Second International Conference on Usage-Centered Design
18-22 October 2003 | Portsmouth, New Hampshire

A Conference on Usage-Centered, Task-Oriented, and
 Performance-Centered Design for Software and Web Applications

"Performance by Design"

Keynote Speaker: Bill Buxton

Bill Buxton is an innovator who challenges assumptions about what works and why. A designer and a researcher concerned with human aspects of technology, his work reflects a particular interest in the use of technology to support creative activities such as design, film making, and music.  Buxton's research specialties include technologies, techniques and theories of input to computers,  technology mediated human-human collaboration, and ubiquitous computing.  He currently heads Buxton Design, a consulting and design firm he started, and continues as an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. For eight years he was Chief Scientist at Alias|Wavefront, Inc., and its parent company SGI Inc,

Preliminary List of Presenters

David Anderson is author of the forthcoming Agile Management for Software Engineering (Prentice Hall), Anderson is the on-line publisher of uidesign.net, The Webzine for Interaction Designers which focuses on UI architecture. David’s career started in the computer games industry but it was his work on a major banking project with Peter Coad, Jeff De Luca and Stephen Palmer which spawned the Feature Driven Development method for agile software development and several other innovations in the field of OO Analysis.

Chris Armstrong, Chief Science Officer of ATC Enterprises, is an internationally recognized expert in iterative software development, object-oriented analysis and design, the Unified Modeling Language, use case driven requirements, and process improvement. Chris is a frequent speaker at major conferences and workshops and the author of numerous articles for Cutter IT Journal, Rational Developer Network, Rose Architect, and Enterprise Development. For more than two decades he has provided consulting and training to major corporations including 3M, US Bank, The St. Paul Companies, and Wells Fargo.

Arlen Bankston is a Managing Technical Consultant and Interaction Design Manager for C.C. Pace Systems in Fairfax, Virginia. He is currently engaged in extending and promoting CC Pace’s capabilities in interaction design and usability. Arlen has led the integration of interaction design practices into a proprietary agile methodology called Catalyst, which blends concepts of Extreme Programming with Agile Project Management and principles of Usage-Centered Design. His latest project was the largest Extreme Programming development effort to date, with a team of over 120 working to redesign an application with 600,000+ lines of code.

Robert Biddle is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Information Systems at Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests are in the areas of software design and human-computer interaction, with a focus on the structural nature of software from both engineering and humanities perspectives, and on applying techniques for information visualization. The author of numerous publications in these areas, BIddle also works with industry and is the recipient of several awards for teaching excellence, including at forUSE 2002 Robert was awarded the title of "Most Extreme."

Jared Braiterman is principal of jaredRESEARCH, a consulting firm focused on leveraging customer knowledge for product innovation. Trained as a cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, Jared has worked in interactive product design for seven years.

Jacqueline Brodie is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, UK. Jacqueline’s research interests lie in methods for the design and implementation of mobile technology, as well as usability evaluation methods. Her publications cover both quantitative and qualitative research methods and she is currently on the Research and Strategy Committee of the British HCI group.

Diana Cave is a lecturer in User-Interface Design and IT Usability at London Metropolitan University, in the Department of Computing, Communications Technology and Mathematics. Diana’s research interests are user models; interactive systems; interactive presentation; universal accessibility; visualization and the user-interface; m-commerce & e-commerce usability; and the elicitation and the evaluation of information.

Jarinee Chattratichart is a lecturer in user-interface design and IT Usability at the Department of Computing, Communications Technology and Mathematics, London Metropolitan University and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, UK. Her research interests are discount methods in usability evaluation and requirements gathering; m-commerce; web usability; universal accessibility; and usability of visual programming languages.

Larry Constantine, Chief Scientist at Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd. and co-organizer of forUSE 2003, is one of the pioneers of software design whose current work centers on usage-centered design. He has contributed numerous concepts and techniques forming the foundations of modern practice in software engineering and applications design and development. An award-winning designer, his innovations include several patents in human-machine interaction. His publications include over 150 articles and papers plus 16 books, among them the award-winning Software for Use (Addison-Wesley, 1999). He has lectured and taught around the world and serves on the adjunct faculty of the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia), where he is a Professor of Information Technology.

Gary Dickelman specializes in applying knowledge management, human factors engineering, learning and information technology, and business process engineering to creating systems that real people can actually use. CEO and webmaster for EPSScentral.com, a key on-line resource for the Performance Support community, he has contributed to several books and written numerous articles. Gary is editor of EPSS Revisited (Prentice-Hall, 2003) and an editor for ISPI’s Performance Improvement journal, as well as an adjunct faculty of George Mason University and Boise State University.

