Here’s an interesting thing about creating and publishing your own project: You need just as many resources, pairs of eyeballs and time to physically sit at a machine long enough to create it.

I’m proud to announce the launch of http://uxprofessionals.com!

In our inaugural issue, we decided to use a very well-received article that was posted on A List Apart. We hope you take the time to stop by and submit your own comments and article ideas.

We’ve made it easy to stay up to date:

• Follow us on Twitter
• Join us on LinkedIn
• Join us on Facebook

We UX Professionals solve multi-layered, complex and sometimes frustrating issues for both online and offline problems. And, quite honestly, it is the user INexperience that drives our battles and forces us to analyze new ways to solve the same issues.

With so many different persona, application interfaces, retail store signage and roadway maps to look at in the course of a day is it possible that a common, overarching standardization or methodology will never be found? Better yet, do we even need a way to work within a framework that handles the many facets of an experience which combines online with offline to accessibility, or is the cooperation the process?

Disciplinary action

In each interaction with a thing or living creature there is a discipline; a niche. Going further, each discipline can be broken down into special interests or subcategories. A person with impaired vision takes your solution and offers feedback, thereby offering you a chance to develop alternatives that keep the values of the original intention.

Without specialization for each UX discipline, we are back in the stone ages of interaction. It takes the combination of interdisciplinary skills to truly solve problems.

Working beyond our means

It’s quite possible that you’ve been on a project where the good and the bad weren’t challenges presented by the information design or the brand relation between on and offline environments. It is very possible that the good and bad were the people. The talent.

When we partner, truly partner, outside of our skillset we need to let go of our fear that one discipline will outweigh another. If we can trust another with our work or trust another with our experience that they’ll create a solution with the user in mind, everyone wins.

I need to post something about recruiters: They’re helpful people who can not only do a lot of leg work for you, but also give you insight into your industry and inform you of trends, analysis and hopefully salary data.

The reason I need to post something is because we’ve received a great deal of inquiries from this profession on our UX Professionals group on LinkedIn. The inquiries range from membership to sales to actual recruiting. Some are up-front, courteous folks who, faced with a direct question, will answer to their intentions; others are not at all as honest.

The UX Professionals group on LinkedIn doesn’t currently accept membership from recruiting because many, many (85%) members have asked that we don’t allow any direct contact via the list in regards to sales or recruiting. I hope that the people in these two industries understand that the entire group is using the majority rule here and, while not to some people’s liking, is going to be in place until next quarter so that we can establish a baseline membership and collect content for an industry site.

I’d love to hear from these two audiences so that they may have their free speech heard in a public forum.

Visual Activity is now accepting submissions for a new industry site dealing directly with all UX Professionals.

We’ll consider pieces that include:

• a clear and concise topic dealing with a UX problem / resolution
• a prospective that is in your own voice (it’s not nice to “borrow without permission”)
• usable examples and tested results (regardless of their outcome)

How to Submit

Please send an e-mail with your proposed article to: uxpATvisualactivityDOTcom. Our editor will get in touch with you once she’s had a chance to review the submission and let you know whether we’ll be using your piece. If we do use it, we’ll let you know the process for publishing and get to work!

Thank you in advance and have fun with it!

After working with so many incredibly talented user experience professionals (both freelance and full-time), we decided to fully manage a for-profit professional organization called UX Professionals.

We’re excited with the opportunity that exists as UX peers assist one another through different disciplines by producing content, networking and advice to one another.

Our immediate goal is to edit our existing inaugural content for the launch of the official site on 15 August, 2008.

Meanwhile, we welcome all UX Professionals to join us on either Facebook or LinkedIn by visiting the group online.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=6651010457

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/38178/624E5215018E

Please join us!

- Keith