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 meet on the first Monday of the month (unless that’s a bank holiday, in which case we meet the following day) to learn, debate and socialise. Usually there is 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 is based in Manchester, but we are also planning sessions in Leeds, and looking for venues in Liverpool.
Events are organised by the steering group and through the nux-discuss list. The steering group members are currently Keith Doyle and Pete Bagnall.
Sponsors
Northern User Experience thanks sponsors of its events. These are currently:
- Code Computerlove provide the Manchester venue
- Extreme Usability provide the Leeds venue
- zed1.com provide the web hosting
Past Events
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 (Keith Doyle). June 2010 event report.
4 May 2010 (Manchester): 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?”.