Gary Elsbernd, Ariel Performance Centered Systems, is a Senior Consultant on the design of highly intuitive business systems, has over ten years of industry experience focusing his talents on designing systems that integrate the knowledge, tools and resources necessary for an employee to work successfully. Prior to joining Ariel, Elsbernd was Manager of Performance Support at Payless ShoeSource, where he led internal efforts to change the culture from a training focus to a focus on developing technological solutions that integrate knowledge directly into the interface and match the way the users think about the work there by reducing the need for training. At Payless, Elsbernd led the internal design team that partnered with Ariel to develop the Retail Performance Support System, a solution that earned an Award of Distinction in the 2000 Performance Centered Design Competition. Elsbernd was also named one of “Training’s New Guard” by Training & Development Magazine in May 1999.

Jason Fried is a member of the 37signals (http://www.37signals.com) elite team of expert Web design and usability specialists dedicated to simple, clear, usable, and affordable design. 37signals' clients include Qwest, Wells Fargo, Getty Images, and Monster.com. The team also publishes a wide range of usability resources, including Design Not Found (http://www.designotfound.com), the first site devoted exclusively to contingency design.

Gloria Gery, Gery Associate, is an independent consultant specializing in performance-centered software design and in developing and implementing interactive training and performance support systems. Her emphasis is in strategy development and in creating the managerial approaches necessary for implementation. In addition, she assists in developing creative interfaces and content to assure learning and guarantee performance. Gloria was inducted into the HRD Hall of Fame in 1998 and received the ASTD Distinguished Contribution Award in 2000. She can be reached at ggery@attglobal.net with additional information at www.gloriagery.com.

Verena Giller is co-founder and managing director of CURE (Center for Usability Research and Engineering), a leading european research center, as well as Managing Partner of USECON GmbH, a consultancy for Human Centric Solutions. She has been working in the field for more than 10 years, in international industrial as well as research contexts. Verena gained her experiences through the variety of activities: more than 150 projects in numerous branches and technologies, numerous publications, talks and presentations at conferences and events, contributions and participations in various commitees and expert groups, development and conduction of university as well as industrial training courses.

Brian Henderson-Sellers is currently Director of the Centre for Object Technology and Applications (COTAR) and Professor of Information Systems at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in Australia. His research interests include object-oriented and agent-oriented methodologies, modeling and meta-modeling, object-oriented metrics, organizational transition to object technology and capability assessment for OO/CBD.

Chet Hendrickson is an independent consultant, helping software teams improve the software development process by the application of Extreme Programming’s core values of simplicity, communication, feedback, and courage. Chet was at Extreme Programming’s ground zero, the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation (C3) system. As a developer on the pre-XP C3, Chet saw how poor communication, inadequate testing, and an overly complex design can doom a development effort. He helped make the decision to throw away 14 months of work and begin again under the guidance of Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, and Ron Jeffries. Chet is one of the authors of Extreme Programming Installed (Addison Wesley 2000), a connected collection of essays, presented in the order the practices would actually be implemented during a project.

Jim Heumann is Requirements Management Evangelist for Rational Software, IBM Software Group, working to promote and educate on the importance of good requirements management. For the past decade Jim has lectured and taught on a range of software engineering topics including Requirements Management with Use Cases, Object Oriented Analysis and Design, Visual Data Analysis, UML, and Using Use Cases to Generate Test Cases.

Jim Hobart is an internationally recognized user interface design consultant specializing in the design and development of enterprise high-volume client/server and web-based applications. An expert in GUI design for transaction processing systems and strategies for migration from character-based and thick-client systems, Jim has over twenty years of software development experience managing software projects, advising large firms on their technology direction, and helping organizations develop in-house GUI standards and software user interface designs. Additionally, he has successfully utilized agile methodologies with clients and has assisted with their adoption of object oriented design techniques.

Karen Holtzblatt, President and CEO of InContext Enterprises, is the co-developer of the customer-centered process Contextual Design. She originated this approach to field data collection and pioneered its introduction into working product design and engineering teams. In 1992 Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer founded InContext to provide design and consulting services to clients backed by the Contextual Design method. Their book Contextual Design: Defining Customer Centered Systems published by Morgan Kaufmann is a key reference for anyone doing or teaching customer-centered design. InContext works with leaders in the technology industry, including SAP, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Motorola, Nokia, Thomson Corporation, and others.

