This year’s conference of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) will take place in Munich from May 24th to May 28th. The theme of the conference is “Embracing Cultural Diversity – User Experience Design for the World”. Centigrade contributes two “Idea Markets” to this top-class event.

The UPA is a network of over 10.000 members all over the world with the goal of promoting the importance of a positive “user experience” in diverse areas of life and to educate about measures required to arrive at user-friendly interactive systems. For the first time in its history, the UPA conference takes place in Europe.

Dr. Markus Weber, Head of Usability Engineering at Centigrade: “We are pleased that both our contributions to UPA 2010 have been accepted. In the ‘Idea Markets’, burning questions from the user experience domain are discussed in a highly interactive fashion. In this context, I will deal with the question of how to establish a ‘UX culture’ in organizations. I’m also looking forward to discussing the topic of communication in the user experience domain. This is highly relevant since user experience professionals should also approach communication in a ‘user-centered’ way – it should be tailored to the needs of the respective communication partner. Hence, communicating with colleagues is very different from communicating with clients. And there are even more subtle pitfalls to communications that will be discussed.”

In addition to conducting client projects, Centigrade places great value on actively participating in professional exchange in the user experience community. Centigrade employees regularly participate in conferences and congresses in order to discuss examples from work practice and to stay up to date regarding best practices and trends in the areas of user experience and user interface design.

More information about the UPA International Conference can be found at the conference website.