New International Usability Partners in India and the United States

HumanCentric (United States) and Kern Communications (India) have joined the International Usability Partners (IUP). User Interface Design GmbH (UID) co-founded the IUP in 2006. In just two years the IUP have become a leading global provider of user experience services, covering all five continents with nine full partners and associate partners in more than 30 countries.

"With our new partners HumanCentric and Kern Communications we are able to offer our clients improved global reach through one point of contact," says Jakob Biesterfeldt, Manager User Research at UID. "Both new partners are leading usability and design companies in their countries as well as experts for global user experience research and design. I am very pleased that they have joined the IUP!"

User experience services worldwide

HumanCentric and Kern Communications join with international usability companies from seven other countries: China, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Providing standardized usability research, testing and design for markets all over the world, these nine companies will establish the gold standard for product usability design and testing.

"I am pleased to join the IUP," says Barry Beith president and CEO, HumanCentric. "Being part of an international network of usability researchers allows us to provide more efficient cross-cultural usability testing to our clients."

Ripul Kumar, Director User Research at Kern Communications, adds his views from India: "Healthcare, education, communication, and consumer products will need to undergo a lot of change, if they have to be designed for India. As the world is looking at India for the next billion consumers, Kern will help IUP clients across the globe understand user behaviour in India."

Excellence through experience and research

The IUP have collaborated in dozens of international projects in more than 30 countries. With recent user research studies in South Africa and Australia the IUP now cover all five continents. Internationally renowned clients rely on the IUP's services including Expedia, Microsoft, Samsung, and eBay.

The network develops strategies for international cross-cultural user research through collaborative research projects. In recent studies the IUP has highlighted cultural differences in the usage of social networks, developed guidelines for the recruitment of user research participants and studied how users perform transactions with their mobile devices in Europe and China. In order to further improve the network' collaboration, the IUP established an exchange program for their members' employees. In 2008 a UID consultant worked at ISAR UID in Shanghai for 9 months.

Links for further information

All IUP have an extended network of other usability companies all around the world.
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