Burton A. Huber, President and CEO of Ariel Performance Centered Systems, has worked in the Information Technology field for over 22 years in a variety of capacities. Designing and developing business systems that effectively leverage technology and human performance has been the focus of his career. In recent years, Mr. Huber has gained recognition as an industry leader in the area of Performance Support EngineeringT, Systems Design, and Knowledge Management with business critical applications. Mr. Huber consults with Fortune 500 organizations in the areas of business strategy, information technology, knowledge management, and performance support. He frequently presents at conferences for various professional organizations and is published in trade publications sharing his vision and strategies for the future. Mr. Huber has been an active member of several professional communities, publishing papers, presenting research and serving on technical committees.

Matt Hummel, Senior Director of Business Development, Ariel Performance Centered Systems, for the past decade has consulted on, designed, and managed many types of software applications including highly intuitive business systems, numerous commercially released multimedia programs, knowledge management systems, and training solutions. Hummel’s latest work has focused in the area of e-business strategy, on-line marketing and user experience design. Throughout his career, Hummel has solved business and human performance problems with solutions that make sense to the bottom line and to users. His experience in human performance, creative design, and technology has led to projects delivered via browser, palmtop, CD-ROM, client/server, and satellite broadcast.

James Hutchison is a graduate of BSc and BA at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Ron Jeffries, senior author of Extreme Programming Installed (Addison Wesley 2000), is an independent consultant and trainer and the publisher of XProgramming.com, a well-known source of Extreme Programming information. Ron has been involved with Extreme Programming since its inception, with numerous papers and presentations on Extreme Programming to his credit. His teams have built operating systems, compilers, relational database systems, and a large range of applications. Ron's software products have produced revenue of over half a billion dollars, and he wonders why he didn't get any of it.

Daniel Kerkow works at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering in the department of Requirements and Usability Engineering and early-stage quality assurance. Daniel focuses on the topic of non-functional requirements, especially in the perception of maintenance and usability quality aspects in software development and requirements gathering processes. Additionally his interests lie in the development and use of flexible processes for software engineering.

Kirstin Kohler leads the usability engineering group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering. Kirstin’s main interest is the integration of usability and software engineering methods. Before joining the IESE she has worked for 4 years at Hewlett-Packard as a user-interface developer and later was responsible for establishing a user-centered design process within the project organization.

Matt Linderman is a member of the 37signals (http://www.37signals.com) elite team of expert Web design and usability specialists dedicated to simple, clear, usable, and affordable design. 37signals' clients include Qwest, Wells Fargo, Getty Images, and Monster.com. The team also publishes a wide range of usability resources, including Design Not Found (http://www.designotfound.com), the first site devoted exclusively to contingency design.

Yong Liu is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science Department at Indiana University, Bloomington. He works with Dr. Kay Connelly on the Role-Based Access Control system in the Active Spaces project. His research interests include usability and security issues for ubiquitous computing, especially usability evaluation and information visualization.

Lucy Lockwood, President, Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd., is an authority on software and Web usability and the integration of people and technology within the software development process. An international consultant, trainer, and specialist in usage-centered design, Lucy works with development teams to elucidate a detailed understanding of users’ work and how best to support their needs. She helps development groups integrate existing requirements and development processes with a usage-centered design approach. Co-author of the award-winning book, Software for Use, Lucy has published numerous articles on user interface design, cross-functional teamwork, and project management. She is co-organizer of forUSE 2003.

Ralph Lord is a systems analyst with Northrop Grumman Mission Systems working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Information Resources Management Office’s (IRMO) Bio-terrorism software development program. An English major in college, Ralph found his way into software design by joining a software startup in marketing and product management. Recognizing the need for his own employer’s software to be more usable, he completed a Master’s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University and has since worked to improve both software design and the software design process within a number of organizations.

Gary Macomber, HumanCentric Design, has worked in a wide variety of positions defining requirements and evaluating systems usability as well as building prototypes. In a recent assignment he was tasked with blending the usage-centered design effort across two product teams – one using XP and one using traditional development methods. He has validated product and UI direction as well as evaluated UI fit in a wide variety of product solutions. He has used structured analysis, storyboarding, and stories as critical components of defining and communicating user actions and expectations.

Peter Messner is Usability Engineering Coordinator at CURE, the Center for Usability Research & Engineering in Vienna. Peter has been active in the field for almost five years now and is responsible for coordinating and conducting industrial usability engineering projects. His main area of expertise is web usability and usability process engineering. He is working on his Ph.D. thesis on the topic of usability software support tools and leads the development of the CURE Usability Engineering Environment.

Brian O'Byrne is the lead developer on the JStateMachine project intended to allow developers to enforce a behavioural design for user interfaces based on statechart notation. Brian's career in IT includes the first release of the Irish Independent newspaper's online publication and chief programmer on web-enablement projects for Ireland's two largest banks. As well as running the JStateMachine project, Brian works as an IT consultant for Irish Life International.

