Northern User Experience is an informal community for people interested in usability, HCI, information design and all aspects of the user experience. Our membership is as diverse as the field itself, with developers, academics, usability specialists, accessibility experts and technical authors all represented. Whatever your interest in usability, we hope you will find something useful here.

We usually meet on the first Monday of the month to learn, debate and socialise. There may be a presentation, followed by a discussion and a visit to the pub, but the group drives the agenda, and we have plans to include more practical sessions, such as a UI problem-solving workshop.

Events are free and open to all. We are unfunded, and rely on the goodwill and energy of our members to contribute and make the events work. If you have something interesting to share with the group, and are willing to put together a short presentation, please get in touch.

The group alternates between Manchester/North West and Leeds/Yorkshire.

Events are organised by the steering group and through the nux-discuss list. The steering group members are currently:

• Rachel Johnston, Ali Zaman, Chris Bush and Barry Briggs in the North West.
• Keith Doyle, Rozanne Driver, Kimberley Bottomley, Dina Saleh and Lucy Buykx in Yorkshire.

Sponsors

Northern User Experience thanks sponsors of its events. These are currently:

• Code Computerlove provide the Manchester venue
• Simple Usability provide the Leeds venue
• zed1.com provide the web hosting

Past Events

26 September 2011 (Leeds): Surveys for UX with Stephen Corbett

5 September 2011: PET (Manchester): Designing for Persuasion, Emotion and Trust with Barry Briggs

1 August 2011 (Manchester): Making UX Strategic with Chris Collingridge

25 July 2011 (Leeds): Mobile Usability with Kimberley Bottomley

4 July 2011 (Manchester): How People Make Judgements About Design Quality with Alistair Sutcliffe

6 June 2011 (Manchester): Rapid Prototyping with Axure RP (Ali Zaman, Chris Bush and Barry Briggs)

23 May 2011 (Leeds): Conversion Optimisation (Matt Clark); HTML5 (Patrick Lauke)

4 April 2011 (Manchester): How can we make UPA less London-Centric (open session)

23 March 2011 (Leeds): History of User-Centred Design (Ian Franklin); Tricks and Tools of the Trade (Open Session)

24 January 2011 (Leeds): Remote Usability Testing (Lee Duddell); Brainstorming of ideas for upcoming NUX sessions; Interaction Architecture for Startups and Digital Agencies (Pete Bagnall).

6 December 2010 (Manchester): Rather than a speaker we had an evening of amusements, and a chance to get to know each other a bit better, while letting our hair down.

22 November 2010 (Leeds): Find out about Northern User Experience; Help plan future events in the Yorkshire area; Fiona Harwood (Usability Consultant) talkedd about ‘How we ask why?’

6 September 2010 (Manchester): Agile UX presented by Sam Sutton; Design Exercise presented by Peter Bagnall.
September 2010 event report.

5 July 2010 (Manchester):  Exploring Users’ Values, Motivations and Emotions, presented by Sarah Thew; Does Technology make any difference in our social life, presented by Alistair Sutcliffe. July 2010 event report.

7 June 2010 (Leeds): Discount Usability Testing presented by Keith Doyle.
June 2010 event report.

4 May 2010 (Manchester): How we organise ourselves; Report from UXCamp London (Keith Doyle); Soap Box (Judith Garman); Selling ongoing usability services to clients (Peter Bagnall).

6 April 2010 (Manchester): Usability Book Club – Ambient Findability (Sam Sutton).

16 June 2009 (Manchester)

17 March 2009 (Manchester): Design workshop – banks (Peter Bagnall)

17 February 2009 (Manchester)

On 28 January 2009, there was a usability event called ‘Usability: What’s The Use?’ held in Manchester presented by three NUX regulars: Paul Rouke, Judith Garman and Peter Bagnall.

20 January 2009 (Manchester): Interaction between Usability and Software Professionals and Develoeprs (Rob Knight)

16 December 2008 (Manchester)

18 November 2008 (Manchester): For World Usability Day theme of transport – Can Public Transport be a better experience than the car? (Peter Bagnall).

11 September 2008 (Manchester): Personas (Judith Garman).

6 August 2008 (Manchester): Measuring User Behaviour and Metrics (Chris Collinge).

2 July 2008 (Manchester)

4 June 2008 (Leeds): User Experience: A Definition and Discussion (Tero Väänänen).

7 May 2008 (Manchester): Usability in an Agile Development Environment (Chris Collinge).

2 April 2008 (Manchester): Latest Developments in Eye Tracking (Judith Garman).

Before March 2008, the group was known as UPA North:

31 May 2006: Information Architecture (Stuart Smith).

2 November or 8 December 2005: Website Accessibility Evaluation Techniques (Steve Potts); Designing Attractive Web User Interfaces (Alistair Sutcliffe).

14 September 2005 (Manchester): Accessibility Practicalities (Stuart Smith); Morae (David Hawdale & Simon Crosbie).

29 March 2005 (Manchester): internet-related facts from recent news (David Hawdale); Ethnography (Louise Ferguson).

2 February 2005 (Manchester) first meeting: A demonstration of the latest eye-tracking systems from EyeTracker; a question and answer panel with David Hawdale and Andrew Swartz answering questions on “What is usability, and why should we give a damn?”.