How can organizations better involve clients in the design process? Are formal written reports the best way to communicate usability test findings? How can we engage new users in mobile and Web-based games for behavior change?

These were a few of the questions that were explored at the 2012 UPA Boston Conference. UPA 2012 allowed professionals to engage with each other and discuss important topics like behavior change, writing content for the Web, healthcare, and accessibility.

CommunicateHealth staff also discussed evidence-based strategies for writing and designing user-friendly health content (slide show below).

Here are a few of our UPA highlights:

• Aimee, Usability Associate:
  • I am very excited to internally discuss how we can vary the delivery of our formative research results to clients. Carolyn Snyder, Dharmesh Mistry, Eva Kaniasty, Jen McGinn, and Steve Krug all offered unique insight about reporting methods and content.
• Mel, Web Designer:
  • I really enjoyed Adam Connor’s session, “Design Studio: a Method for Idea Generation, Critique, and Iteration.” I can’t wait to start directly engaging with clients and involving them in the problem-solving aspects of design!
• Molly, Creative Director:
  • Fred Abaroa’s talk about presentation skills was engaging and memorable — and lived up to the hype.  Body language and tone can stand out far more than the words you actually say, so using hand gestures, avoiding monotone speech, presenting a positive image, and paying attention to the mood of your audience is key.
• Sarah, Usability Associate:
  • Based on their work on Staples.com, I’m excited to build on card-sorting and labeling studies with tree testing as discussed by Wolf & Harter. This is a great method to validate site organization and labels that have come out of card sorting, without going through costly prototype building and testing.

Thanks to all of the fantastic presenters for a great day!