World Usability Day is November 13 and if you’re interested in learning more about usability and technical communication, there is a great networking opportunity coming up next week.

On Wednesday, November 5, Barb Hernandez, Josie Scott, and Casey Wright of TechSmith Corporation will present the program “Usability Testing: Observation to Analysis”. Guests will be able to experience a live usability test, participate in observation and analysis, and learn what it takes to put together a test and make actionable recommendations.

This is a great networking opportunity for both professionals and students who want to learn more about usability testing and the Society for Technical Communication. Costs are as follows: chapter members: $5.00; students (members and non-members): $5.00; and non-members: $10.00.

The event will be held at TechSmith headquarters in Okemos, Michigan and you can register in advance via email or pay at the door with cash or check. Networking starts at 6:30pm and the presentation will run from 7-8:30pm.

Barb Hernandez serves as the User Experience Manager at TechSmith Corporation and specializes in using User Centered Design techniques to drive the user experience for technology products. She has led the user centered design efforts for cross-functional teams and has been involved in all stages of product development, including investigation and analysis, defining detailed requirements, creating prototypes, running usability tests and conducting usability evaluations. She has worked on the design and usability testing of graphical user interfaces, content Web sites, Web-based applications, and interfaces for hand-held devices including cells phones and PDAs. At TechSmith Barb focuses on helping teams make design decisions grounded in user intelligence.

Josephine Scott serves as Senior User Experience Researcher at TechSmith Corporation. She has provided usability, user experience research, information architecture and user-centered design services for an energy company, a major bookseller, for automotive manufacturers and software producers. She is an active member of the Usability Professionals’ Association, and involved with the Voting and Usability Project. She helped to facilitate a UPA voting workshop in 2004 and a series of other projects for organizations like Design for Democracy and IEEE. She presented a portion of the interactive session, “Recommendations on Recommendations,” with Rolf Molich at CHI 2007. Josephine received her bachelor’s from Michigan State University and a master’s of science in Information Management and Communications from Walsh College.

Casey Wright serves as a User Experience Researcher at TechSmith Corporation, a software design company. She graduated in May 2007 with her M.A. from Michigan State University’s Digital Rhetoric & Professional Writing program. Her B.A. is in English, also from MSU. During her graduate study, she worked at MSU’s Usability and Accessibility Center as a usability specialist and graduate research assistant. She has a background in communication and design which has positioned her as a professional technical communicator specializing in human-computer interaction and usability, with specific experience and skills focused on user experience research and design. She is a member of the Usability Professionals’ Association and the Society for Technical Communication.