What is UPA Israel?

UPA Israel is a community of Israeli professionals in the fields of usability, user interface design, human factors engineering, user experience design and the gray areas that lie in between. The organization is a formal chapter of Usability Professionals' Association.

UPA Israel Goals

UPA Israel addresses all those who are working or interested in usability, user experience, user interface, human-computer interaction, and human factors: professionals, vendors, consultants, lecturers, researchers, existing and potential customers, and all those who wish to develop a career in these fields. Key target audiences of UPA Israel are professionals in development and management of technology based products as well as the people who use technology.

	Increase awareness for the need of convenience, simplicity, and fun of using technology
	Develop a platform for networking among professionals
	Constitute an Israeli body of knowledge

Members

UPA Israel members come from various fields such as software, hardware, and Internet product development, graphic design, and industrial design. Hundreds of professionals are registered in the community, including consultants, professors, students, user interface designers, industrial designers, technical writers, marketing managers, human factors researchers, Website editors, and more.

History

The organization was established in 1999 by Dr. Avi Parush, an HCI researcher from the Technion, in response to the demand to have an HCI-related professional community in Israel. This need kept on coming up among the few Israelis that attended international conferences and lamented the lack of such events in Israel.

During the years 1999-2000, Dr. Parush gathered some of the leading people in the field and they discussed the possibility of founding the local SIGCHI chapter, which he later named IsraCHI.

When looking for a good gathering place in the center of Israel, Prof. Shimon Schocken from IDC (Interdisciplinary Center) was happy to sponsor a meeting place at IDC, which is used until today.

The initial goals were to meet the above mentioned needs by organizing periodic meetings in which one or more lectures on various topics in the field were presented. There was very little PR for the events, and publicity was mainly through word of mouth. The response of people in the field was overwhelming, and attendance in every meeting was high. Dr. Parush notes that other local CHI groups elsewhere in the world, including the one he is involved with in Ottawa, tend to have a lesser attendance.

When Dr. Parush left Israel and moved to Carleton University (Canada) in January 2004, a steering committee was established to replace him in his duties as the organization leader. The chairman that was selected was Tomer Sharon, Check Point's usability expert, and committee members until June 2006 were Miri Olin (A senior usability engineer and user interface designer), Erez Pedro (a distinguished user interface consultant), and Professor Joachim Meyer (Ben Gurion University and Chairman of the Israeli Human Factors and Ergonomics Society).

Some of the organization’s past successes were a huge breakfast with more than 300 people attending to hear Ben Shneiderman, and another evening with Jenny Preece (a leading expert in HCI, usability, and on-line communities). Another memorable event was devoted to accessibility with Gidi Rabinovich sharing his experiences as a blind computer user. At a recent event that was devoted to the issue of graphic design and usability, a special video interview with Jakob Nielsen, the world known usability guru, was presented. The interview was held in San Francisco and conducted by Tomer Sharon especially for this event. During 2004 and 2005, frequent events were held at IDC covering topics such as “Digital Photography User Experience”, “Children’s User Experience”, “Making of UI professionals”, “Usability in practice” and “Web vs. Windows. In January 2005, the organization's website was launched at www.upaisrael.org. An important milestone of the organization was the first ever World Usability Day event that was celebrated in a full day professional event with 250 attendees in November 2005. The activities and the website brought more people to the organization and it encompasses about 700 professionals to date.

On June 2006 IsraCHI was registered as a formal Chapter of Usability Professionals' Association and changed its name to UPA Israel.

On June 2007, Eva Tsur replaced Tomer Sharon as President of UPA Israel after Tomer Sharon left to the USA.