Certification officer, British HCI Group. ABSTRACT. The British HCI Group and UPA have both investigated professional accreditation schemes. The.
Development and accreditation of HCI professionals Jonathan Earthy, Lloyd's Register, London. Certification officer, British HCI Group
ABSTRACT The British HCI Group and UPA have both investigated professional accreditation schemes. The UPA is working towards producing a Body of Knowledge that could support certification. The BHCIG is seeking to incorporate human centred design skills into the existing UK IT skills frameworks. Keywords certification, accreditation, usability professionals 1. BACKGROUND Over the last few years there has been a large increase in demand for usability skills, but it has been difficult to know who has the expertise and experience to provide a professional service. Both the British HCI Group and UPA have investigated possible professional accreditation schemes. The British HCI Group proposal for a lightweight scheme is described at www.bcs-hci.org.uk. The UPA co-sponsored a workshop in November 2001, where it was agreed to draft a usability certification scheme. UK participants subsequently defined proposed core competencies derived from ISO 13407 Human Centred Design Processes for Interactive Systems. In 2002 the UPA organised a survey which showed that while 77% of people new to the field would seek certification, only 39% of the most experienced would do so (see www. upcertification.org). Experienced professionals were also the most voluble in their criticism of certification in responses to the survey, and in email discussion groups. The UPA concluded that it had neither the financial nor people resources to go it alone with a controversial certification programme. Moving certification forward again will require: support from members of a (non-profit) consortium gaining consensus on the basic usability competencies defining a category of certification for new practitioners In the UK there is interest in producing a career development framework for usability practitioners compatible with the BCS industry structure model that provides "A matrix of over 300 roles, each with clearly stated tasks, experience and development targets, categorised by ten levels of responsibility and competence." www1.bcs.org.uk/DocsRepository/01300/1366/structure.HTM. A paper by Nigel Bevan (1) that summarises the UPA workshop and subsequent discussions is attached for conference attendees by kind permission of the author. 2. CREATING A BODY OF KNOWLEDGE At a workshop held at the UPA 2002 conference the UPA agreed to work towards creating a usability Body of Knowledge that would also support any future certification initiative. The five initial projects are: 1. Create a pamphlet to lay the groundwork for a body of knowledge. This document will build on ISO standards for human-centered design. The goal is a document in clear language with an attractive design.(Leader: Nigel Bevan) pending 2. Create an annotated bibliography for getting started in UCD. This list of reading will be integrated with the pamphlet to help those just learning about the field find the best reading material. (Leader: Chauncey Wilson) underway 3. Catalog current courses and degree programs in usability, UCD, HCI, IA or related fields. This work is in preparation for developing guidelines for a UCD curriculum. (Leader: Julie Nowicki) underway
4.
Define roles for practicing UCD, and start work on creating sample job descriptions. (Leader: Whitney Quesenbery) in discussion 5. Create a Code of Conduct for people practicing UCD. (Leader: Chauncey Wilson) draft For UPA 2004 Nigel Bevan is organising a one-day workshop to explore a top-down definition of the scope and content of a body of knowledge. 3. BHCIG POSITION At HCI/EUPA 2002 a panel session was held to collect input on the next steps for UK and Europe. The main findings were: • The UPA work presents a potential stop-gap with some degree of international coverage. • The core problem in accreditation of usability professionals is the lack of a representative professional body. • That the British Computer Society Industry Structure Model and the Skills Framework for the Information Age already define what HCI does should be a matter of concern. • That there is international concensus that HCI/usability professionals do human centred design as defined in ISO 13407 is evidence of a nature discipline • The small numbers of attendees (12) and the result of the final vote (who can assist? - 50%) explain why progress in this area is slow. • For the BHCIG accreditation activities will in future be addressed as part of the work of the Education and Practice sub group of the BHCIG chaired by Janet Findlay. • The services offered by the BHCIG in some part already address UPA activities and could contribute to them (through support from the E&P sub-group). A liaison was proposed. 4. THE PANEL The intent of the panel session at Effective Training and Teaching in HCI is to revisit professional accreditation and the development of the HCI professional with the "education" stakeholder group. The panel session will start with Jonathan Earthy making a set of short presentations covering: • The threats and opportunities • Important events and actions • Findings of the UPA and BHCIG surveys • UPA proposed programme of work • BHCIG products and services. Jonathan will then facilitate a discussion session on the part HCI trainers and teachers could and should play in the development of the HCI professional in general and the proposed initiatives in particular. It is hoped that the session will generate specific actions for the community, and even actions for specific attendees. 5. REFERENCES 1. Bevan N (2003) Accreditation of usability professionals. Human-Computer Interaction: Theory and Practice (Part 1), Volume 1 of the Proceedings of HCI International 2003, 429-433. Lawrence Erlbaum. 2. Bevan, N. (2002) Bevan N., Earthy J and Jarrett C. (2002) Building the usability professionals certification scheme: where next? Proceedings of the 1st European Usability Professionals Conference, September 2002. British Computer Society.
