World Usability Day in NJ - STC UUX Newsletter

This article was originally published in the October 2006 issue (Vol 12, No. 2)

The UsabilityNJ group is the New Jersey chapter of the UPA. It was started in 2001 by members of the UPA and Society of Technical Communications located in central New Jersey. Its membership has since grown to over 250 professionals in the area of usability and related disciplines. Please visit http://www.usabilitynj.org for more information.

STC UUX Community Newsletter
Usability Interface

World Usability Day 2006 – How New Jersey will Celebrate

By Richard D. Herring, Secretary, UsabilityNJ, and Cindy Lu, Chair

"Why doesn't this work right? What am I supposed to do with this now?"

The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) asks these questions at its World Usability Day 2006 web site. These questions have become universal as an explosion of products promises to make life easier and things run smoother. These promises are often broken when experiences lead to a user’s frustration. It does not have to be this way.

World Usability Day, November 14, 2006, is for everyone who has asked these questions and seeks good answers. This “Earth Day” style event focuses on how User Centered Design (UCD) and usability engineering deliver on their promises. Last year, World Usability Day featured 115 events in 35 countries during a 36-hour period. Approximately 8,000 people attended world-wide and 200 people from 16 countries participated in online seminars. This year’s events will likely exceed those figures as participants meet globally and locally.

Usability professionals in New Jersey are eager for this day. New Jersey has provided a steady stream of innovation and research that ranges from physics (Einstein), home products (Edison), Health Sciences (Waksman), to telecommunications (AT&T, Bell Labs and its spinoffs). The state continues this tradition as new companies grow along the Route 1 Corridor known as “Einstein’s Alley.” There seems no better place to celebrate.

UsabilityNJ (the New Jersey local chapter of UPA) and The Joint Princeton Professional Chapter of the ACM and IEEE Computer Society will celebrate this day together. They are holding World Usability Day 2006 at the Sarnoff Corporation, site of the landmark RCA Laboratories. The program will be rich and varied, like the state’s contributions. The parts include:

Keynote speakers from local industries . They will review how user-centered designs make innovations and technologies more usable and accessible. The speakers represent three key state industries: Finance (Todd Warfel), Life Sciences (Edmond Israelski) , and Telecommunications (Mark Altom).
Showcases of usable products, processes and methods. These will highlight “success stories” and new usable offerings.
Special “Idea Market” sessions . Attendees can brainstorm hot topics and use tools, techniques and processes to develop new product ideas.

This event is possible only through collaboration. The UsabilityNJ Group provided the impetus and found a willing partner in the Joint Princeton Professional Chapter of the ACM and IEEE Computer Society. The Joint Chapter kindly changed its meeting date to World Usability Day and provided the venue at Sarnoff Labs. These groups are pulling together for their sake and the public’s.

New Jersey companies can also sponsor this event. Sponsors’ funds will help defray logistics costs. Sponsoring opportunities include: Introducing speakers at the event; printing credit and logos on World Usability “take aways”; and public credit for sponsoring “Idea Market” sessions. Sponsorship also widens participation by the public, potential clients, and practitioners … the triad of World Usability in microcosm.

Have a wonderful World Usability Day on November 14th, 2006. There will be an event near you.