Celebrating the First World Usability Day
Posted on Tuesday October 25, 2005 by Betsy Weber
Tagged as:
Only people passionate enough about a cause get an entire day designated to celebrate it. Who fits that description? Usability experts.
As a result, the UPA (Usability Professionals' Association) is celebrating the first annual World Usability Day on November 3, 2005, and they're inviting one and all to the party.
The goal of World Usability Day is to promote the fields of usability engineering and user-centered design. At TechSmith, we're excited to be a part of the event.
We partnered with Human Factors International (HFI) and my alma mater, Michigan State University, to conduct a usability study using Morae on booking online travel. Michigan State donated the use of their state-of-the-art lab. In addition to donating copies of Morae to the study, TechSmith and HFI both donated their usability staff to conduct each test and analyze the results of the study. Results will be published in the Morae Newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter and see the results, along with other World Usability Day information, sign up here.
What does World Usability Day mean to you? If you're a webmaster or software developer, you want your Web site and software to be easy to use and accessible to everyone. Plus, you want anyone who visits your site or uses your software to be successful. We share those goals at TechSmith, and that's why we're so heavily involved in the day of recognition.
If you're ever interested in hearing more about how TechSmith conducts usability testing, or you're in the area and would like to participate, comment to let me know.
Planning to attend Michigan's UPA event at Michigan State University on November 3, 2005? Please comment here or e-mail us - we'd love to meet up at the event.
Comments (1)
Is there any way that there could be a "making of" documentary created (probably a "movie," maybe a series of photos+screencast material, sort of a narrated "filmstrip") from these activities at MSU. It would be really interesting to have a "how-we-did-it" product, which would show the usability process from start to finish.
Maybe there could be narration and images from the initial brainstorming about how/why to do the usability test, then some narration and visuals about which small number of variables were finally chosen to be tested, some photos of the physical setup, some screencasts of what the process looked like as it was happening in "real time," some screencasts of how the usability team used Morae, and finally what it was like for the "decision makers" to watch Morae highlights and make their final decisions about the software (at least from the usability pt of view!).
From this, people who want to learn about usability testing could watch this complete process, from brainstorming to final decision, all in a 15-30 minute "movie" which highlighted the steps. Hardly anyone will be able to attend the event in person, so this is a pale substitute, but still useful. Not too much to ask, is it?
Posted by Mike Lougee | October 26, 2005 9:50 AM
Posted on October 26, 2005 09:50