The Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) supports professionals who research, design, and evaluate the user experience of products and services. The UPA sought our expertise for a usability analysis of the registration and scheduling portions of the UPA conference web site. With the expansion of the conference, the previous site outgrew the constraints of the original design and users complained of confusion over conference and session options.

Our Experience Designers performed an independent heuristic evaluation of the existing site. After sharing findings with business stakeholders, we developed a usability test script and wireframe for alternative approaches to site organization and content.

We conducted one-on-one usability test sessions with 15 participants representing three groups of user types:

* Prior conference attendees
* Never attended a conference
* Administrative assistants

Researchers compared results of task-based testing from each group to identify usability issues of the current site with associated level of severity.

Comments from participants indicated that the site required multiple views to session information - a calendar based approach by default, a listing by speaker, and a listing by discipline or track. In addition, the usability test environment allowed moderators to evaluate customer reaction to proposed social features such as saved agendas and attendee networking. Feedback from participants allowed developers to focus on high-value features.

The feedback after the 2009 conference was resoundingly enthusiastic, and the design we created was reused for the 2010 conference.