Conference Theme: Connecting Communities

Communities are the core of our social structure, a bridge between us and the larger world. Families, businesses, sports, religions, professions, schools, towns, cities, and nations all function as communities. In turn, they are all made up of individuals that interact with each other through community networks.

Communities are changing in ways unimagined a generation ago. More and more, people work and play together for years without meeting face-to-face. While technology may undercut and fragment traditional communities, it also opens us up to broad new possibilities.

UPA 2004 will explore the many ways that communities affect usability and the user experience, as well as the ways that the user experience affects communities.

Changes in community infrastructure affect how we communicate and interact. How are text messaging, online communities, instant messages, cell phones, wireless broadband, and mobility changing user expectations?

New technologies demand new processes to create and support them. How do our processes and techniques in new product innovation, user research and usability evaluations continue to evolve with a community focus?

As our communities grow and stretch, they take in more and more diverse people. How do we design and evaluate products in this new global marketplace? How do we make products more inclusive, while maintaining specificity to critical audiences? How do we reach so many different audiences?

As we begin to design for communities, how do we transform the concept of “user experience” into ”community experience?” How do we develop the persona of a community? How do we measure and assess the community experience? How do we balance between users and communities? How do communities interact with each other, and how do we design for inter-community interaction?

The usability community itself is changing and growing. How do we shape these changes? How do they affect the way we define ourselves, the tools and processes we use, and the ways we work with our colleagues to the benefit of our users, both individuals and communities?

The community landscape changes every day. Come to UPA, and network in our community.