User Experience Magazine: Volume 6, Issue 1, 2007
Feature Articles: Usability Around the World: World Usability Day 2006
A World Usability Day Case Study: Conducting Multinational Expert Reviews
By Simon Herd, Maura Vij and Tjeerd de Boer
As
products and services become increasingly global, brands must reflect
cultural differences across many diverse markets. Effective usability
services across target countries provide the means for brands to embody
the local customer experience and to take this into consideration when
developing an interface intended to work globally.
On World
Usability Day 2006, the User Experience Alliance ran an ‘Expert Review
around the World’ to raise awareness of usability as a global matter.
In this article, we discuss the process and benefits of this review and
how global usability services can deliver real business benefits and
make a significant impact for local users.
World Usability Day 2006: Forty Thousand People Hear How to Make Life Easier
By Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Caryn Saitz
World
Usability Day 2007 was a bigger success than we dreamed: on that day,
we had 40,000 people all around the world thinking about usability. In
addition, the global media reported on many of the 225 events and
activities held all around the globe. These events varied from exhibits
and activities in public venues such as museums and malls, to placing
red balloons on city streets.
Design Competitions Succeed in Spreading the Usability Message
By Joi L. Roberts
Technology
has become a way of life, but sometimes at the cost of ease of use. We
come across so many products and systems at offices, banks,
restaurants, theaters, and even in our homes. Yet may people wonder
"Why doesn't this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?“
World
Usability Day was for everyone who has ever asked these questions.On
this day, participants around the world learned howthe User Experience
industry is "Making Life Easy" in sectors from healthcare to food to
home appliances to communication to government.
In
places likeAtlanta, Georgia, Chicago, Illinois, North Carolina’s
Research Triangle area and Hyderabad, India, students and industry
professionals sought to make a tangible difference. The World Usability
Day planning committees in each of these locales organized design
competitions to identify existing systems that are poorly designed or
to design new systems that maximize usability. Focus areas
includedentertainment, finance, tourism, relationships, communications,
and work. Such design competitions offer submitters exposure to their
peers and experts in the industry.
Creating a Global Team and a Global Infrastructure
By Daniela Marghitu and Raymond Van der Zalm
Building
on the success of last year’s World Usability Day global event and its
central Web site, an international interdisciplinary volunteer team was
formed early in the year, on a small budget, to start formulating the
strategy for the World Usability Day Web site 2006. With the
understanding that in 2006 the Web site was the key platform for
communicating internationally, the aims of this team site were to
develop a universally usable centralized tool clearly reflecting World
Usability Day—educating people about usability, accessibility, and new
Web-based technologies for global communication; and for sharing
professional and every day usability experiences. The site needed to be
highly accessible and, at the same time, vibrant, professional, and
engaging for all users.
English was the official
language used for communicating among the World Usability Day Web team
members, event organizers, and users; however, we also needed to
address multiple languages and times of day. Interdisciplinary teams
are widely considered to be central to the success of complex
professional projects, but building and holding together such a team is
never easy.
The World Usability Day 2006 Web site team
included experts from the usability and accessibility, computer
engineering, information technology, education, and marketing fields.
Add to this diversity several major locations (Sydney, Australia;
Auburn, Alabama; and Bellingham, Washington, USA) and we had another
level of difficulty. The challenges and issues that arise when people
work together from diverse parts of the world are common to many global
teams, and the lessons learned in the process of creating the World
Usability Day global team and platform can be carried through to other
projects.
Departments
One Day Around the World: Good Signs and Future Challenges
Editor's Note by Aaron Marcus, Editor in Chief
A Recipe for Usability
The View from Here by Rahel Bailie
Wii Usability Woos Non-Gamers
What’s News by Tema Frank
Book Review: It’s Show Time!
Reviewed by Aaron Marcus