Jeff Patton, Tomax Corporation, has, for nearly ten years coached and developed software with top-notch teams on a wide variety of projects from on-line aircraft parts ordering to rules-based pricing engines. He has successfully helped to design, develop, and deploy software now in use by thousands. Although he prides himself in specializing in nothing, Jeff has placed emphasis on the study of OO design and development, agile development methodologies and Extreme Programming, user-interface design, and interaction design.

Tom Poppendieck, Poppendieck LLC, is an enterprise architect, analyst, and agile process mentor focused on articulating features of real business value and enabling whole project teams to effectively realize that value. Tom has 22 years of experience in computing and 8 years of experience with object technology centered around planning and coaching transitions of development organizations to object and component based thinking and to agile methodologies. Specializing in customer side processes, he assists project owners and system end-users to clarify and articulate their needs in a way that maximizes development efficiency, system flexibility and business value.

Thyra Rauch is a HF Engineer who has worked at IBM for sixteen years, currently is on the Data Management team working on information integration solutions. She has been instrumental in validating product and UI direction, user roles, and role/task pairings across a number of different industries for multiple product solutions. She has been using customer stories and storyboarding as an integral part of her design process. She is the author of 10 patents relating to user interface design.

Joshua Seiden is a user experience consultant and interaction designer whose work helps companies create technology products that meet users' real-world needs. Josh founded, and is currently president of 36 Partners, (http://www.36partners.com) a consulting firm based in New York. Prior to founding 36 Partners, he was a design director at Cooper Interaction Design, where he worked with Alan Cooper to develop, refine, and teach Cooper’s goal-directed design methods.

Jeannine Strope, Applications Development Advisor, McKesson Information Solutions, LLC, received a BS in Nursing from the University of Florida. After 10 years in patient care and 3 years implementing clinical applications, she now specializes in user interface design at McKesson. She headed up the analysis and design team applying usage-centered design to the successful redesign of McKesson’s legacy clinical applications.

Manfred Tscheligi holds a master in Business Informatics and a Ph.D. in Social and Economic Science. He has been an Associate Professor for Applied Computer Science at the University of Vienna and very active in the field of HCI for more than ten years. He is founder and director of both CURE, (Center for Usability Research & Engineering) and USECON, a usability consultancy. Manfred is a member of various international expert, advisory and conference committees; he will be general conference co-chair of CHI2004, is on the editorial board of a new HCI book series (Kluwer) and part of the Interacting with Computers (Elsevier) Special Editorial Board on Applications.

Bobbi Underbakke is President/CEO of ATC Enterprises, Inc., an innovative education company that offers unique e-learning, c-learning, and mentoring experiences. She is a thought leader and expert in iterative development, organizational development and change management, knowledge management, process engineering, and business modeling. A frequent speaker and writer in the field, Bobbi has more than twenty years experience educating and mentoring clients, including Best Buy, 3M, UnitedHealth Group, and Medtronic. Bobbi is a Certified Knowledge Manager and Knowledge Environment Engineer.

Andreea Vaduva is a Lecturer at London Metropolitan University where she runs workshops, tutorials and lectures in user-interface design at both undergraduate and Masters level. Previously Andreea worked as an Interaction Designer at NORTEL, Queen Mary & Westfield College and Symbian Ltd. Her work incorporates a broad portfolio covering all aspects of user-interface design, from user needs research for web sites, interactive television systems and 3G mobile phones, to prototyping, usability evaluations, and help system design.

Helmut Windl is Director of the User Interface Design Group for Simatic Automation Software at Siemens’ Automation & Drives Division. He is an experienced user interface and visual designer for large-scale software applications and project leader for usability-focused products. He is also a trainer and presenter within Siemens AG and an Associate with Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd.

John Zapolski recently joined Yahoo!, where he is responsible for managing product design for the company's Commerce group. Prior to Yahoo, John was vice president of design research at Wells Fargo, where he focused on building a strategic design practice that has helped Wells Fargo develop the most successful internet business in the financial services industry. This summer, he co-developed the program for the Designing for User Experiences conference (DUX2003), which for the first time formally brought together members of ACM SIGGRAPH, SIGCHI, and the AIGA.

Alexander Zipf spent nearly six years as a research associate at the European Media Laboratory where he was in several national and international research projects focused on mobile, multi-modal, adaptive and location-based systems, agents and geoinformatics. Currently he is a professor for Applied Computer Science at the Department of Geoinformatics and Surveying at the University for Applied Sciences, Mainz, Germany.