Experience, June 25–29, Lake Las Vegas, Nevada

Publications

UPA publishes a magazine, a peer-reviewed journal and two online publications.

• User Experience Magazine (quarterly, print)
• Journal of Usability Studies (quarterly, online)
• The UPA Voice, the bi-monthly magazine
• UPA Monthly, timely news by email each month