World Usability Day 2009 set for November 12th

World Usability Day (WUD) was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals’ Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 200 events are organized in over 43 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.

WUD is about making our world work better. It’s about “Making Life Easy” and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first.

Designing for a Sustainable World (the 2009 theme) events and forums will focus on how products and services impact our world. Programs will look at all products and services, whether they are buildings, roads, consumer products, businesses, services or healthcare systems; throughout their life cycle. The impact focuses on the environment, energy, water, soil, and more. Have the materials and processes that have been used been recycled and are they re-usable? Are they user and environmentally friendly? These are questions that must be considered as we design, purchase, use and dispose of products each and every day.

Human-centered design, a methodology that maximizes the likelihood that the product will meet user needs and wants, directly supports the first two pillars of sustainability:

• Economic – matching a design to user’s needs and abilities enhances its utilization, quality, and efficiency, thus providing cost effective solutions and reducing the likelihood that systems products and services will be rejected by their users;
• Social – taking a human-centered approach results in systems, products and services which are better for the health and well-being of their users, including users with disabilities

Human-centered design also supports the environmental component through promoting a whole lifecycle approach to design. It explicitly encourages all those involved in design to consider the longer-term implications of their system for their users and therefore for the environment. (ISO DIS 9241-210)

World Usability Day 2009 will serve as an impetus to creating greater awareness for designs, products and services that improve the sustainability of the world.

For a list of World Usability Day events, visit the World Usability Day Web site.

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