We're very pleased to announce that the SAA User Experience (UX) Section has been formed, and we'd like to invite you to join the section and its email list.
Here is a bit about the section's goals:
Centering users is an imperative in our field, and the need to implement this as a professional priority is underscored by DEI and social justice considerations. Despite the supposed centrality of centering user needs to archival practice, there are currently no guidelines or standards informing user experience work, nor is there a community of practice around performing that work. We hope that this section will form that community of practice. We hope that we might begin by developing a set of principles to guide user experience testing in archives, including testing and research methodologies that measure the impact of changes to descriptive content, interface design, and functionality. We hope that these principles will be accompanied by a toolkit of scalable, customizable user and usability testing approaches and script templates.
Any SAA member can join the new UX Section by visiting their SAA profile portal: https://connect.archivists.org/home. From there, use the "Communities" menu to go to "Manage My Sections"; scroll down to the User Experience Section under the "Sections Available" heading; and click "Join." Once you've joined the section, you may contact the full section email list by emailing archivists-userexp@ConnectedCommunity.org or writing a message through SAA Connect by using the "Communities" menu to go to "My Communities," navigating to the User Experience Section, entering the section's "Discussion" page, and posting a new message.
Thank you to everyone who signed the petition in support of the creation of the section, and special thanks to the Accessibility & Disability Section Steering Committee for their support.
We're in the process now of setting up the section and scheduling our June or July meeting in conjunction with the SAA Annual Meeting. We hope to see many of you there, and in the meantime, we hope to see you around in the new UX Section mailing list!
Best wishes,
Faith Charlton, Alison Clemens, Betts Coup, and Zoë Hill