DE Oracle @ UMUC

Reflections on World Usability Day 2007

Yulia Nemchinova

Usability Specialist - IT

Graduate School of Management and Technology

Published: January-February 2008

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Teaching-strategies

When was the last time you visited a website and could not find anything you needed? Or when was the last time you struggled with another piece of technology such as a radio or a microwave oven, but just could not figure out how to make it work? Well, perhaps, too often. Fortunately, there is a whole group of usability professionals that is committed to making technology easy to use, so it is logical, intuitive and just makes sense.

Interestingly though, poor experiences with technology do not go unnoticed by the users. Good experiences, on the other hand, are invisible. When things work well, no one seems to notice cleverly designed interfaces, intuitive navigation or well-thought through content. The ease of use is likely to remain transparent to users. However, bringing these positive experiences to a user is a hard job that requires understanding and integration of user and business needs.

In 2005 the first World Usability Day was founded, and every year since a whole day is dedicated to usability not just here in the U.S., but around the globe.  By holding numerous usability events, organizers hope to bring awareness to the technology related issues while reaching usability experts in different industries.

With expansion of the Internet and advanced technologies during the last decade, the usability profession has been shaped to accommodate new challenges. The usability discipline, in turn, has been introduced to college curriculum as part of preparation of future user-centered design professionals. More organizations recognize that providing usable products is directly related to their bottom line. A number of government projects which, by the way, have to deliver accessible interfaces, now include usability testing in their product development cycle.  These are all good signs; however, the need of developing usable products is still far greater than what has been done so far.

Understandably, hiring usability consultants or bringing them in house takes time and resources. With a new semester quickly approaching, it is a good time to consider what can be done today to improve student experiences in their classrooms. It may not seem apparent, but simple things such as well organized classrooms, responsiveness to students' questions and keeping them on track with regular personalized feedback - all contribute to a good user experience.

As we are getting ready for a new semester, let's try to think about experiences we deliver to our students.