We’re very pleased to announce that the Society of American Archivists has formed a User Experience (UX) Section. 

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.

If you’re an SAA member, we invite you to join the new UX Section. You may do so by visiting your 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 [log in to unmask] 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.

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