Spring 2007 Continuing Ed Scholarship
Recipient Reports…

by Elisa Miller, Senior Member and LSC 1st Vice President

Thanks to the STC Lone Star community , I was able to do something this summer, that I’d never been able to do: attend pre-conference workshops associated with a professional conference. As the first winner of a continuing education scholarship, I attended one full-day and one half-day pre-conference workshops before the UPA (Usability Professionals Association) conference.

Once you leave school, the opportunities for learning change. Most of us try to attend a conference when we can or listen to an hour-long webinar. The chances for in-depth learning are limited to workshops put on by our professional associations (like those scheduled by the STC Lone Star in September, December, and May) and pre- and post-conference workshops.

I’ve often wondered what it is like to attend one of those workshops, learning something new in the fields of my interests. In the areas of information architecture, user research and usability, as the technologies change, so do some of the approaches to how we do our jobs. While there is some research happening at the academic levels, those of us employed in “real world jobs” rarely get the chance to learn to apply the concepts and abstract thinking to the work that we do.

UPA Annual Conference (Austin, TX)

This summer, I attended the UPA annual conference in Austin, and, as a scholarship recipient, two pre-conference workshops, “Abstract Prototyping” and “Designing a Task-Focused Conceptual Model,” taught by Larry Constantine and Jeff Johnson, two industry leaders.

Abstract Prototyping (Larry Constantine). In my information architect role, I’ve been developing more and more prototypes for software. Many of the people we develop for prefer to see both figurative and abstract samples of what we are thinking as we develop the software. We now have software which enables this process to some degree, and taking Larry’s class enabled me to think about prototyping in a way that I had not thought of it before. His model-driven prototyping methodology was exactly the class I needed to move from building flat, Visio designs to interactive prototypes based on tasks and standardized functions.

Designing a Task-Focused Conceptual Model (Jeff Johnson). Jeff’s class looked at some of the some ideas from a completely different perspective. His focus was on the concepts first, followed by the presentation layer. He asked us to perform an object/action analysis of managing a checking account. What are the objects; what are the actions; and what are the attributes. From those definitions, we were able to build task scenarios from which we built our models.

Both of these classes let me explore abstract concepts—something I hadn’t done since I left graduate school (over 14 years ago). The courses challenged me to think about my work in a new way and energized me to continue exploring my fields.

I’d like to encourage any of you who have vast experience in your position (and especially those of you who are senior members) to consider applying for a continuing education scholarship. Perhaps you would like to take a graduate-level course in something new; maybe you’d like to attend a one- or two-day workshop in management or another area that can challenge you. The application deadline is coming up. This scholarship is for you!