This Week, Colorado

I'm hanging out at the Omni Interlocken just outside of Denver. I'm at a conference of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA). This is my third or fourth time. I like this conference because it's all about results. The people who attend are mostly practioners, and usually young ones, at that. I feel like an old man. The only people my age are some of the presenters or consultant predators looking for lucrative engagements. I'm also a bit out of step, because many of these folks come from usability shops, and I come from the business product side of the house.

I like the questioning, the sharing of ideas, the sets of usability methods that people are talking about. It's a good way to checkpoint my own practices, which because of circumstance, often are not the best. Some of these people practice state-of-the-art usability, and I practice seat-of-my-pants. But we're all trying to do the same thing - create a better experience for users. Of course, we hope it increases our business, or web traffic, or what other metric used to measure success.

I talked with a consultant with which my company used to do business. We had an interesting talk, and I'm hoping we can talk again before the end of the conference. He had some interesting perspectives on the progress (regress?) that usability has taken at home. He had a unique view of some decisions made about how to proselitize usability in the company. I think we lost the usability war, but I'm trying to win skirmishes one day at a time. It's been a difficult transition, and usability is hard to manage out of a product group. I think the awareness is in our company's development, QA, and management groups, but no clear vision of how to make it happen.

My brother and I talked last night. He lives in Estes Park, about 45 miles northwest of here. I'm going to rent a car on Friday and drive up there. It's been a year since we've seen each other. We had a long phone conversation last night. I love the guy dearly.