CUA Central, the Hangout for Certified Usability Analysts
I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a community nut. I don’t hang out at cool Blogger watering holes, I don’t go to cool clubs with a bunch of cool friends, and I seldom join in the cool chatter at any hang-outs like myspace, facebook or twitter. I’m just this kind of quiet usability guy, ya’ know?
So, it was with some interest that I recently ran across a new feature on the humanfactors web site. What new feature? The CUA Central community.
CUA Central is a community for all Certified Usability Analysts where different topics of conversation around the usability profession can take place. An email and password are required, and you must be accepted into the community by providing your CUA number. What’s a CUA number? That’s the number that comes on the certificate you received after successfully completing and passing the Certified Usability Analyst test that Human Factors International administers.
If you’re a CUA, I urge you to join and check it out. By coming together as a community we can not only grow our profession as a whole, but also grow ourselves by learning from other CUAs out there.
Don’t have a CUA certificate? No problem, just enroll in the online certification test, you can find it on the HFI Certified Usability Analyst training web page. Of course, you have to take (and actually pass) the test. I should warn you in advance however, that you might want to take the courses HFI offers if you’re new to usability. The test is about 2.5 hours, and when I took it I needed almost all of that 2.5 hours.
However, the time and energy you spend in learning about usability and user-centered design is in my humble opinion time very well spent, so I urge you to consider the courses and certification test, or if you’ve already received a CUA to join the community.
