Workshop on Strategic Usability

[TE <te -at- TECED -dot- COM>]

Dear colleagues,

I'd like to share with you the Call for Participation in a CHI '98
workshop I'm co-organizing with Janice Rohn of Sun Microsystems and Judee
Humburg (formerly of Intuit, now an independent consultant).  The ACM
SIGCHI 1998 conference will be held in Los Angeles from April 18 - 23;
this workshop will take place on Sunday, April 19th.

Please don't hesitate to ask me any questions you may have about this
workshop.  Janice, Judee, and I look forward to having some of you join
us!

Call for Participation

Unpacking Strategic Usability:
Corporate Strategy and Usability Research

Usability research can be a strategic tool that contributes to an
organization's business direction, marketing position, and overall
strategic planning.  Human factors professionals can partner with other
groups and build cross-functional teams to define usability research
programs that address a company's key goals and help focus product
development to achieve these goals.

This workshop expands on the organizers' previous CHI workshops and panels
on corporate strategy and usability research.  After the CHI '97 panel on
"Corporate Strategy and Usability Research," the panelists-and the
audience-wanted more in-depth exploration of strategic usability issues.
Strategic usability reaches beyond best practices in product development
and design, striving for a role where customer understanding and usability
data influence decision-making throughout an organization.  In "unpacking
strategic usability" we intend to explore the meaning of "strategic" in
both the product and the organizational contexts.

The CHI '98 workshop will bring together practitioners who:

* Already incorporate iterative usability research in product design and
development
* Are trying to establish usability research as a strategic tool within
their organizations
* Have attempted to build cross-functional teams to achieve this vision

We solicit case studies of successful and unsuccessful experiences, so
participants can pool their insights; we'll learn as much-or more-from
unsuccessful efforts.  This one-day workshop is limited to 15
participants.  In your position/participation paper (3 to 5 pages long),
please describe your organizational environment, what you have done to
achieve strategic usability (what methods you used and how well your
efforts worked), and-if desired-new ideas you've wanted to try for
building strategic usability.  A template is available for describing
your organizational environment.

Submission deadline:  February 15, 1998

Contact:

Stephanie Rosenbaum
Tec-Ed, Inc.
P.O. Box 1905
Ann Arbor, MI  48106
e-mail: stephanie -at- teced -dot- com
Voice:  734-995-1010
Fax:    734-995-1025

Note to West Coasters: I'm coordinating the participation papers through
Tec-Ed's Ann Arbor office, but you can usually reach me at Tec-Ed's Palo
Alto office: 650-493-1010.  My e-mail address is always the same.

	http://www.documentation.com/, or http://www.dejanews.com/