Texas Tech University’s Usability Research Lab, in partnership with the College of Outreach & Distance Education, is now offering user experience training workshops leading to university-recognized certification as a user experience professional (CUEP).
The intense workshops will give students the opportunity to work hands-on for three days in the Tech Usability Research Lab. They will learn the key skills and techniques necessary to develop, evaluate, and improve users’ experience with a wide variety of products, from web sites and software to cell phones and print documentation.
Dr. Brian Still, the Lab’s Director and the CUEP Workshop Instructor, says “the fact is, usable products save money. Users are more satisfied using them, and organizations spend less money to support them because they work on their own to let users do what they want and need to do. However, it isn’t easy to create user-friendly products. Organizations often have untrained staff who are unaware of how to design products and evaluate them. It also costs far more than some organizations can afford to pay outside experts to conduct the necessary usability testing. Besides, if you’re a company, you want those skills in-house.” Still added, “if you’re a webmaster, application developer, product engineer, writer, communicator, even manager responsible for designing products people use, you should know how to make those products more usable.”
Texas Tech’s new Certified User Experience Professional (CUEP) workshop has been specifically designed to help organizations and individuals do this. The workshop is affordable, costing only $1,800 for three days of training, plus long-term access to an online forum and data repository, available only to CUEP workshop attendees,
which will provide ongoing support even after students have received certification. An all-inclusive package, including boarding, lunch and dinner while at Texas Tech, is available for $2,300.
Each workshop size is purposely small, limited to 10 students or less, ensuring that students don’t have to compete for space or resources.
“From the very first moment they arrive in the Lab to the last, they’ll be working, getting their hands on equipment required for facilitating and recording user testing, learning how to conduct a heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough, think-aloud facilitation, user and task analysis, and other usability analysis methods,” Still said, “We’ll even make them develop a plan and test real users in the Lab. When they leave not only will they be certified user experience professionals, but they’ll also be able to put into practice immediately what they learned in the workshop.”
For more information about Texas Tech’s Certified User Experience Professional (CUEP) Workshop, visit http://www.uxcertification.ttu.edu. You can also register online to attend the upcoming November 13-15, 2008 workshop, or other workshops scheduled monthly from January to August, 2009.
For more information, contact:
Michele Moskos, Marketing Director, College of Outreach and Distance Education
Telephone: (806)742.7202, ext. 276
E-mail: michele.moskos@ttu.edu
