Thursday, April 23, 2009

First-Ever Arizona UPA Meeting - Thursday, April 30, 2009

Please join us for the first-ever Arizona Usability Professionals Association (UPA) Chapter meeting on Thursday, April 30. Dean T. Barker, Director of User-Centered Design at Sage Software, will speak on integrating user-centered design into various software processes.

Dean will explain why software projects fail and how user-centered design (UCD) can be used to improve and optimize your product development methodology. He will present a structured approach to tailoring and integrating UCD into the software development process. In this presentation you will also learn about the critical gaps in your software development methodology, how to unify design and development, how to express UCD in the "language" of your methodology, how to promote usability activities within development, and how to make UCD a routine part of your software processes regardless of whether you're using waterfall, agile methods, the Rational Unified Process (RUP), or other methodologies.
You'll also learn about the UPA and meet local colleagues who share a passion for all things related to creating compelling user experiences.
Speaker Bio
Dean T. Barker is the Director of User Centered Design and User Assistance for Global CRM Solutions at Sage Software. He has over fifteen years of experience in design and software product development. He has been a co-editor and author of ISO standards for Software Quality and is co-author of the book Designing Effective Speech User Interfaces. Mr. Barker has a B.A. in Business Management and Communication and a M.S. in Software Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He is also the Membership Chair for the Arizona UPA Chapter and is the Phoenix-area Local Ambassador for UXnet.org, an online community connecting people, organizations, resources, and ideas to enable the growth of User Experience as a practice.
Meeting Location
The Art Institute of Phoenix
2233 West Dunlap Avenue
Phoenix, Arizona
Note: The meeting will be in room 456
Agenda
6:00 pm Arrival, networking and snacks
6:30 pm Brief business meeting
7:00 pm Presentation - Invited Speaker
8:00 pm Adjourn
This is a free event, but space is limited. Walk-in attendees are certainly welcome, but please RSVP to this address so that we can ensure we provide the appropriate accommodations.
You do not need to be a member to attend. Feel free to come and check us out!!! We look forward to meeting you.