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Chris LaRoche, User Experience Consultant , Division of Student Life (DSL)

Katherine Wahl, Accessibility and Usability Consultant , Division of Student Life (DSL)

As the usability profession evolved to become the User Experience field and has grown exponentially the past decade, understanding and defining user experience or “UX” has become increasingly important and difficult at the same time. This presentation will discuss and define what user experience encompasses today. Additionally, the presentation will focus on the primary roles and the common methods of practice used within the field, as well as when you should use them. The webinar will also include a practical discussion and definition of user research and usability evaluation. Finally, we will examine the increasingly important role design and design thinking is having within the overall UX practice.

The presentation will cover some of the work that IS&T is doing to modernize MIT's VoIP infrastructure.

Katherine Wahl, Accessibility and Usability Consultant , Division of Student Life (DSL)

Kathy Cahill, Associate Dean, Accessibility and Usability , Division of Student Life (DSL)

Join us to learn how you can make your department’s websites and applications more accessible, an important step to ensure inclusion and meet established standards. We'll cover how and where to get started with assessment, what questions to ask vendors, and when to seek assistance. The presenters will give a brief overview of accessibility, describe the most common issues they encounter, and discuss how to address them.

Chris LaRoche, User Experience Consultant , Division of Student Life (DSL)

With the expansiveness of the concept and idea of user experience everywhere in our digital and physical lives today, the question remains: how did we get here and how did this topic become so pervasive in such a short time? The discussion will describe how the field has evolved, matured, adapted, and continued to expand: from humble beginnings, as human factors and usability, to becoming an all-encompassing term user experience that includes so many professions and areas. To answer this question, this talk focuses on the evolution of the journey of the UX field from its incubation in World War II and post war, through the evolution of the consumer society in the 1950s/1960s, through the software explosion of the 1980s/1990s, and the Web explosion of the 1990s/2000s. We will then discuss specifically how this professional solidified and became so important within the last decade. Finally, a wrap up will include where the idea and concept of user experience is headed in the immediate future, with a call to action to understand the risks and benefits on the field’s horizon.