Building the Usability Profession
with Tom McEwan
3rdDec '08
About the event
How do usability consultants build careers and gain seniorirty in their organisations? In more mature organisations, this is by meeting well-defined competency criteria. This evening's presentation is designed to help you plan a career in usability, at a time when the profession gets increasingly defined and organised.
The latest edition of the UK competency framework for the IT sector, Skills Framework for the Information Age is released on 4th December. Over 70 roles are defined in up to 7 levels, with each one having a six-page description that forms the basis of many job contracts.
In SFIA v3, three separate usability roles were added to the pre-existing two in ergonomics/human factors. In SFIA v4 these roles have been refined to give a sense of progression through your career. For example the highest level of the "Human Factors Integration" role includes more strategic objectives in "work activities":
- Is accountable for the "user experience" of deployed IT-enabled products and services
- Monitors the rate of progress in the organisation's capability in user-centred design, and obtains resource
- Studies emerging theory and practice on human factors, identifies opportunities and ensures that measurable business benefits are achieved
Attend this meeting to find out how you can raise the profile of usability in your organisation and enhance your career.
All attendees are welcome to join SUPA for some early Christmas drinks across the road in the Voodoo Rooms after the meeting.
More about the speaker(s)
Tom McEwan
Tom is responsible for the commercialisation of Informatics research at Napier, and is also treasurer of BCS Interaction SG, where his responsibilities include funding usabilitynews.com, which he helped set up. He is also PR Officer for the BCS Edinburgh Branch, a past Director of ScotlandIS and a reviewer for SFIA. In these various roles he seeks to bring together the sperate related communities in user-centred design, human computer interaction, accessibility etc. Over ten years at Napier he has pioneered new degrees in web design, multimedia and e-commerce and worked with industry on many different types of usability-related projects. Before Napier he was Technical Director of an SME and a software engineer with Unisys.
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