Usability Certification

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Usability Certification
Gateway CHI, January 30, 2002 Charlotte
Schwendeman Director, UCD and Usability Perficient
(formerly Vertecon)
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UK UPA Survey
Should there be a recognized accreditation scheme
for UK usability professionals?
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UK UPA Survey
Which of the following should UK usability
accreditation be based on?
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Is usability certification viable?

• Working group formed at the invitation of the
  Usability Professionals Association (UPA)
• Met in November, 2001 in Salt Lake City

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Working Group
United Kingdom

• Julie Nowicki, Optavia
• UPA
• Stephanie Rosenbaum, Tec-Ed
• Charlotte Schwendeman, Perficient
• Bill Saiff, Fannie Mae
• Eric Strandt, Northwestern Mutual
• Don Williams, Microsoft
• Larry Wood, Brigham Young University
• UPA
• Whitney Quesenbery, Cognetics

• Nigel Bevan, Serco Usability Services
• UK UPA
• EC UsabilityNet Project
• Jonathan Early, Lloyds Register
• British Computer Society HCI Specialist Group

Japan

• Masaaki Kurosu, NIME
• SIG Usability - Japan

United States

• Alan Colton, Surgeworks
• Donald Day, Intuit

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Working Group Goals

• If usability certification is viable
• Determine the criteria for certification
• Determine the certification process
• Determine the scope and mission of a
  certification consortium

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Stakeholders

• Identified and prioritized key stakeholders
• Purchasers of usability services
• Usability professionals
• Usability aware employers
• Entry level practitioners
• Usability consultancies
• Usability training organizations
• Positive / negative impacts of certification for
  each of the key stakeholders

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Competitor Analysis
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General Guidelines for Certification

• Certification process and criteria
• Define a minimum standard
• Inclusive rather than exclusive
• Promote professional development and excellence
• What its NOT Small cadre of elite individuals
• The process should assess the candidates
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Usability aptitude
• Whether a candidate has a relevant mindset
• Entire User-centered design (UCD) field not just
  usability testing and evaluation
• Candidates will need to subscribe to an ethical
  code of practice.
• Software Engineering Code of Ethics and
  Professional Practice

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Preferred Approach for Certification

• Based on core competency elective specialties
• Points for
• Sufficient background / experience equivalent to
  a threshold score
• Industry experience
• University programs in HF and related fields
• Work experience peer references
• Possible process
• Submission of a brief describing the use of UCD
  on a project
• How / why UCD principles / techniques were or
  were not used
• Written exam
• Problem solving style questions
• Essay responses
• Structured interviews with multiple assessors
  approved by the consortium

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Certification Core Competencies

• Prior work done in UK and Europe
• Technical Report Technical Competencies for
  User-Centered Design Professionals
• Based on ISO 13407, Human-centred Design
  Processes for Interactive Systems (1999)
• Plan and manage the human-centered design process
• Understand and specify user and organizational
  requirements and context of use
• Produce design solutions
• Evaluate designs against requirements
• For ISO 13407, see www.usabilitynet.org/certificat
  ion

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Governing Body

• Consortium
• Not-for-profit
• International
• Representatives of professional bodies
• Representatives of major companies

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Next Steps

• Interactions article
• Engage the usability community
• SIGCHI (ACMs Special Interest Group on
  Computer-Human Interaction)
• CHI 2002, Minneapolis, MN, April 20-25
• www.acm.org/chi2002
• SIG A Proposed Scheme for Certifying Usability
  Practitioners
• UPA (Usability Professionals Association)
• UPA 2002, Orlando, FL, July 8-12
• http//www.upassoc.org/new/conferences/2002/index.
  html
• Workshop Certifying Usability Professionals
  How Can Competence Be Assessed?
• STC (Society for Technical Communication)
• 2002 Conference, Nashville, TN, May 5-8
• http//www.stc.org/conferences.html
• HFES (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society)
• 2002 Annual Conference/Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA,
  September 3-7
• http//www.hfes.org/meetings/2002menu.html
• BCS HCI (British Computing Society Human-Computer
  Interaction)
• APCHI (Asia Pacific Computer-Human Interaction)
• UK UPA (UK Usability Professionals Association)

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Next Steps

• UPA survey
• Personas based on UPA Survey
• Obtain startup funding
• Corporations
• Organizations
• Grandfathering scheme
• White paper for standard responses to inquiries

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Adjunct Activities

• Promote professional development and excellence
• UPA committee on curriculum development

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• Questions

Ideas
Suggestions or To-Dos