UPA 2.0 - A New Horizon

Silvia Zimmermann and Dan Szuc

Silvia C. Zimmermann is the UPA President and Daniel Szuc is the UPA Vice President.

In January 2009, the UPA Board of Directors met in Portland to outline the UPA Strategic Goals and Visions for 2009 and the next 3-5 years. It was a fruitful and productive time as we looked ahead at how the UPA can develop its full potential and become the association we all think we want it to be. We discussed how the UPA can learn more from leading industry trends, market shifts, our membership, and our regional leadership & partners.

What SWOT Analysis Reveals

Our SWOT (Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats) analysis showed that we have a full set of unique strengths with regards to our international community, our brand strategy, our decentralized conference strategy and our focus on practitioners and volunteers. However, it also revealed that we have to continue to do our homework with regards to UPA's:

• Local chapter strategy
• Membership Model, including membership value and retention
• Content Strategy for our publications, including our website
• Communication Strategy

Furthermore, the steady growth and interest in user experience (UX) demonstrated by our chapters around the world and by our successful conferences in Europe, China and North America suggest that we transform from a pure usability focused association to a usability and user experience association.

Our 2009 Strategy

For us, 2009 is therefore the year of consolidation. We will fix what needs to be fixed, realign what needs realignment and start to better sell our extremely inclusive and inspiring community of usability and user experience people from around the globe. We believe that by sharing ideas, visions and innovation strategies across cultures and by supporting those who research, design, and evaluate the user experience we can truly make a difference in the entire user experience (UX) field.

Following these strategy discussions the UPA Business Plan 2009 contains prioritized projects and initiatives, some of which are operational, others more strategic, but all tied to our overall UPA vision and mission. Our key strategic initiative for 2009 is the UPA Membership Model 2.0, envisioning to bring all local and international UPA chapter members from around the globe closer together to unify our overall potential.

We Want to Hear from You!

Our UPA board of directors is dynamic and open to suggestions from all UPA members around the world. We are excited by the opportunities ahead for the UPA and the UX Community as a whole and we want to hear your voice in this.

As we leverage the UPA Voice as one of the UPA Board's direct channels to our members and beyond, we would like to hear from YOU what local and/or internal UPA and UPA chapter members can do to make the UPA an association of which we can be proud. Some questions as food for thought:

• Where do you see the UX industry going in the next 3-5 years?
• What challenges and opportunities do you see for the UX industry in the next 5 years?
• What topics do you think UPA should be discussing more and getting more involved in?
• What do you find valuable about UPA today?
• What other benefits would you like to see UPA offer?
• What overall improvements do you see for UPA?
• What is UPA doing well today?

We look forward to hearing your voice to help us build the UX community and forge closer ties with other like Associations. Please write to us with your thoughts at president2009@usabilityprofessionals.org.