I went to the inaug­ural meet­ing of the Usab­il­ity Pro­fes­sion­als Asso­ci­ation — North of Eng­land (UPA North) tonight.

It was a great meet­ing. Andy Swartz and David Hawdale organ­ized and presided. There was a detailed demo of eye track­ing tech­no­lo­gies from Ian James of Eye­Tracker and some good dis­cus­sion from a group of inter­est­ing people.

I caught up with some old friends and met a bunch of new people.
As David poin­ted out, the people who atten­ded had quite a diverse cross-section of job titles and skills, with dif­fer­ent interests and from dif­fer­ent fields. It illus­trated just how all embra­cing the concept of usab­il­ity is. There are a lot of people who have a legit­im­ate interest in mak­ing their products more usable.

We hope to have another get together soon. I’m look­ing for­ward to it.