Corporate and Academic Affiliates Join the UXalliance, Expand Capabilities

SSB BART Group and Bentley University have been added as the newest User Experience Alliance (www.UXalliance.com) members, enhancing the international user research network to a total of 22 companies across the globe.

The network’s first corporate member, SSB BART Group (www.ssbbartgroup.com), focuses solely on accessibility to expand the wide-range of services that the UXalliance already offers its customers. Founded in 1997 by engineers with disabilities, SSB BART Group leverages off human compassion, personal experiences and unsurpassed knowledge to help design and enhance IT systems for all users.

“Joining the UXalliance affords us the ability to offer our products and services internationally with the intention of navigating multi-national companies through the many different accessibility requirements they encounter across counties and cultures,” explains Karl Groves, Director of Strategic Planning and Product Development at SSB BART Group.

The UXalliance’s first academic partner, The Design and Usability Center (DUC) (www.bentley.edu/usability) is a human factors research, design, and testing consultancy housed within Bentley University’s Master’s program in Human Factors in Information Design.

Bill Albert, DUC Director and author of Measuring the User Experience (2008) and Beyond the Usability Lab: Conducting Large-scale Online User Experience Studies (January 2010), explains that DUC’s dual mission is to “serve corporate clients and train students to produce cutting-edge user experience research studies.”

Albert predicts that due to the network’s array of shared experiences, best practices, and use of the latest technology, the UXalliance is “perfectly positioned to be the leaders in the industry as attention shifts towards understanding and improving the entire user experience, for a wider, more international population.”

Along with the addition of our new partners, the UXalliance has launched a redesigned website (www.uxalliance.com) for a more user-friendly experience of learning about our international alliance.  Please visit our blog at www.globaluserresearch.com and get your hands on a copy of our newly released Handbook of Global User Research, a collective effort from over 53 user experience professionals from over 20 countries.

About the UXalliance

Founded in 2005, the UXalliance is the international network for user experience. The UXalliance covers Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia; they are ideally placed to lead international user experience research. The UXalliance has over 250 professionals worldwide, manages over 50 testing facilities and has experience across a broad range of technologies and sectors. www.UXalliance.com

The UXalliance consists of eleven partner companies, Axance (France) www.axance.com, Mitsue-Links (Japan) www.mitsue.co.jp/english/, Optimal Usability (New Zealand) www.optimalusability.com, Serco ExperienceLab (United Kingdom) www.serco.com/usability, SirValUse (Germany) www.sirvaluse.de, Snitker & Co (Denmark) www.snitker.com, UIDesign Group (Moscow) http://eng.uidesign.ru, UserCentric (United States) www.usercentric.com, User Experience (China) www.usability.cn, User Intelligence (Netherlands) www.userintelligence.com, Xperience Consulting (Spain) www.xperienceconsulting.com; four associate partners, Mercedes Sanchez Usabilidade (Brazil) www.mercedessanchez.com.br, Teleno (Switzerland) www.teleno.com, ThinkUser (South Korea) www.thinkuser.com, and User Intelligence (Finland) www.userintelligence.com/fi; and six affiliate members, Ayer Viernes (Chili) www.ayerviernes.com, ExperienceU (Czech Republic) www.experienceu.com, SSB Bart Group (US) www.ssbbartgroup.com, Symetria (Poland) www.symetria.pl, The Design and Usability Center (DUC) www.bentley.edu/usability, and Yu Centrik (Canada) www.yucentrik.ca.