September Program Meeting: Brave New Usability: Exploring the Potential of 21st-Century Technologies
Usability is on the minds and mouths of every informed technical communicator who seeks to understand the user - who they are, how they work, where, when, and how they use the product, and what they value. However as technology changes new issues continue to emerge to challenge the usability practitioner. Our speaker Judith Ramey addresses these concerns and its implications on how we define and assess usability.

Judith Ramey has been a STC Fellow since 1998. She is a professor and chair of the Technical Communication Department at the University of Washington. As the director of UWTC Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation, she investigates human-computer interfaces, the usability of information, and the research methods used to determine usability in the context of product development. Many techies have enjoyed her usability presentations at conferences and workshops.

Rahel Baillie demos Denim 1.0 - Wired describes the web site prototyping tool “that magically brings alive sketches of sites without its users having to do any programming”. Developed by a team at UC Berkeley, a formal version was released in April 2003 and available for free at (http://guir.berkeley.edu/projects/denim/download/) Berkeley’s Group for User Interface Research web site. Denim gives the user the ability to sketch ideas with the speed and ease of drawing on paper, and hyperlink them to become an instant interactive site.