Friday I spent most of the day at User Focus, the UPA DC metro chapter’s second annual conference. In their words, the conference was:

A one day exchange of ideas and experiences that demonstrate the value of usability in successful design.

It was that indeed. I really liked it. Small, close to home, and full of attendees working in the area. Understandably, it was good for networking, but it was also notable for the focus of the presentations.

Unlike national events in which you might hear top-tier media firms brag about pushing the limits of Web design and interactivity, the attendees and presenters were talking about issues facing organizations in this area, namely federal government and nonprofits.

How, for example, do you make the two-million-page Census.gov site easy to navigate? Can nonprofits better serve their members via well-designed online social networks? Topics maybe not have been sexy, but they are real and applicable to the folks I work with and the clients we serve.

I also have to give a shout to Ovo Studios, one of the few vendors set up at User Focus. Their usability testing suite was cool for sure. What impressed me is that they offer their software on a lease-to-own basis, Ovo by the Pound. That means small Web design/development companies can offer some pretty high-end usability testing and reporting without having to drop huge dollars up front on software and training. For those of us working fee-for-service, that’s awesome. We can write those services into our proposals and afford to execute them no matter how infrequently they’re purchased.